CLIENT ALERT – New Canadian Travel Restrictions

Today, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced additional quarantine measures aimed at preventing the spread of COVID-19. These new rules significantly tighten up border control in response to new variants of COVID-19 being reported in Canada.

Flight Grounding

All flights to and from vacation destinations in the Caribbean and Mexico will stop as of this Sunday, January 31, 2021, and will remain suspended until at least April 30^th. Furthermore, all foreign incoming flights will now only be permitted to land in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, and Montreal.

Mandatory Hotel Quarantine Requirement

The additional quarantine measures also require incoming international travelers to quarantine in hotels, at their own expense, for at least 3 days while they wait for negative COVID-19 test results taken after arrival. Those who test negative will be allowed to return to their home or other final destination and complete the rest of the 14-day quarantine requirement as we have discussed in previous blogs. Those who test positive will need to stay in the same hotel until they recover, which Trudeau says may cost over $2,000.

While no start date to these new measures have been announced, Canada hopes to have these functions up and running within the next several weeks. At this time, it does not appear that these new rules apply to land entry from the United States, but we are expecting that all incoming essential travelers these land borders will also soon have to present a negative result from a PCR test before being allowed entry.

Stay tuned for the latest from the Moodys immigration team!