Justin Trudeau's Liberal government has officially lifted the onerous requirement that foreign nationals must be vaccinated to enter America's northern neighbor, which means Canadian citizens who have been living abroad and have refused to take the jab can now return to their homeland. The government is also ending the forced wearing of masks on airplanes and random COVID-19 testing at airports.
"It basically has become a free country again between Canada and the U.S., which is going to benefit both countries extremely – financially, socially, etcetera," submits Brian Rushfeldt, co-founder and former executive director of a Canadian pro-family group.
Canada, like the United States, reportedly requires that foreign nationals be vaccinated when entering the country, but for the former, that requirement ends Sunday. No change in the mandate is expected in the U.S. in the near term.
"The removal of border measures has been facilitated by a number of factors, including modelling that indicates that Canada has largely passed the peak of the Omicron BA.4- and BA.5-fuelled wave, Canada's high vaccination rates, lower hospitalization and death rates, as well as the availability and use of vaccine boosters (including new bivalent formulation), rapid tests, and treatments for COVID-19," the government said in a release.
Rushfeldt is inclined to believe, however, that Trudeau only has political expedience in mind.
"I believe the idea behind him stopping all these restrictions is that there may just be an election coming up, and he thinks that he can win a whole lot of votes," Rushfedlt submits. "Trudeau, being the fascist that he is, never acts for the best practices of the country; he acts for totally selfish reasons."
Rushfeldt says the popularity and recent election of Pierre Poilievre as leader of the Conservative Party likely played a part in forcing Trudeau's hand.
