Canada has moved to extend international travel restrictions in place due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The decision to extend the restrictions until September 30 was announced Friday on Twitter by Bill Blair, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness.
It means the restrictions will now be in place for at least six months, after initially being imposed in March.
“Our government is extending the existing restrictions on international travel to Canada by one month – until September 30, 2020 – to limit the introduction and spread of COVID-19 in our communities,” Blair said on Twitter.
The restrictions cover travellers arriving from a foreign country other than the United States. The travel ban affecting the Canada-U.S. border is covered by a separate agreement, that currently expires on September 21.
The following people can currently travel to Canada:
- Citizens and permanent residents.
- Work permit holders travelling for non-optional and non-discretionary reasons.
- International students who held a valid study permit, or had been approved for a study permit, on March 18, 2020, who are travelling for non-optional and non-discretionary reasons.
- Permanent resident applicants who had been approved for permanent residence before the travel restrictions were announced on March 18, 2020, but who had not yet travelled to Canada.
- Immediate family members of Canadian citizens and permanent residents
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Anyone entering Canada is still required to quarantine for 14 days on arrival and provide CBSA officers with a viable quarantine plan.
Canada’s monthly immigration levels continued to recover in June, with more than 19,000 new permanent resident arrivals welcomed, according to the latest available federal government figures.
The total is a 75 percent increase on the nearly 11,000 newcomers welcomed in May, but still significantly down on the more than 34,000 admissions in June 2019.
New ‘arrivals’ can either be candidates already in Canada transitioning from a temporary status, or those from overseas who were approved before March 18.
Figures for the first six months of the year show Canada has now fallen well behind its target of 341,000 new permanent resident arrivals in 2020.
Between January and June, Canada welcomed 103,420 new immigrants, down from 160,230 in the same period of 2019.
The drop off in numbers all came in the second quarter as coronavirus restrictions fully took hold, with 34,260 newcomers welcomed in 2020, compared to 94,275 in 2019.
