TORONTO -- With warmer weather approaching, snowbirds are flocking back to Canada and some of them are finding ways to avoid spending three days in a government-mandated quarantine hotel.
Business is booming for car services in American border towns where Canadian snowbirds are arriving to be driven across the border to their front doors.
鈥淭riple, probably quadruple the amount of calls, it鈥檚 crazy. The phones are ringing off the hook,鈥 Tony Moore, owner and president of Buffalo Black Car Service in Buffalo, N.Y., told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview on Monday.
鈥淲e鈥檙e taking people straight to Toronto, right to their house,鈥 he added.
He said that Canadians coming through aren鈥檛 happy about the restrictions on people flying into the country.
鈥淭hey told us they're not really happy with it, they've heard horror stories about staying at the hotel,鈥 he said. 鈥淭hey鈥檇 definitely rather pay the price of US$350 for us to take them up there.鈥
As for his drivers, most of them have been vaccinated as essential workers and are regularly tested, so they鈥檙e not too worried about driving Canadians home.
鈥淭hey wear masks the whole time, and we also have purchased very expensive, nice partitions to put up between the passengers and the driver,鈥 he said.
All in all it鈥檚 about a five-hour round trip for his drivers who, once in Canada, won鈥檛 step out of their vehicles.
鈥淲e have to have a full tank of gas, that way the driver doesn't have to stop anywhere. They go directly from the airport in Buffalo, directly to the border,鈥 said Moore. 鈥淲e test the clients in the backseat, and then take them, the driver never gets out of their car, directly to their home.鈥
Once home in Canada, passengers are to get their own bags from the car so the driver can remain in the vehicle the entire duration of the trip, he added.
He said that a lot of the Canadians using his service aren鈥檛 happy with the way the pandemic is being handled in Canada.
鈥淭hey鈥檙e complaining a lot about the leadership, or the lack of leadership in Canada,鈥 he said. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e not happy with that.鈥
For the Canadians who opt to take the long way home aren鈥檛 necessarily doing it to skip out on the hotel bill.
鈥淐ost is less a factor than exposure to germs in an enclosed hotel environment,鈥 Laura Lawrence told CTVNews.ca in an email.
Lawrence and her husband have spent the last four months in the Turks and Caicos Islands, and trying to get back to Canada hasn鈥檛 been a simple task. They鈥檝e already spent $1,800 on a room at a quarantine hotel in Toronto before changing their plans.
鈥淲e decided to rebook our flight, direct to Buffalo and enter Canada by car - thus losing money on our booked - non-refundable hotel,鈥 she added.
Lawrence said both she and her husband were fully vaccinated in Turks and Caicos.
Even flying into Buffalo and booking a car service hasn鈥檛 simplified their travel plans. After landing in the U.S., they will have to have another PCR test and await results before taking a car service home.
鈥淪o in brief we will need to stay overnight in Buffalo while having taken another COVID test in a Buffalo Niagara International Airport Kiosk centre, wait 24 hours for the test results and then take the car service over the border,鈥 she said.
For the Lawrences, this is still preferable to a stay in a quarantine hotel, where they worry COVID-19 might spread.
While there haven鈥檛 been reports of this happening in any Canadian quarantine hotels, one such facility in Australia had a B.1.1.7 variant outbreak earlier this year.
