Canada-U.S. border restrictions extended until April 21

Canada's non-essential travel restrictions with the United States have been extended, again, until April 21, 2021, announced Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Bill Blair on his Twitter account Thursday morning (March 18). 

"We will continue to base our decisions on the best public health advice available to keep Canadians safe from #COVID19," the Minister tweeted. 

The news comes as Canada's rolls out its national vaccination plan and as many provinces are still under varying degrees of lockdown. 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters on Monday (March 15) that cross-border travel over the U.S. land border will resume “eventually.”

“We’re all eager to be able to travel again,” the Prime Minister told journalists. “But I think we’re all going to wait patiently until such time as the health situation allows us to loosen border restrictions internationally.”

The Canada-U.S. land border has been closed to non-essential travel since March 2020. 

READ MORE: Canada-U.S. border will open “eventually,” says Trudeau

Trudeau has also previously said that restrictions with the U.S. won't ease until vaccination rates and COVID-19 case counts reach levels that would make doing so safe for Canadians.

“We will see what vaccinations look like, we will see what case counts look like. We will listen to experts on when we can start easing restrictions, but the safety of Canadians needs to come first,” Trudeau told CTV on March 12. 

“Even as Americans are getting lots of vaccines, we’re still seeing around 50,000 new cases a day in the United States,” he said. “Everyone looks forward to starting the travel again and we're certainly going to keep working closely with the United States as we have since the beginning of the pandemic. But the safety of Canadians is our single most and top priority.”

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