Border will remain closed until at least Nov. 21. Although Canada and the U.S. have agreed to close their shared land border to non-essential travel, they don’t appear to agree on several related issues — including what to do next.
More than seven months after the border closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Donald Trump have offered up contradictory messages about the border’s future. The Canada-U.S. border closure agreement was set to expire on Oct. 21, but the Canadian government announced on Monday that the closure will be extended until at least Nov. 21. In an interview last Wednesday on Winnipeg podcast The Start, Trudeau said Canada plans to keep the border closed as long as COVID-19 case counts in the U.S. remain high. “We keep extending the border closures because the United States is not in a place where we would feel comfortable reopening those borders,” he said.
Four weeks prior, Trump offered a different prognosis for the Canada-U.S. border closure.“We’re looking at the border with Canada — Canada would like it open,” he said at the White House on Sept. 18.“So we’re gonna be opening the borders pretty soon…. We want to get back to normal business.” Foreign affairs expert Edward Alden said the disconnect between the two leaders suggests there are currently no joint discussions about an
eventual reopening plan. “With the Trudeau government saying, ‘No, don’t open’ … and President Trump saying, ‘Oh, I think we’ll reopen sometime soon,’ that’s no grounds for a serious government-to-government negotiation,” said Alden, a professor of U.S.-Canada economic relations at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash.
Even though many Canadians support the border closure, which took effect in late March, it has devastated the tourism industry, separated loved ones and hurt border communities in both Canada and the U.S. Alden said he understands why the border is closed for now, but that it’s important to start laying the groundwork for a reopening plan.“The problem of not having those negotiations is, when do we possibly have a sense of when it will be safe to reopen the border?” CBC News asked both the Canadian and U.S. governments about the fate of the border closure and got disparate answers.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said the two countries are exploring the loosening of some restrictions. The department’s acting secretary, Chad Wolf, echoed this sentiment in a tweet on Monday. “We are working closely with … Canada to identify safe criteria to ease the restrictions in the future and support our border communities,” he wrote.
Source: cbc.ca
Friday, May 15, 2026
