Multiple reports tonight say Canada may be ready to institute tough, new travel rules that once again restrict discretionary travel outside the country.
CTV, the CBC and the Globe and Mail all state that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was speaking with provincial premiers Tuesday evening. All three quoted sources as suggesting that changes were afoot, perhaps taking Canada back many months to the days of tough travel rules.
Sources told the Globe that the new rules could be announced as early as tomorrow. One source told the paper that the Canadian government “plans to ban the entry of foreign nationals for non-essential travel.”
“Public health officials and experts have warned that the omicron variant — which is thought to be highly contagious and the variant most capable of evading vaccines — is on its way to becoming the dominant coronavirus strain in Canada,” the CBC said in a report early Tuesday evening.
“Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland declined to provide details of pandemic measures under consideration during an appearance on CBC’s Power & Politics, saying that she did not want to ‘pre-empt any announcements,'” the CBC wrote.
“We are in the midst of a global wave of a variant that just turns out to be extremely, extremely, extremely contagious,” Freeland said. “We have a chance to keep this under control. But we can only do that if all of us really act, and the federal government is committed to doing its part.”
CTV News quotes a source as saying that “potential new travel restrictions could come into place before Christmas and would be a ‘one-sized fits all approach.’”
