- US travelers drove to the Canadian border after it reopened to non-essential travelers on Monday.
- The boom in travel, as well as a union strike earlier in the week, caused wait times up to seven hours.
- Pictures from the scene show the traffic jams that spanned over 6 miles.
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US travelers are waiting as long as 7 hours to enter Canada, after border restrictions were lifted on Monday.
Drivers began to line up outside the border to Canada after midnight last night when the country was opened to vaccinated US travelers, following a 16-month ban. The new policy spurred a rush of tourists.
Reuters
Canadian government data show a seven-hour wait time for border crossings between Fort Frances, Ontario, and International Falls, Minnesota – an area that the site said "rarely experiences delays."
Numerous other locations also had wait times between two to three hours, including the border between St. Stephen, New Brunswick, and Calais Maine, as well as Lansdown, Ontario, and Alexandria Bay, New York.
At the onset of the pandemic, Canada banned all leisure travel from the US. In July, the country announced that the border would reopen on August 9 to fully-vaccinated non-essential travelers.
Several days ahead of the reopening, Canadian customs officers launched a work-to-rule strike - a protest where about 9,000 employees would only work following the exact requirements of their contract.
The two striking unions, Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) and the Customs and Immigration Union (CIU), warned earlier in August that the protest could lead to delays.
"There will be no picket lines, everybody will be in the workplace, what that means is we'll be doing our job to the letter of the law," said Rick Savage, 1st National Vice President of the CIU, said in a statement. "We, as border officers, administer over 97 different laws and acts of Canada. We routinely, maybe not ignore, but we push aside certain things that may not have the importance, you know, at the time to uh, to allow for the borders to function smoothly. So, if we work to rule, it's going to result in significant delays to both the traveling public as well as to the commercial stream."
Discussions between the two unions and Canadian officials reached a stalemate last December, as the unions demanded higher pay and the ability to carry their guns in certain areas, including airports. The union members had not had a contract in three years.
The union struck a deal with the Canada Border Services Agency after 36 hours of negotiations late Friday night, ending the strike which had begun earlier that day. Despite the deal, the protest spurred a series of delays for commercial drivers at multiple checkpoints going into Canada from the US over the weekend.
Andrew Soong/Xinhua via Getty Images
On Friday, commercial vehicles were at a stand still in a line that extended over 6 miles past the entry point from Port Huron, Michigan into Canada. At the time, the Michigan Department of Transportation said the backup was causing delays along I-75 all the way into Detroit.
One TikTokker captured the 6.2-mile-long traffic jam on video.
The work slowdown on Friday impacted all Canadian airports, border crossings, commercial shipping ports, and postal facilities. While wait times have dwindled since the deal was struck on Friday, delays still remain.
A picture from News 4 in Buffalo, New York, highlighted the dramatic difference between traffic going into Canada versus the US on Monday morning.
-News 4 Buffalo (@news4buffalo) August 9, 2021
Canada relies heavily on US vacationers and border traffic. Tourism generates over $83 billion per year and employs about 10% of Canadian workers, according to the Tourism Industry Association of Canada.