As delays and long lines continue to frustrate air travellers flying through Canada’s busiest airport, the travel and tourism industry has been calling on the federal government to ease the remaining COVID-19 travel measures as a way to speed up service and address the staffing shortages.
While many of the COVID-19 restrictions have largely been lifted at the provincial and territorial level, many federal measures affecting travel remain in place, including a vaccine mandate for air travellers, mandatory use of the ArriveCAN app for those entering Canada and randomized COVID-19 testing upon arrival.
Last week, Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada announced that the restrictions at the border would be extended to at least June 30.
Monette Pasher, interim president of the Canadian Airports Council, says these health measures are “bogging down the system.”
“We’ve gotten back to regular travel volumes — we’re at 70 per cent now. It’s very difficult to fulfill these public health restrictions,” Pasher told CTV’s Your Morning on Wednesday. “We could manage it when we were in the middle of the pandemic and there weren’t many people moving, but now we’ve turned the corner and we really do need to move forward.”
The council is also calling on the federal government to lift the vaccine mandates for federally regulated employees, citing the widespread staffing shortages that have affected everything from baggage handlers to security screening and the Canada Border Services Agency.
“That would help us be able to move forward and hire some of these workers back that have security clearance and are already trained,” Pasher said.
Staffing shortages are also being driven by employees leaving the travel industry amid restrictions and work stoppages. Beth Potter, CEO of the Tourism Industry Association of Canada, says 400,000 people have walked away from the industry in the last two years.
“This is a crisis situation as far as we’re concerned and we need to see it dealt with very quickly,” Potter told CTV News Channel on Wednesday.
Duncan Dee, former chief operating officer of Air Canada, believes lifting restrictions affecting travellers will help clear the bottleneck at arrivals, and says the COVID-19 measures have made it four times longer to get through customs and immigration.
“Before the pandemic it would take about 30 to 60 seconds per traveler to get through customs and immigration. Now, it’s taking four times longer than that, but they haven’t increased the number of staff four times,” he told CTV News Channel on Wednesday.
The Greater Toronto Airport Authority (GTAA), which operates Pearson, has meanwhile called on the federal government to “urgently streamline or eliminate inbound legacy public health requirements at Canada’s airports.”
The situation is leaving travellers feeling frustrated, with some going online to vent about their experiences.
Former NHL player Ryan Whitney recently detailed his chaotic night of delays at Toronto Pearson International Airport in a video posted to Twitter on Monday, where he called Pearson Airport the “worst place on earth” after waiting in several lines for hours and dealing with multiple rescheduled flights.
Toronto Mayor John Tory has called the delays “unacceptable” and says he’s spoken with GTAA CEO Deborah Flint as well as Federal Minister of Transport Omar Alghabra and Minister of Public Safety Marco Mendicino about the need to address all of the issues plaguing the airport
“The situation at the airport is not acceptable as it presently is. It’s just not acceptable,” Tory said at a press conference on Tuesday morning. “This is not just a Toronto problem. (Pearson) is the gateway to all of Canada.”
“ADJUSTMENTS ARE TAKING PLACE”: ALGHABRA
Alghabra told reporters in Ottawa on Tuesday that the federal government has been looking into adding resources and addressing airport bottlenecks. He also pointed to the recent hiring of 400 new CATSA screening officers.
“When we have an announcement ready to make, you will hear it,” he said.
Transport Canada says the 400 new screening officers will undergo “a more flexible onboarding program for these officers to be trained and working more quickly.”
But even with the faster onboarding process, Transport Canada says these screening agents are expected to be on duty by the end of June. Dee says the new staffing commitment may be too little, too late.
“He’s a little late to the party, and I’m not even sure if he’s bringing the right gifts,” Dee said. “Because 400 staff represents about six or seven percent of the staffing that they had in May and April. And the traffic that’s about to start hitting the airports is between 22 and 24 per cent more than it was in April in May.”
When asked about easing COVID-19 travel restrictions, Alghabra pointed to one recent change that now allows international travellers who have a connecting flight to be no longer subject to random COVID-19 testing, but would not commit to a timeline on further adjustments.
“We’ve made some adjustments, more adjustments are taking place,” he said. “Until I’m ready to announce them, I can’t tell you right now.”
“Taking out the laptops, taking out the fluids – all that adds 10 seconds here, 15 seconds there,” he told reporters.
Potter disagrees.
“Travellers know what they’re doing. They know how to travel. They know what to expect when they get to the security carousels and what they need to do in order to get through them. I think that what we’ve got here is, again, a lack of staff,” she said.
The Conservatives have called on the government to revert back to pre-pandemic travel rules, with interim leader Candice Bergen calling the remaining restrictions “nothing short of disingenuous theatrics and astonishing hypocrisy” at a news conference on Tuesday.
NDP leader Jagmeet Singh said at a media availability on Tuesday that the airport delays were “no surprise,” adding that the Liberals should have made sure they had sufficient staffing levels at airports.
With files from CTV News Toronto and The Canadian Press
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CALGARY – MEG Energy says it earned $167 million in its third quarter, down from $249 million during the same quarter last year.
The company says revenues for the quarter were $1.27 billion, down from $1.44 billion during the third quarter of 2023.
Diluted earnings per share were 62 cents, down from 86 cents a year earlier.
MEG Energy says it successfully completed its debt reduction strategy, reducing its net debt to US$478 million by the end of September, down from US$634 million during the prior quarter.
