Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau extended the U.S.-Canadian border closure to non-essential traffic through December 21. The ban on non-essential travel will remain in effect until COVID-19 is “significantly more under control around the world.”

Trudeau’s decision to close the border began back in March in order to mitigate the spread of the virus. Exceptions were put in place for airline crews, diplomats, immediate family members of citizens, and U.S. citizens. Border crossings have been limited by both the United States and Canada since then, with the restrictions extended every month. Trudeau’s announcement of an extension through December 21 seems routine enough but he’s upping the ante with more stringent language. He now speaks of the necessity of the virus being more under control around the world. That covers a lot of territories. Different countries and parts of the world are in various stages of the coronavirus pandemic, with some countries in a second or third wave of infections. It looks like non-essential travel will be off the table for the foreseeable future.

The prime minister is happy with how the flow of trade between the United States and Canada continues while limiting humans from crossing the border.

“Until the virus is significantly under more control everywhere around the world, we are not going to be releasing the restrictions at the border,” Trudeau told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

“We are incredibly lucky that trade in essential goods, in agriculture products, in pharmaceuticals is flowing back and forth as it always had,” he said. “It’s just people not travelling, which I think is the important thing.”

Prime Minister Trudeau made certain to acknowledge the incoming Biden administration and deliver a bit of snark about the change in presidents.

Trudeau said although President-elect Joe Biden has an “obvious” different approach to the pandemic than President Donald Trump, the situation in the U.S. remains serious and it will take awhile to change that.

About 400,000 people crossed the world’s longest international border each day before the pandemic.

About 75% of Canada’s exports go to the U.S. which has more confirmed cases and deaths from COVID-19 than any country in the world.

Hmm. I wonder what exactly Trudeau thinks he’s heard that shows Biden has an “obvious” different approach in addressing the pandemic. I hate to burst his progressive bubble but so far Biden hasn’t put forth a single action that his administration will take to deal with the coronavirus pandemic that is different from the actions of the Trump administration. The only changes will be the personnel working in the White House and a different manner of speaking from Joe Biden. His elderly raspy voice is very soft and some people take that to be comforting and calming. Unfortunately, after just a few minutes into any kind of speech or presentation, Sleepy Joe devolves into rambling confusion. Does anyone think Biden would have had the persistence and backbone to create and oversee Operation Warp Speed with drug companies and manufacturers? He sure didn’t when he was in charge of the Obama-Biden administration’s responses to Eboli and to H1N1. Biden’s longtime right-hand man, Ron Klain, was the pandemic czar in the Obama years and he admits how poorly they performed. He specifically has admitted to failing, just giving up. So spare us on how great the next president is going to be in approaching the coronavirus. Trudeau is in for a surprise.

Canada doesn’t have mass vaccine-production facilities. There are no COVID-19 vaccines being made in Canada. Trudeau is feeling the heat from opposition parties over his remarks that Canadians won’t be the first to get the vaccines when they become available. He expects the first doses to go to citizens of the countries they are made in. However, he did offer some good news for Canadians during his news conference – Canada was one of the first countries to pre-order Moderna’s vaccine.

But Trudeau said at a news conference on Tuesday that Canada was among the first to pre-order Moderna’s vaccine candidate and, “We are guaranteed some of Moderna’s first batch if the vaccine is safe and approved.”

“Already, Moderna has submitted their candidate for Health Canada review, as have Pfizer-BioNTech and AstraZeneca-Oxford. And just yesterday, Johnson & Johnson joined this list as the fourth candidate for Health Canada’s review.”

Trudeau said the coronavirus situation in the U.S. remains serious and the border will not re-open to non-essential traffic in the near future because it will take some time to stop the spread of the virus.