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Most North Shore residents in no hurry to head to USA when border opens: poll

Worries about the COVID-19 virus, plus requirements for expensive tests and a second vaccine passport have most North and West Vancouver residents content to stay in Canada
Jane Seyd
Jane Seyd
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The Blaine border crossing. Photo via Shutterstock

Most North Shore residents won't be stampeding to the U.S. when the land border officially opens next month.

Over two-thirds of North Shore residents responding to an online poll in the North Shore News said crossing the border is more trouble than it's worth, with almost 68 per cent of North and West Vancouver residents saying they felt the move to head down south is premature at this point in the pandemic.

American authorities recently announced its land border with Canada would open to non-essential travel Nov. 8 to fully vaccinated visitors.

The land border between Canada and the U.S. was initially closed to non-essential travel at the outset of the pandemic in March 2020. Canada reopened its border to fully vaccinated American travellers back in August 2021, but the move was not reciprocated by U.S. authorities.

However, Americans have allowed Canadians to enter the U.S. on non-essential business via air travel throughout the pandemic.

U.S. authorities require that foreign travellers entering the country must be fully vaccinated by January – be it for essential or non-essential travel. And that will soon require a new standardized federal vaccine passport – separate from the provincial vaccine passport most British Columbians currently have.

A negative PCR test from fully vaccinated travellers is currently not needed when entering the U.S., but Ottawa still requires a negative PCR test within 72 hours of arrival from all travellers entering the country, be it by land or air. Those tests typically range in cost from $150 to $250 each.

The North Shore News polled 1,272 North Shore News readers and asked the question: Do you intend to travel to the U.S. once the land border opens to non-essential travel next month?

The poll ran from 10/18/2021 to 10/27/2021. Of the 1,272 votes, we can determine that 453 are from within the community. The full results are as follows:

Yes. I've been waiting a long time to visit friends, family and some of my favourite places in the U.S. Plus the border is opening just in time for Black Friday. 16.34 % local, 26.10 % total    
Maybe. I like the idea that I can cross the border if I want but I'm still being cautious about international travel. 15.89 % local, 14.07 % total    
No. With the Delta variant afoot, I'm still worried about COVID making a resurgence with increased travel. Plus I don't want to pay $150 for a COVID test to return to Canada. 67.77 % local, 59.83 % total    
  Local   Total

Results are based on an online study of adult North Shore News readers that are located in North Shore. The margin of error - which measures sample variability - is +/- 2.74%, 19 times out of 20.

North Shore News uses a variety of techniques to capture data, detect and prevent fraudulent votes, detect and prevent robots, and filter out non-local and duplicate votes.