President and CEO Darlene Gates said moving forward all the company’s free cash flow will be returned to shareholders through expanded share buybacks and a quarterly base dividend.
The company says its capital expenditures for the quarter increased to $141 million from $83 million a year earlier, mainly due to higher planned field development activity, as well as moderate capacity growth projects.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
Premier David Eby is proposing an all-party committee investigate mistakes made during the British Columbia election vote tally, including an uncounted ballot box and unreported votes in three-quarters of the province’s 93 ridings.
The proposal comes after B.C.’s chief electoral officer blamed extreme weather, long working hours and a new voting system for human errors behind the mistakes in last month’s count, though none were large enough to change the initial results.
Anton Boegman says the agency is already investigating the mistakes to “identify key lessons learned” to improve training, change processes or make recommendations for legislative change.
He says the uncounted ballot box containing about 861 votes in Prince George-Mackenzie was never lost, and was always securely in the custody of election officials.
Boegman says a failure in five districts to properly report a small number of out-of-district votes, meanwhile, rippled through to the counts in 69 ridings.
Eby says the NDP will propose that a committee examine the systems used and steps taken by Elections BC, then recommend improvements in future elections.
“I look forward to working with all MLAs to uphold our shared commitment to free and fair elections, the foundation of our democracy,” he said in a statement Tuesday, after a news conference by Boegman.
Boegman said if an independent review does occur, “Elections BC will, of course, fully participate in that process.”
He said the mistakes came to light when a “discrepancy” of 14 votes was noticed in the riding of Surrey-Guildford, spurring a review that increased the number of unreported votes there to 28.
Surrey-Guildford was the closest race in the election and the NDP victory there gave Eby a one-seat majority. The discovery reduced the NDP’s victory margin from 27 to 21, pending the outcome of a judicial review that was previously triggered because the race was so close.
The mistakes in Surrey-Guildford resulted in a provincewide audit that found the other errors, Boegman said.
“These mistakes were a result of human error. Our elections rely on the work of over 17,000 election officials from communities across the province,” he said.
“Election officials were working 14 hours or more on voting days and on final voting day in particular faced extremely challenging weather conditions in many parts of the province.
“These conditions likely contributed to these mistakes,” he said.
B.C.’s “vote anywhere” model also played a role in the errors, said Boegman, who said he had issued an order to correct the results in the affected ridings.
Boegman said the uncounted Prince George-Mackenzie ballot box was used on the first day of advance voting. Election officials later discovered a vote hadn’t been tabulated, so they retabulated the ballots but mistakenly omitted the box of first-day votes, only including ballots from the second day.
Boegman said the issues discovered in the provincewide audit will be “fully documented” in his report to the legislature on the provincial election, the first held using electronic tabulators.
He said he was confident election officials found all “anomalies.”
B.C. Conservative Party Leader John Rustad had said on Monday that the errors were “an unprecedented failure by the very institution responsible for ensuring the fairness and accuracy of our elections.”
Rustad said he was not disputing the outcomes as judicial recounts continue, but said “it’s clear that mistakes like these severely undermine public trust in our electoral process.”
Rustad called for an “independent review” to make sure the errors never happen again.
Boegman, who said the election required fewer than half the number of workers under the old paper-based system, said results for the election would be returned in 90 of the province’s 93 ridings on Tuesday.
Full judicial recounts will be held in Surrey-Guildford and Kelowna-Centre, while a partial recount of the uncounted box will take place in Prince George-Mackenzie.
Boegman said out-of-district voting had been a part of B.C.’s elections for many decades, and explained how thousands of voters utilized the province’s vote-by-phone system, calling it a “very secure model” for people with disabilities.
“I think this is a unique and very important part of our elections, providing accessibility to British Columbians,” he said. “They have unparalleled access to the ballot box that is not found in other jurisdictions in Canada.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
WINNIPEG – A public memorial honouring former judge, senator and chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission into residential schools, Murray Sinclair, is set to take place in Winnipeg on Sunday.
The event, which is being organized by the federal and Manitoba governments, will be at Canada Life Centre, home of the NHL’s Winnipeg Jets.
Sinclair died Monday in a Winnipeg hospital at the age of 73.
A teepee and a sacred fire were set up outside the Manitoba legislature for people to pay their respects hours after news of his death became public. The province has said it will remain open to the public until Sinclair’s funeral.
Sinclair’s family continues to invite people to visit the sacred fire and offer tobacco.
The family thanked the public for sharing words of love and support as tributes poured in this week.
“The significance of Mazina Giizhik’s (the One Who Speaks of Pictures in the Sky) impact and reach cannot be overstated,” the family said in a statement on Tuesday, noting Sinclair’s traditional Anishinaabe name.
“He touched many lives and impacted thousands of people.”
They encourage the public to celebrate his life and journey home.
A visitation for extended family, friends and community is also scheduled to take place Wednesday morning.
Leaders from across Canada shared their memories of Sinclair.
Premier Wab Kinew called Sinclair one of the key architects of the era of reconciliation.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Sinclair was a teacher, a guide and a friend who helped the country navigate tough realities.
Sinclair was the first Indigenous judge in Manitoba — the second in Canada.
He served as co-chair of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba to examine whether the justice system was failing Indigenous people after the murder of Helen Betty Osborne and the police shooting death of First Nations leader J.J. Harper.
In leading the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he participated in hundreds of hearings across Canada and heard testimony from thousands of residential school survivors.
The commissioners released their widely influential final report in 2015, which described what took place at the institutions as cultural genocide and included 94 calls to action.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
