Feds warn holiday travel abroad comes with ‘risk and uncertainty’

The federal government isn’t exactly telling Canadians to avoid international travel this holiday season, but they aren’t giving the idea a glowing endorsement either, warning that trips abroad in the midst of the burgeoning Omicron variant come with “risk and uncertainty.”

In an update Friday, Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos stopped short of telling Canadians to stay home, but did his best to lay out some of the harsh realities that could accompany an overseas vacation.

“My message to people who are planning to travel in the coming weeks — they must know that around the world things can change rapidly … they must expect that things are going to get more complicated when it comes to travelling abroad.”

Those complications could include rapidly evolving restrictions, delays, and the potential for lengthy mandated quarantines.

“People may go abroad and find themselves in very difficult situations because measures in other countries can change very quickly,” Duclos warned.

“The second risk is when people come back to Canada, they will face procedures at the border, these measures take time, there will be delays. They may need to quarantine for a certain number of days, it may be many days because we may need to be strict and severe to protect Canadians’ health.

“The main advice is to be extremely prudent when it comes to thinking about travelling outside of Canada,” he stressed. “We are not currently advising Canadians not to travel, that could come. If it does come it will have to come from a combination of different input and sources of advice.”

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News of the emerging Omicron variant already has some re-thinking their holiday travel plans. President of Tripcentral, Richard Vanderlubbe, told CityNews last week that his company saw an almost immediate drop in bookings when Omicron starting making headlines.

“The moment we got news of the Omicron variant affecting potential travel restrictions, we did notice a slow down in bookings and a pause while people were contacting us to say, ‘what does this mean to me?’ ”

Canada has already implemented travel bans on some African countries where Omicron is rapidly spreading, and Duclos stressed Friday that COVID-19 testing capacity at Canadian airports is ramping up.

Duclos said on November 30, testing capacity at Canadian airports for all travellers from all countries was 11,000 tests per day. As of December 9, that has increased to 17,000 tests per day.

On Thursday, an auditor general’s report found Canada failed to adequately enforce border measures designed to stop international travellers from bringing cases of COVID-19 into Canada.

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With files from Michael Ranger of CityNews and The Canadian Press