Here’s why I think the Liberals are reimposing random airport COVID testing, and why I think it’s one of their dumbest moves yet. This is what they should do instead.

This morning the Liberal government announced that they are resuming mandatory random COVID testing for fully vaccinated arriving international passengers, including for Canadian citizens.

There will be public outrage because Canada is one of the only countries in the world with this requirement. It begs the question, why are the Liberals doing this?

Today they said it was to help detect the emergence of new variants of COVID. But to what end? Even in the past when mandatory testing for every passenger was required, when any new strain had been detected, it had already entered Canada and was found to be in community circulation. Airport testing has done little, if anything, to prevent the spread of new variants in Canada. 

Perhaps the Liberals believe it will catch people entering the country who are ill and require them to quarantine. That argument is also garbage because a small sample of random testing would never detect every case that enters the country. 

It can’t be for quarantine reasons either. Most provinces now only require any positive cases to be isolated for five days, as opposed to the ten days imposed by the federal Liberals for people who are positive on a random airport test. The move to a five day requirement was taken by provinces out of a better understanding of incubation periods, high vaccination rates, and out of an acknowledgment that the economy can’t survive people being out of the workforce for two weeks every time they test positive for COVID. The lack of alignment on this issue without explanation just makes the public trust Health Canada less.

So maybe it’s that the Liberals want to randomly test people to notify close contacts of potential positive cases? That argument doesn’t hold water either. Canada, for the most part, long ago stopped contact tracing and testing, as well as ended close contact isolation requirements. 

So if it's for none of those reasons, then what is it?

I have to wonder about what exactly is in the contracts that the federal government signed with the companies providing random testing. I’m sure those companies don’t want this program to end because they are probably making a lot of money from it. I’ll be keeping an eye on the lobbyist registries for these companies as well as putting in formal questions to the government on this front.

However, I think this is likely the result of people working at Health Canada wanting this data without a strong Minister to question if this advice is an overall bad idea. Bureaucrats have no direct accountability to the public to weigh the broader public good of their advice in the context of the potential downsides, of which there are many. 

First, the government cannot justify why this measure is needed in light of the fact that it is a massive incursion on someone’s right to privacy on their personal health information. We don’t randomly test at airports for any other communicable disease, for this reason. The Liberals have never said how they are using the data they collect from random testing. And like the quarantine hotels, they’ve also never shown any evidence that continued random airport testing benefits the public. This only serves to further erode trust in the government.

Second, the clusterf*ck that is the Canadian air travel system right now is a topic of a lot of negative international news. The Liberal’s decision to reimpose random testing will impact tourism recovery because it presents another logistical nightmare for travelers to Canada. Even if testing is moved off site, the new system will require travelers selected for testing to monitor their emails to see if they were chosen (hello spam folder). It will require them to disrupt their plans and travel to a pharmacy or book an at home test. What tourist would want this hassle? 

Third, given the state of Canada’s health care system, and the state of our country’s finances, it's bananas to spend tax dollars on enforcing and prosecuting people who won’t comply with this measure.

Instead of clogging up Canada’s already stressed airport system and border crossings, instead of deterring badly needed tourism, instead of wasting resources on random testing and enforcement that likely has no material impact on public health, and instead of violating the privacy of those entering our country, the Liberals should scrap random testing and take a different approach.

Just prior to the emergence of COVID, the Liberals dismantled Canada’s early pandemic warning system. This system didn’t disrupt the daily lives and right to privacy of Canadians, while giving our country the ability to make public health decisions without having to rely on data from organizations like the WHO. The Liberals should get busy putting this system back together and restoring the trust they’ve lost with a public that is weary and skeptical of continued COVID measures.

They should also get busy using their convening power to support the provinces in fixing the real issue; a health care system that is overwhelmed when a few hundred people in each province present at the ICU.

In the meantime, the Liberals should keep their swabs out of the noses of people entering our country.