CBSA allows one-time ArriveCAN exemption at land border for vaccinated travellers

The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) is allowing a one-time exemption for fully vaccinated travellers who forget to submit their mandatory health information on ArriveCAN.

“As of May 2022, temporary measures have been put in place at the land border for fully vaccinated travellers with a right of entry to provide more flexibility to travellers with no history of non-compliance, who may have been unaware of the requirement to submit their mandatory health information via ArriveCAN,” said Rebecca Purdy, senior spokesperson for the CBSA, in an email to CityNews.

“Travellers will still need to manually provide their public health information to an official,” she added.

The CBSA says since May, the one-time exemption has been used 308,800 times of the 5,086,187 land border travellers with a right of entry,

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Purdy emphasizes that the one-time exemption is exactly that — a one-time thing.

“After this one-time exemption, fully vaccinated Canadian citizens, permanent residents, and persons registered under the Indian Act who do not submit their information through ArriveCAN will be subject to quarantine and testing and may also face fines,” she said.

She adds that foreign nationals that don’t submit their information in ArriveCAN will not be allowed to enter Canada.

The ArriveCAN app and masking at airports and on flights within Canada are some of the last remaining COVID-19 travel measures imposed by the federal government.