There’s a small town in southern New Brunswick where seeing as many foreign licence plates as local ones is not unusual — or at least it wasn’t before COVID-19 slammed the Canada-U.S. border shut.
Residents of St. Stephen were used to passing folks from Calais, Maine, across the street, or crossing into that town to do a bit of stateside shopping.
In Something’s Brewing, Ada Dempsey’s café about a block from the crossing into Maine, she’d serve Americans regularly pre-pandemic.
“I even used to have a girl that was from Calais and she would come here in the morning in her pyjamas to get her coffee,” Dempsey says.
“That was before the pandemic.”
Dempsey says her café closed in March 2020 and when it opened again that summer, she saw only locals.
This spring saw New Brunswick lift its COVID-19 restrictions and federal testing requirements for anyone crossing into Canada have eased. She says that seems to have helped somewhat.
“I’ve been noticing in the past couple weeks, the past week or so, we’re seeing more Americans come through,” says Dempsey.
She says not everyone’s back — the girl in pyjamas, for example, is still staying stateside as far as Dempsey knows — and it seems there’s still one major roadblock keeping people from crossing the bridge.
“We have some customers who say it’s about the ArriveCAN app,” says Dempsey.
Despite loosening COVID-19 testing requirements at land borders and most recently for air travellers, anyone entering Canada needs to log their trip with the federal government’s ArriveCAN smartphone app.
This includes submitting information about when and where they’re crossing and where they’re going.
It’s even required for quick trips to grab a coffee or for Canadian citizens coming back from the U.S. and the tedious process is enough to discourage some from making those brief visits.
“I haven’t been across in months,” says St. Stephen resident Carol Lynn Gamblin.
She says she used to cross a couple of times a week — even three times a day at one point — but hasn’t found the motivation to fuss with the ArriveCAN app.
“Every week I tell myself this’ll be the week but it’s just one of those things, that little extra step,” Gamblin says.
“I think about it and then I think, next week.”
There’s been increased pressure on the Trudeau government to suspend or do away with the ArriveCAN app, particularly ahead of the busy summer travel season.
Municipal politicians and tourism stakeholders joined forces earlier this week to demand the app’s deletion.
There’s no word on when — or if — that will happen, though.
Federal Transport Minister Omar Alghabra said Wednesday ArriveCAN remains relevant.
“ArriveCAN is an important tool that continues to be valuable to protecting the health and safety of Canadians and those who are arriving,” he said.
Alghabra added meetings are happening to figure out how the process can be improved.
At Something’s Brewing, Dempsey’s not personally feeling an urgent need to scrap the app.
“Anything that is to keep us safe, I’m okay with,” she says.
She’s optimistic she’s already looking at a busier summer than at least the last two.