In a news release on Wednesday, the province of New Brunswick announced “increased screening” to happen at the Aulac and Tidnish Road border crossings. New Brunswick Public Safety spokesperson Elaine Bell says the screening will mainly consist of more peace officers on duty at the border checkpoint, doing electronic validation of travel registrations.
“We’re doing more active checking, or electronically validating every registration,” says Bell. “It’s similar to what we did last summer, when maybe you’d be driving through from Halifax on your way back to New Brunswick. If you have an approved, proper registration, you have it on your phone, you would show it to a police officer. They punch in the number, and then they’d let you go on your way. So we’re going back to do during those regular active checks.”
In addition to having registration forms handy by paper or digitally on a device, peace officers may also ask people crossing the border for supporting documents, like a photo ID.
Cross-border commuter Alyssa Greene says that on Thursday, a peace officer asked that she provide her drivers license in order the clear the checkpoint. Greene works at Canada Post in Amherst and has been crossing the border throughout most of the pandemic.
Up to 10 peace officers will be working at the checkpoints at a time, says Bell. When commuter Lloyd Bruce crossed the border Thursday morning to come to work in Sackville, there were six peace officers on duty, occupying four of eight small sheds set up at the checkpoint.
Bell says that peace officers may not stop every vehicle crossing the border, though everyone should be prepared for it.
“Everyone should expect to be stopped,” says Bell. “It may not necessarily happen that they are stopped but you should expect to be ready to stop and show your number.”
Bell says that Public Safety is not expecting any traffic backups due to the increased screening, because traffic volumes are so low as a result of strict travel restrictions, some of the strongest in place since the pandemic began.
Hundreds of people in the Tantramar area cross the border regularly for work, medical care, or child custody arrangements.
Frequent border crossers are eligible for passes that allow them to cross multiple times for up to 3 months, at which point they need to be renewed. Recently some cross-border commuters have had issues with pass renewals being rejected. Crystal Baird, a nurse at the Sackville Memorial Hospital who lives in Nova Scotia was rejected the last time she applied, but accepted after she applied again. Bell says anyone who has issues needs to get in touch with the department, either by email (TravelRegistration.EnregistrementVoyage@gnb.ca) or by phone (1-833-948-2800).
The department of public safety will not provide the number of people registered as routine border crossers in the area, but statistics published on the province’s COVID-19 dashboard say that 402 personal vehicles crossed at the Aulac checkpoint on Wednesday. That number does not include the roughly 2100 trucks and commercial vehicles that crossed, also on Wednesday.
