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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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.
