GUNTER: It’s time to turf the ArriveCAN app

Article content

Did you know it is mandatory to have the ArriveCAN app on your phone when entering Canada? Do you even know what ArriveCAN is? I’m betting lots of intelligent, well-informed Canadians don’t.

Article content

ArriveCAN is the federal government’s smartphone-based method for ensuring all arriving passengers in Canada are vaccinated against COVID. And if you attempt to enter the country without ArriveCAN on your phone or if you have the app but fail to fill out its myriad of questions completely correctly, you could be forced into quarantine for 14 days or fined $5,000.

Even if you’re a fully vaccinated Canadian citizen.

If you want to know why Pearson International has become a total mess, with waits at Canada Customs of up to seven hours, ArriveCAN is one of the biggest reasons.

For a government app, it’s not bad. But note that qualifier: “for a government app.”

Remember those federal and provincial government apps near the beginning of the pandemic that were going to use your cellphone’s location services to let us know whether we’d been in close contact with anyone who later turned out to have COVID?

Article content

Okay, ArriveCAN is marginally better than those totally useless exercises in public-sector software design. marginally.

ArriveCAN is overthought. It has too many steps, such as the “Complete” button that appears at the bottom of the screen informing you that your documents have been successfully submitted.

A Montreal couple, apparently, were ordered by the Canada Border Services Agency to quarantine in their home for two weeks simply because they hadn’t scrolled down far enough on their “Document Successfully Submitted” screen to see and tap the “Complete” button.

A Gimli, Manitoba couple reported to their local paper that they had also been sentenced to house arrest because when they tried to show their ArriveCAN receipt to a CBSA agent at Pearson (again), the app kept crashing.

Article content

In both the Montreal and Gimli cases, the couples had copies of their vax records and negative test results. But that wasn’t good enough.

Canada is the only major Western nation that accepts only its own government app. Provincial, federal or foreign vax records, no matter how legit, aren’t good enough for the Trudeau government.

Another insanity is that the feds know over 5 million Canadian adults don’t have smartphones, but officially they offer no other way than ArriveCAN for these people to return to the country.

I’ve been outside the country three times since Ottawa made the app mandatory. Luckily, I’d heard about it before my first foreign trip because a friend encountered terrible treatment (including several hours of delay) at – guess where – Pearson, for the crime of not having the app.

Article content

Most recently, I used the app in Calgary in mid-May without a hitch. Even though my wife and I were chosen for full PCR COVID testing, we were through our Customs interview and nasal swabbing in under 25 minutes.

The federal government should do away with ArriveCAN.

If there are other equally valid and simple methods for ensuring arriving travelers are fully vaccinated and disease-free, then the only reason for clinging to the federal app is so Ottawa can make all of us jump through their hoops.

None of the quarantines I’ve read about have been ordered for people who were trying to enter Canada without being vaccinated or while sick with COVID, which was the purpose of the app in the first place.

Everyone I’ve read about or talked to who has been subjected to an ArriveCAN isolation, has been quarantined, not for spreading COVID, but rather for not using the app correctly.

The feds have forgotten the true goal of ArriveCAN (pandemic prevention) and replaced it with obeying ArriveCAN rules as the apps ultimate purpose.