Abolish ArriveCAN Forever
Sign the petition to Abolish ArriveCAN Forever.
Update - 16th July
Are you 86 years old, quadruple vaccinated, in a wheelchair, and have the temerity to want to enter your own country without owning a cellphone?
ArriveCAN is the federal government's mandatory app that must be used to enter Canada, and if you don't have it, the federal government don't care - you're getting a $5,000 fine.
Check out this video circulating today:
0 views, 0 likes, 0 loves, 0 comments, 0 shares, Facebook Watch Videos from Alberta Institute: Are you 86 years old, quadruple vaccinated, in a wheelchair, and have the temerity to want to enter your...
This is government run amok.
Yes, in this particular case, the elderly gentlemen could have been added on to their family member's app.
But, as the family member says, what if he was travelling alone?
Besides, that's not the point - the existence of some technical loophole or some other means of fulfilling the government's unreasonable demands doesn't mean that the unreasonable demands somehow suddenly become reasonable!
This is how bureaucracy works to take away our freedom over time.
Even if (and that's a massive if) we give the government the benefit of the doubt and believe that the original intent of the app was to "help" Canadians by making it easier to provide proof of vaccination prior to boarding a flight, government bureaucrats will always find a way to make things worse.
We also know, now that it's been revealed, that the federal government intends to implement the app permanently, and even expand its use to cover other border control issues.
That's why they desperately need to force everyone to use the app.
And that's precisely why the app needs to be abolished.
Abolish ArriveCAN Forever
ArriveCAN is the federal government's mandatory app that must be used to enter Canada.
When introduced, it was ostensibly designed to "help" Canadians by making it easier to provide proof of vaccination prior to boarding a flight.
But in recent days, it has become clear the federal government intends to implement the app permanently, and even expand its use to cover other border control issues.
On Tuesday, the app's website was updated to change the description of the purpose of the app.
"It only takes minutes to help keep each other safe" was removed and replaced with "ArriveCAN is not only keeping travellers safe, but is part of our ongoing efforts to modernize our border."
Then, just today, the app was updated to add the ability to fill out a CBSA Declaration, in addition to vaccination status.
That means that government employees and contractors have been working behind the scenes - likely for months - on adding new features - completely unrelated to COVID - to an app that was "ostensibly" just a temporary COVID measure.
Finally, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino was forced to admit it.
"ArriveCAN was originally created for COVID-19, but it has technological capacity beyond that, to shrink the amount of time that is required when you’re getting screened at the border," said Mendicino.
The issue - of course - is not the intent to reduce wait times at the border, but the utter audaciousness of introducing a massive privacy-invading app, seeing that it's causing ridiculous problems and delays for hundreds of thousands of Canadians, and then trying to claim that by adding a new feature to the app you would be saving people time!
The whole thing is utterly unacceptable.
Once again, politicians have snuck through a massive expansion of the surveillance state under the guise of a one-off, temporary emergency.
The Government of Canada must immediately drop all plans to expand the use of the ArriveCAN app, abolish the app immediately, and never reinstate it.
If you agree, sign our petition today and then spread the word to your friends, family, co-workers, and every Canadian.
