Prisoner in Canada

During Covid, I experienced for the second time in my life how is to live under a dictatorship, a situation I experienced as I child in my home country. I never imagined I could experienced that again in a democratic country as Canada.

I live in Canada, but I was born in South America. Before Covid, I use to travel to my home country almost once a year to visit my family, specially my older parents.

I was planning to return at the end of 2021, when frontiers gradually began to open. It was risky because of lockdowns mandates, but I was determined to see my family since we haven’t seen each other for more than 2 years. My child would come with me.  None of us were vaccinated, because I wanted a type of vaccin that was not yet available in Canada. My kid was not vaccinated because healthy children were not at high risk from Covid.

During his campaign, Trudeau made strong declarations against the non vaccinated, and announced that if he won the election, vaccination would be mandatory in order to travel within Canada. He was re-elected. Some days after the election, he announced that vaccination would also be mandatory to leave the country. This meant I would have to get two shots of Pfizer or Moderna to get in a plane or a train. Unvaccinated would not be able to travel after October 31st 2021, with a grace period until the end of November if they had a negative PCR test. That was stressful but still possible. 

I was not expecting that the US government was also going to require vaccination of foreing travellers, beginning November 8th, I will never forget the date. I had a connection through the US because there was no direct flights to South America.I realized that I had to change my travel schedule in order to travel unvaccinated through the US, or escape by boat. 

But even if I was able to leave Canada before november 8th, I would not be able to come back unvaccinated, due to US requirements. Fortunately, I had the option to get a non RNA vaccin in my home country. I would have to get 2 shots during my stay and wait 14 days to be considered fully vaccinated. Because the future was so uncertain and I was afraid of not being able to leave the country again, I chose to do this.

Departure date finally arrived, we had our negative PCR tests and our masks for the 18-hour travel (my kid had to wear it too). During the check-in at the airport, the travel agent told us that we were not allow to fly because we were unvaccinated. He didn’t know (or he didn’t want to acknowledge) that we were allowed to leave the country with a negative PCR test. Fortunately, I registered our personal informations in a new app (it was mandatory according to the airline guidelines). Because our status in the app was “green”, the agent finally let us go. I neved cried so loud in my life. 

I get vaccinated in my home country with a non RNA vaccin. Fortunately, while being abroad, Canada recognized my vaccination status following the WHO guidelines, so I would not have to  quarantine after arrival. But my child wasn’t vaccinated. We were both tested  before leaving the country and again at the airport. He was tested at home some days later, he couldn’t return to school unless he had another negative test. Canadian government called us many times to check on my child status, telling us he was a threat to public health because he was unvaccinated. We never had any symptoms.

Months later we learned that vaccination didn’t stop or prevent transmission. We also learned they already knew it. Nobody in the media asked how much all these measures cost to canadians.

My family get infected during Omicron wave.