Two Indo-Canadian academics have claimed that the Canadian government is adopting double standards on Covid-19 testing for those stuck in India.
by Staff Reporter (via Reuters), Sept 14, 2021
Among them is Mitu Sengupta, a professor in the department of politics and public administration at Ryerson University in Toronto, who is particularly upset with the Canadian government rejecting Covid-19 RT-PCR tests conducted in India and instead mandating such molecular tests at the final point of departure for Canada for connecting flights.
“It’s absurd they don’t trust the Indian Covid test. That’s an instance of blatant discrimination. This particular policy - a blanket no to Indian Covid tests does smack of racism to me. What is racism, after all? When you think a group of people are inferior to you based on something like their nationality and this is what they’re suggesting. I find that really objectionable,” she said. Mitu Sengupta is presently in Delhi.
Her comments follow a letter to the editor published by the Canadian daily Toronto Star last week, in which Arun Paramekanti, professor of physics at the University of Toronto, alleged, “The prolonged Canadian government regulation to forbid direct flights from India to Canada, and to completely distrust pre-flight Covid-19 RT-PCR tests carried out in India while trusting test results from any other third country, is a racist policy which places a significant burden on Canadian citizens of Indian origin.”
“To ban travel from India at this stage, when nearly 80% of the eligible Canadian population (76.35% of Canadians aged 12 and older have been fully vaccinated) has been fully vaccinated, and we have far more knowledge of the disease, reeks of racism,” he claimed.
Arun Paramekanti, who is in Bangalore at this point, confirmed that viewpoint while speaking to the Hindustan Times, saying such policy seemed to be “picking on India” and was “overkill and really discriminatory”.
Canada opened its borders to fully-vaccinated travellers from the United States in August and earlier this month, to all fully-vaccinated visitors even if that was for discretionary reasons. Cases per thousand in America and in European nations like the United Kingdom are higher than in India.
Responding to emailed queries from the Hindustan Times, a spokesperson for the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) said, “The requirement for pre-entry molecular testing in a third country is in place so that the Covid-19 molecular test is performed after leaving a high-risk country (India in this case). In this way, the risk of the traveller being exposed to the virus and its variants in India between the time of testing and boarding the plane, which can take up to 72 hours, is reduced.”