Chatham-Kent’s mayor is standing with local boaters who want to see border restrictions eased and local reporting sites reopened.
The owners of Port Lambton’s RiverKraft Marine and Resort, formally Ecarte Marina, are frustrated at being kept closed, unable to provide reporting services for boaters trying to enter the country. That means the closest reporting sites for boaters is either Sarnia or Windsor.
Mayor Darrin Canniff says that’s an unacceptable distance for local boaters to travel.
“This is not going to work,” Canniff says. “It’s going to really cut off tourism from boaters because of the length of time it’s going to take them to go check in first and then come to their destination.”
Municipal officials are sending letters to their provincial and federal counterparts to explain the hardship the reporting site closures are having on not only boaters but the community as a whole.
CBSA officials say the agency is taking a phased and measured approach to restoring border operations.
RiverKraft is one of the hundreds of ports that remain closed to cross-border boaters due to COVID-19 restrictions. There are currently only 86 small vessel reporting sites that are operating in the province, compared to around 400 prior to the pandemic.
