What about ArriveCan, Canada’s controversial travel app?

The bug-prone app touted as an efficient border tool early in the pandemic has become a punching bag for critics who question its usefulness ⁠, but ArriveCan may be here to stay.

The government insists that it is a useful tool. Critics say it has outlasted use, if it ever had one.

Here’s a quick rundown of what we currently know about it.

What is ArriveCan?

The application was introduced at the beginning of the pandemic and its use is mandatory at air and land borders from February 2021, with exceptions in cases of accessibility problems or outages.

Apparently, ArriveCan screens incoming travelers for COVID-19 and has, over the past year, tracked their vaccination status. Refusal to use the app to provide the required information may result in a fine of up to $5,000 under the Quarantine Law.

Has the app done what it was supposed to do?

A December 2021 report from the federal auditor general said the ArriveCan app improved the quality of information the government collected about travelers. But poor data quality still meant that nearly 138,000 COVID-19 test results could not be matched for incoming travellers, with only 25 per cent of travelers told to self-quarantine being verified. in hotels authorized by the government they had stayed in them.

Last month, due to a technical problem, ArriveCan ordered about 10,200 travelers to self-quarantine for 14 days when it was not necessary. Bianca Wylie, a partner at Digital Public, questioned why the app would be automating those decisions in the first place, instead of sticking to the information-gathering mandate it launched with.

Is the app only about COVID-19?

Why is #ArriveCan still mandatory and what is Ottawa’s plan for the controversial app? #CDNPoli #Covid19 #PersonalData

Recent government updates related to the app have focused on efficiency rather than public health measures. At air border crossings, it is now possible, though optional, to use the app to complete a customs declaration form before arriving at Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal Pearson Airport.

Last week, the government said it planned to expand that optional feature to air arrivals in Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Quebec City, Halifax and Toronto’s Billy Bishop Airport.

In a statement earlier this month that focused on Canada’s broader air travel fiasco, Transport Canada said those using the forms cut their time at kiosks by a third. That’s 40 seconds short of the average two-minute visit, which the government estimates could “save hours in wait time” if everyone used it.

Are apps the way of the future for air travel?

Electronic data collection related to COVID-19 has been mandatory at many international borders, and online forms are increasingly being used for reasons unrelated to the pandemic. Australia handles its electronic travel authorizations exclusively through an app, while an online authorization form will be required to visit the European Union from next year.

Canadian officials have not gone so far as to say they are planning something similar. But Public Security Minister Marco Mendicino told reporters in June that while ArriveCan was created for COVID-19, “it has a technological capability beyond that to really reduce the amount of time that is required when you examined at the border.

Before the pandemic, Canada had already begun digitizing its border services with other initiatives, including setting up customs kiosks at major airports starting in 2017 and introducing an e-declaration app in 2018, which still exists, to reduce processing times.

Wylie said people didn’t use that app very often before the pandemic because it was voluntary and there were easy alternatives. But he said Ottawa has been using COVID-19 as an opportunity to speed up the transition.

“The federal government has been using a public health crisis to basically train people on a border modernization exercise that they wanted to do,” Wylie said, adding that modernization initiatives are fine as long as they are voluntary and alternatives are available.

How has the app affected travel across the land border?

About a quarter of people who cross into Canada from the US by car don’t use ArriveCan ahead of time, according to Pierre St-Jacques, a spokesman for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Union.

At the land border between Canada and the US, there is a one-time exemption for travelers who “may not have been aware” of the rules, the Canada Border Services Agency confirmed. Of five million crossings between May 24 and August 4, the waiver was used 308,800 times, the CBSA said in a statement.

But that’s only a temporary solution, St-Jacques said, as officers who already feel scattered due to staffing shortages find themselves acting as “IT consultants” and fixing travelers’ technical problems instead of doing what they do. what they are trained to do. “If the goal of the app is to make cross-border travel more efficient or safer, well, it doesn’t work in its current iteration,” he said.

Border city mayors, border city chambers of commerce, and even duty-free shops have publicly complained that they believe ArriveCan, along with other pandemic border restrictions, have deterred American tourists.

Why has ArriveCan become such a hot political topic?

Whether Canadians are upset about the added hassle, concerned about their privacy, sympathetic to border towns, or simply fed up with the feds Liberals, Conservatives have an audience for their calls to scrap ArriveCan.

Beloved Canadian actor Simu Liu joined the “throw the app” bandwagon, daring his followers to say something nice about it in a tweet on Tuesday, then immediately say, “I failed the challenge.”

Acting Conservative Leader Candice Bergen said in a tweet on Tuesday that ArriveCan created “unnecessary roadblocks” and “only serves to harm Canada’s economy and tourism industry.”

Some voices have gone a step further, claiming that the app is part of a broader effort to collect personal information and control the public. Conservative leadership candidate Leslyn Lewis has called the whole affair a “surveillance experiment”.

The privacy commissioner is also investigating a complaint about the app’s collection and use of personal data.

This report from The Canadian Press was first published on August 16, 2022.

— Archived by Sarah Ritchie

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