Maybe I can just start by saying that for a year now I've had discussions about every two weeks, sometimes a little bit more often, with the Department of Homeland Security regarding the Canada-U.S. border. Those discussions are around our policy objectives with respect to the border and what restrictions we feel we need to put in place in order to achieve those policy objectives.
Since the outset, the joint objective that we set with the United States was to minimize and in fact stop non-essential travel but to allow essential business travel to continue. It was a monumental decision, as everybody knows. It was unprecedented, but ultimately as we looked at the data, and as we checked in with each other every couple of weeks, it was clear that that measure was doing what it was designed to do, because truck travel in your neighbourhood and across the country was down by maybe 5% or maybe 7% or maybe 2% or maybe not at all, depending on the week. The actual release of goods into Canada and into the United States, again, was down very little, sometimes not at all. However, the numbers of the rest of the travellers overall at the land border were down, depending on the week, between 80% and 90%.
That seemed to be very important, and it has, I think, proven to be very important in controlling the spread in our communities.