$7 Travel Tax Is “Unfriendly”
ACTA will be weighing in on this new development in future communication but thought you would find the following story of interest.
www.blacklocks.ca - Staff
Federal plans for a mandatory $7 background check on offshore visitors are rated “unfriendly” and “jarring” by foreign travellers. Citizenship & Immigration Canada interviews with passengers at three airports drew bad reviews on the plan to take effect in 2015.
“Participants’ feedback about the policy changes themselves weren’t always positive,” said a federal report. The electronic travel authorization program will see some 3 million foreign visitors from non-visa countries barred from flying to Canada without paying a fee and submitting personal information online.
MPs earlier described the program as a “petty irritant”; “There’s a risk of nickel and diming our tourists,” MP John McCallum (Markham-Unionville, Ont.), Liberal immigration critic, said in an earlier interview; “It’s kind of a petty irritant.”
The citizenship department hired pollster Ipsos Reid to interview visitors at Vancouver International Airport, Pearson International in Toronto and Montréal’s Trudeau International Airport. Travellers were shown sample ads explaining the electronic visas in stark warnings: “You will need to apply”; and “Don’t get left behind”.
The hectoring messages “left many participants with negative views of the concept as jarring or even ‘impolite’,” concluded the research Electronic Travel Authorization Campaign Pre-Test. Airline passengers rated the messages “impolite”; “too dark”; “unfriendly” and “brusque”. Ipsos Reid noted some airport interviews were conducted 9 o’clock at night.
Canada Border Services Agency expects to collect $23 million a year in the new fees effective next year. The scheme follows a similar U.S. program introduced in 2008, the Electronic System For Travel Authorization. American travellers and passengers who stop in transit on international flights are exempt from the Canadian checks.
The visas are valid for five years. Authorities have not specified what use will be made of the data beyond immediate background checks; how long individual information will be stored; or whether files will be shared with foreign governments.
Countries and territories whose citizens would be required to submit to the background checks include Andorra, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Barbados, Belgium, Bermuda, British nationals from overseas territories including Hong Kong, British Virgin Islands, Brunei, Cayman Islands, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Montserrat, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Papua New Guinea, Poland, Portugal, Samoa, San Marino, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, Spain, St. Helena, St. Kitts and Nevis, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan and the Turks and Caicos Islands.