Border delays getting shorter, but there will always be a wait, department says

New Brunswick's public safety minister says people are just going to have to put up with waiting when they cross provincial boundaries during the Atlantic bubble.

Wait times are improving but haven't been eliminated because of the time it takes to screen people at the border.

"You have two options, either not allow anybody in, or unfortunately you're going to have to put up with the time it takes to get that information," Public Safety Minister Carl Urquhart told Information Morning Moncton.

After the Atlantic bubble opened on July 3, drivers reported waits of of 90 minutes to three hours at the Aulac crossing into New Brunswick, and the province has been forced to simply wave people through without screening.

There were concerns about safety, including holding back essential workers and transport trucks from getting across the border in a timely way.

Jacques Babin, director of inspection and enforcement for Public Safety, says wait times are better, averaging around 15 to 20 minutes most days.

Fridays and Sundays, however, are still likely to still see longer wait times to get into New Brunswick on the Trans-Canada Highway, a four-lane divided route.

"The highway was not created with this type of control mechanism applied," Babin said. "So it's really difficult to have any form of control point or registration point that does not affect traffic. Very difficult."

Urquhart said the government has started separating vehicles with New Brunswick licence plates into one lane so they can get back into the province faster and shorten the screening line.

"[New Brunswick residents] have fairly easy access back into it. But there are going be times that if there's an outbreak, it's going to be locked down again, and they're going to go very slowly."

Urquhart said there are no concerns about emergency vehicles getting through the lineups, and the department has been in constant contact with emergency personnel to ensure it's not a problem. 

He said things could move faster if more people had their screening forms ready upon arrival, but even then a wait should be expected. 

The forms from the border have to be delivered to staff in Fredericton, where the information is entered into a government website, where it stays for six months, Urquhart said. A new team of staff handles the data entry and is in charge of cleaning out the old information.

"There's a lot of time, a lot of travel, it's a slow process but it's getting done."

Urquhart said an all-electronic system will eliminate the need for paper copies of the forms and speed up the process. He didn't say when that system will be ready.