MONTREAL —
Tania Azevedo wasn’t sure if she would make it to Aruba after all.
After Ontario’s lockdowns forced her to close her hair salon in Toronto, Azevedo decided to capitalize on the free time by visiting friends in the small island nation. She had filled out the country’s application for foreign visitors, purchased the mandatory insurance and taken a COVID-19 test in the days before her departure.
But when she arrived at the airport, airline staff informed her that she had taken the wrong test — RNA, not PCR — and that she would have to take another test and quarantine on arrival.
“I almost didn’t get on my flight,” Azevedo said, adding that in the end, Aruban authorities approved the test and let her skip the quarantine.
With some hotels and airlines offering special terms to lure in travellers this holiday season, sun seekers like Azevedo are nevertheless running into new logistical challenges brought on by efforts to contain the pandemic.
Entry requirements for Canadians heading to the most popular destinations vary from country to country, and range from mandatory quarantines on arrival to required testing and insurance programs. Beachgoers also have to contend with fewer options for airline routes and measures such as mask requirements and temperature checks in place at every step of the journey.
Travellers must quarantine for 14 days at home when they return to Canada, a federal measure that the travel industry has fiercely contested, arguing that replacing it with a testing program at airports would be as effective at containing the disease and would increase people’s appetites for travel.
Still, with the winter cold settling in across the country, many Canadians have decided that the benefits of taking a beach vacation during a pandemic outweigh the inconveniences.
“It was definitely worth it and I’d do it again,” Azevedo said from quarantine in her Toronto home.
Christina Miller, a Montreal-based real estate agent who owns a vacation home in the Dominican Republic, had to fly into Punta Cana instead of the smaller airport closer to her house, filling out at least two documents about virus symptoms and taking a rapid COVID test along the way.
Speaking from the Caribbean island, she said she felt safe on the plane ride there and planned to exercise the same level of caution about the virus abroad as she did at home, adding that she has had her temperature taken everywhere she has gone inside to sit.
“I can honestly say that it’s much easier to respect social distancing in 28-degree weather than it is in freezing temperatures, that’s for sure,” Miller said.
Melissa Iantosca, a spokeswoman for Air Canada Vacations, said the company’s most popular beach destinations remain Cancun, Cayo Coco, Punta Cana and Varadero, meaning passengers’ tastes haven’t changed drastically since the start of the pandemic. But airlines have reduced their capacity by as much as 85 per cent this winter in anticipation of lower demand.
“Analysis of the data we have confirms that people are interested in travelling, but the continued entry restrictions at destination and the quarantine imposed on returning to Canada are limiting bookings and delaying travellers’ plans,” said Debbie Cabana, a spokeswoman for Air Transat.
In a November survey of regular winter travellers in Canada conducted by Snowbird Advisor, for example, 40 per cent of more than 3,000 respondents said they would not be travelling this winter (the poll cannot be assigned a margin of error because it was not based on a random sample).
The mandatory quarantine for those returning to Canada has made it impossible for many people to travel, splitting up some families that normally vacation together. Amanda Steinberg, a dietitian who lives in Montreal, flew to Florida this week with her daughter, but had to leave behind her husband, who wouldn’t have been able to work remotely while in quarantine, and her son, whose high school isn’t allowing students to travel.
Steinberg said she had to take a shorter vacation this year, factoring in the length of the quarantine when she gets back. She wasn’t sure yet whether she felt comfortable enough to do some of her usual vacation activities in Florida, like spin or yoga classes, she said.
Other holiday travellers have felt COVID-19 culture shock upon arrival in their destinations. Brittany Pekeles, who flew to Florida from Montreal in December, felt nervous when she first arrived, realizing that she would have to adapt to the locals’ attitudes toward mask-wearing and physical distancing, which she said were lax by Canadian standards.
Pekeles said she is comfortable eating at restaurants outside, but won’t be going to any nightclubs, which in Florida are permitted to operate at full capacity even as the state reports 10,000 new virus cases per day, on average.
“It’s definitely not the same vacation as it would be,” Pekeles said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published December 17, 2020.
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
