LILLEY: If Pearson was treated like Amazon, it would be closed

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We accepted rules saying we can’t visit family and friends and that closed restaurants to indoor dining in Toronto for about 300 days in the last year, but why does the airport remain open?

It makes no sense at all that these are the rules or that Amazon’s warehouse is closed for a fraction of the cases coming in via flights at Pearson.

Beyond that, we have politicians arguing that a third wave driven by the B.1.1.7 variant that originated in the U.K., isn’t the result of travel.

That’s right, we need to keep stores, restaurants, hair salons and offices closed to control COVID but airplanes full of people coming from hotspots around the world are perfectly fine. If that’s your thinking, then you are no doubt a TruAnon Liberal, part of the cult that believes Prime Minister Justin Trudeau can do no wrong.

Here’s the deal, I don’t like all of these closures — few people do — but you can’t tell me that visiting my mother is too dangerous but flying to Glasgow to see my Uncle Frank is just fine.

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Yet, that is where the Trudeau Liberals are.

They have shut down flights from India and Pakistan for 30 days but also claimed travel is not the source of Canada’s COVID woes. Will they still tell us that when the B1.617 variant discovered in India is creating a fourth wave?

Based on their track record, yes.

For all the criticism that Premier Doug Ford takes from his critics for opening up too early or not closing things down enough, Trudeau deserves even more criticism.

Ford can shut down all the businesses that he wants, but if Trudeau keeps letting cases in and those travellers infect other people, Ford’s restrictions won’t matter.

Right now, 70% of all cases in Ontario are the B.1.1.7 variant. That variant came in through travel; it didn’t originate in Timmins.

Before the variant showed up, Ford had been calling on Trudeau to put in more border measures, including testing upon arrival and enforcing quarantine measures. As he has at every stage of the pandemic, Trudeau acted too late, once the variant was here and even then his government claimed travel was not an issue.

Under new rules brought in by Peel Public Health, workplaces are shut down for 10 days if they have five cases over a two-week period. Two Amazon warehouses are shut now but Pearson remains open with cases arriving on flights from Delhi, Frankfurt, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Islamabad.

Hundreds of cases at the airport, passengers testing positive later in their quarantine, long after they had left. If Pearson, or any of Canada’s airports were subjected to the rules of Amazon’s warehouses, they would not be open.

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If they were subjected to the same rules as hair salons, restaurants, or stores, all of these airports would be closed.

It amazes me that as we struggle with an imported third wave — with another variant arriving on our shores — that people who support all of the other closures argue for airports to stay open and claim, as Trudeau’s ministers and MPs continue to, that travel is not a factor.

That’s a lie.

On Sunday, six PC MPPs for Mississauga, where Pearson is based, wrote to their federal counterparts, including Transport Minister Omar Alghabra, asking for an end to all non-essential travel. They noted 10,000 people last week landed at Pearson on international flights and 80,000 people – not counting exempt truckers – crossed the land border in that time as proof something needs to be done.

“We urgently ask that your government act, ban all non-essential travel, and close the land border loophole, to prevent this crisis from getting worse,” the MPPs wrote.

I hope that they do act before things get worse, but their track record says that won’t happen — not without some serious pressure from the public.