under2100

I drove across from WA to BC at 6pm Jul8 at Douglas. I am not Canadian, I am not PR, not essential. I am traveling on US pass + currently eligible to enter, and my vaccine was done in Europe.

I started my day in BC, crossed into the US early afternoon, and came back that evening. Entering the US was quiet, two lanes open including one nexus, 3 cars waiting in the regular lane. The US guy just asked where I lived and how much cash I was carrying, so I told him I was running errands.

However, coming back into BC, it's much busier than last month - 4 lanes open (no nexus) and with 3 or 4 cars per lane, and each car was taking minutes. There were only 3 lanes at first, and they opened another and some quick people jumped in the new line. I think it took me 25 minutes of waiting to see the officer.
I'd flashed my nexus card as I drove up to the booth, which he said pulled up the infos - I handed him my passport, visa, and copy of test from Bellingham Walgreens, and nothing else. He did not want the arrivecan printout, nor the vaccine documentation. He said arrivecan was pulled up on his computer automatically, and it contained the vaccine documentation already. He asked about my trip (I'd only been gone for a few hours to run errands), asked where I lived (so I told him, and said that was my quarantine plan), then handed me the test kit. That's all, very fast, a couple minutes at most. I did remark to him that it seemed quite busy and he agreed a lot more people were using the relaxation of the rules as an opportunity to travel.

The testing took a lot of time. The redcross tent has 4 car slots, but they made people wait and do the registration beforehand. Before I entered this queue, they gave me the box and said I could do it at home, or in person, so I asked how long it would take in person, and they said 30 or 40 minutes. I said I'd do it there. There were 2 cars ahead of me. In BC we are now using Lifelabs, so you have to register anew. I think if you didn't have data, or you don't have a smartphone, they must have some other provision.

The registration is very long winded, there are several screens, and you also have to enter all your data, name, address, passport, travel date, etc - and there does not appear to be a way of registering an account ahead of time - the registration is for that specific test since you have to enter an ID# from the actual test box at some point. There is also a piece of paper which you have to fill out with various identification details. The system then generates an order ID which you have to note on the form.

The first time I tried, with the person guiding me, I lost connection after I'd filled in nearly all the form, and then tried to refresh the page, but that wiped out all the data I'd entered, so I had to painstakingly re-enter everything. So the admin side of registering the kit took the longest time, maybe 20 minutes. The actual test was quick, a few minutes at most. I did not do a cheek swab, only a nasal one (there's some mention of cheek swab on the flyclear/lifelabs website). I think their estimate of half an hour for the testing was fairly accurate - not sure what will happen when it becomes even busier.

But the (vaccine documentation) = (no quarantine) side of things seem to be very smooth. No hassle.