A lack of leadership in times of crisis: Trudeau's (in)decision around closing the Canada-US border
Written by: Daniel Xie
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https://www.thecanadafiles.com/canada/nc
In response to the Coronavirus outbreak in Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has ordered the closing of Canada’s borders to prevent any non-citizens from coming into the country. The order, which was declared on March 16th, declared that anyone travelling to Canada will be turned back at airports, and that anyone boarding a plane that may be infected with the Coronavirus. All Canadians outside the country, along with their family members, are allowed to return to Canada, which Trudeau advised them to do as soon as possible. Airlines will be mandated to ensure no one infected arrives in Canada during this time. International flights will also be redirected to four airports — Montreal, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver — in order to facilitate more effective passenger screening.
While this was later rectified, one country that Canada had not initially closed their borders to is the United States, whose citizens were initially exempt from the emergency border policy. Not closing the border with the US as soon as possible made reducing the spread of the COVID-19 harder. This is because more Americans visit Canada in a given year than more people in the world combined altogether and consequently, Canada was unprotected from the Coronavirus. This was pointed out by NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, who stated that, unless there is a solid public health basis, there was no scientific basis for Canadians to not be closing the US border, especially with worsening public health situation there. When the Liberals were confronted by journalists about the implications of keeping the American border open, Trudeau originally claimed that the economy linkages between Canada and the US were too important to consider the closing of the border.
Focusing on economic considerations before the public health needs of Canadians was ignorant in the quickly worsening situation around COVID-19 in the US. Currently, there has been over 8,500 cases of the virus in the United States, and hospitals are being increasingly stressed by the large number of confirmed cases while state officials and governors call for self-isolation and seek to acquire more supplies such as masks and ventilators. In some states with a dense population such as New York, there has been over 2000 confirmed cases.
This crisis is worsened by the lack of a comprehensive single-payer healthcare system in the US. Many low wage workers in the US lack basic health supplies such as asthma inhalers, or the ability to even pay for visits to the doctor. Twenty-seven million Americans don’t have health insurance at all, while those who have health insurance are stuck with a high-deductible plan. This forces Americans to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket, before they get any benefit from the premiums deducted from their paycheck every week.
A large percentage of the $500 billion going into healthcare every year, is wasted on private insurance corporations’ shareholder returns rather than the implementation of a comprehensive single payer healthcare plan. With the existence of a huge paywall preventing working class Americans from accessing affordable medicine healthcare in the form of privatized health care, many Americans can’t even see a doctor to verify if they have the Coronavirus. This leaves a large percentage of the population in danger of getting the virus without proper treatment, and the possibility that there are many unaccounted for cases, that could put many people at risk.
On Wednesday, the Canadian and American governments came to a deal on closing the border to non-essential travel (tourism, shopping, leisure reasons). They are keeping “critical” supply chains open to transport essential goods and services between both countries, as part of a “collaborative” and “reciprocal” measure to limit the spread of COVID-19.
This is the correct move to stop the spread, and one that came rather soon. However, the fact that Trudeau needed to discuss a joint agreement to close the borders, rather than declare the end of non-essential travel unilaterally, demonstrates a lack of political leadership that puts politics ahead of the well-being of the populace. In requiring Trump’s consent before closing the border, Justin Trudeau put Donald Trump’s feelings on the issue, as well as any implications a unilateral closing of the border has for US-Canadian relations, before the health and safety of Canadians.
Rather than demonstrate leadership in a time of crisis, Trudeau has chosen to placate a leader that has downplayed the severity of COVID-19 by waiting for said leader to act first before he could make a decision. While the Canadian-American border was closed as quickly as possible, Trudeau’s lack of immediate action raises the question of what if Trump didn’t give consent to closing the border to non-essentials. Would Trudeau have acted unilaterally regardless of any negative impact on US-Canadian relations, or would he have taken no action regardless of how many lives could be lost in the face of such an inaction?
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