OTTAWA—Minutes after Justin Trudeau hung up the phone with Donald Trump on Wednesday morning, the U.S. president took to Twitter to share the news: The Canada-U.S. border would close to most travellers.

After years of brutal negotiating to keep the border as open as possible, Trudeau’s call to Trump sealed a mutual agreement to shut it down to “non-essential travel” almost immediately.

But the decision to strictly limit cross-border traffic actually came Tuesday afternoon, in two phone calls between Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and Vice-President Mike Pence.

The Star spoke to several Canadian and American officials about the behind-the-scenes negotiations that led to the extraordinary closure of the world’s largest undefended border. Most spoke on the condition they not be named.

As recently as last week, public servants and public health experts were not advising Ottawa to impose any travel restrictions. But “the world kind of changed” when Trump announced he was banning travel to the U.S. from Europe, said one federal official.

“That’s what really kicked off all the decision making. So one of the immediate, key decisions we made which we announced on Monday was to ban foreign nationals except the United States.”

The official said the initial decision to exempt U.S. citizens was based on advice from senior public servants, but also pointed to Freeland’s comments Tuesday, describing the Canada-U.S. border as a “lifeline” for the economy — and for ensuring Canadian grocery stores and pharmacies remain stocked.

Later Tuesday, the Trudeau cabinet’s COVID-19 committee met. Right after that meeting, Freeland called Pence and told him Canada wanted to bar most U.S citizens.

“She laid out that we felt that having a restriction on non-essential travel, essentially vacations and tourism, would be important,” said one official with direct knowledge of the exchange. “Pence immediately reacted positively, but said he needed to have some conversations.”

Within an hour, Pence phoned back and said the Trump administration agreed.

But hammering out the details of how to close the border to most of the hundreds of thousands of people who usually cross it each day — without disrupting billions of dollars in cross-border trade that both countries rely on — is a more complicated task.

On the Canadian side, the key players included Trudeau and Freeland, Public Safety Minister Bill Blair and Kirsten Hillman, Canada’s acting ambassador to in Washington, D.C.

They primarily dealt with Pence, who is leading the Trump administration’s COVID-19 response, and acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf.

The conversation between Freeland and Pence expanded to include the White House and the Prime Minister’s Office, senior public servants in both countries, and Blair and Wolf.

“A lot of work happened overnight between Public Safety and Homeland Security,” said one government official.

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As of Wednesday evening, that work appeared to be ongoing. While both Trudeau and Trump announced the travel restrictions in the morning, neither released the details of the ban, such as who would still be allowed to cross the border, and how the two countries will ensure their vital trade relationship isn’t disrupted.

Two officials told the Star that as of Wednesday afternoon, the two countries were still hammering out details hours after Trump’s tweet. “We’re still working out some of the bigger details,” a senior Canadian official said.

Blair told reporters Wednesday that nobody will be permitted to cross the Canada-U.S. border for “recreation and tourism,” but “essential travel will continue unimpeded.”

“It’s also important to recognize that Canadians and Americans cross this border every day to do essential work and for other urgent or essential reasons, and these will not be impacted,” Blair said.

A U.S. State Department official told the Star that “no travellers exhibiting symptoms will be allowed to enter Canada,” regardless of citizenship.

At a news conference Wednesday, Trump said he expects the travel restrictions to remain in place for 30 days, although it was unclear what the president was basing that estimate on. In his own news conference, Trudeau said the measures would remain in effect until both countries determine they’re no longer required.

When asked what counts as “essential” travel, Trump cited the flow of medical goods, military and industrial co-operation.

“I spoke with the Prime Minister Trudeau, very good relationship obviously between us and our two countries … and we both thought it was time,” Trump told reporters.

“Now, it’s not affecting trade. It’s non-essential. It’s non-essential crossings. It won’t affect trade at all. And it was just something we thought would be good for both countries.”

While the details of the travel restrictions have yet to be released, the fact that the two countries were able to come to an agreement is already an improvement on the last time the border was closed in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, said U.S.-Canada analyst Eric Miller.

“When you look at how this was executed, it couldn’t have been more different than the post-9/11 period,” said Miller, a fellow at the Canada Global Affairs Institute.

In 2001, “it came from an order from the U.S. president that said ‘shut everything down,’” Miller said. “And that included the Canada-U.S. border, and it created lines that were 26 miles long at their max that included everything from travellers trying to get home to auto trucks full of parts.

“So this process built on, essentially, the trust that has been built over the last two decades.”

With files from Edward Keenan

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