Biden ‘Leads from Behind’ on Opening the U.S.–Canada Border By John Fund
https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/biden-leads-from-behind-on-opening-the-u-s-canada-border/
Ottawa continues to ban nonessential travel across its border with its southern neighbor. The closure no longer makes medical sense.
C anada is usually our leading trading partner, and ties between the two countries run deep. But they’ve been severed for the last 14 months by a closure of the U.S.–Canada border. The closure no longer makes medical sense.
The closure of the world’s longest international border has just been extended again. That is unlikely to change soon. Friends, relatives, and business associates have been separated. Americans who own vacation homes in Canada can’t maintain them.
The closure isn’t equal. Canadians are allowed to travel to the United States by air, but Americans aren’t allowed to cross the border for nonessential travel into Canada. A Canadian coming to the U.S. only needs to have had a negative coronavirus test no more than three days before travel, while Canada requires a hotel quarantine for those arriving by air. This is despite the U.S.’s comparable record on vaccinations and its better record on COVID-19 cases.
On the Canadian side, the closure has devastated border towns and destroyed tourism from the U.S., which sent more than 15 million arrivals in 2019.
An anti-American strain infects the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. “Canadians are boastful of their tolerance, but the reliable way so many will rush toward the worst possible interpretation of any American event reminds that when it comes to the United States, the dominant Canadian disposition is often closer to a form of unthinking bigotry,” writes Canadian journalist J. J. McCullough in the Washington Post. Indeed, the Canadian historian Frank Underhill once mused that Americans are benevolently ignorant of Canada, while Canadians are malevolently knowledgeable about the United States.
Earlier this month, Trudeau told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that he would prefer to wait until 75 percent of his country is vaccinated before fully reopening the border. “My gut tells me it’s going to be [closed] at least well into the fall of 2021,” Trudeau predicted a week earlier. As of now, only 49 percent of Canadians have been at least partially vaccinated, the same percentage as in the U.S.
The travel site One Mile at a Time concludes that “it’s hard to argue that this is anything other than political. . . . Canada is just doing everything it can to discourage all kinds of travel regardless of risk, and the US travel ban is part of that.”
When is President Biden going to jawbone his fellow liberal Justin Trudeau to open the border?
Greece, France, and Spain will all be open by early June. Last week, even the intensely bureaucratic European Union agreed to accept vaccinated visitors this summer. But there’s no sign that the U.S. is seriously pressuring Canada to reopen.
It looks like President Biden’s stance on this issue has been borrowed from his old boss, Barack Obama. It’s called “leading from behind.” Both Americans and Canadians are suffering as a result.
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