News
Canadian airlines accused of ignoring COVID precautions, denying refunds – CBC.ca
When Bobbi Jo Green booked a flight back in May for her, her husband, and her children to see two ailing family members, she was counting on the airline’s physical distancing rules to still be in place.
But just three weeks before Green and her family were set to fly from Edmonton to Sydney, N.S., on July 17, WestJet announced it was ending its policy of leaving the middle seats on its flights empty.
“I was devastated,” Green said, noting her family spends every summer in Nova Scotia with her 93-year-old grandmother who is suffering from severe dementia and another family member with an incurable form of cancer.
“We all knew it could very well be the last summer we would spend with them.”
When Green called WestJet to see if any accommodations could be made, she told the company she has a heart condition that puts her in the high-risk category for COVID-19.
Despite her pleas, Green said the airline told her it was unable to make any special accommodations, nor would it allow her to change the date of the flight to before July 1, when the rules were relaxed, without paying a fee.
And Green’s not alone: as provinces begin to relax domestic travel restrictions, the cessation of physical distancing rules by two of Canada’s biggest airlines — WestJet and Air Canada — is causing frustration and grief among some passengers.
Gabor Lukacs, head of the advocacy group Air Passenger Rights Canada, said he has fielded countless complaints from passengers during the COVID-19 pandemic, many of which are related to the same issues: airlines refusing to offer refunds or accommodations amid the abolition of physical distancing rules.
While he acknowledges the effort to fill seats is due to airlines attempting to recoup billions in lost revenue, Lukacs argues the companies risk deterring customers from flying at all.
“The question is: do we allow economic considerations to override public health? We don’t allow supermarkets to sell spoiled meat because it’s cheaper. Are we going to allow doctors to skip disinfecting their tools to save the cost?”
There’s some evidence he’s right: a new poll conducted by Leger and the Association of Canadian Studies found 72 per cent of respondents say they are not comfortable flying now that Air Canada and WestJet have culled their seat distancing policies.
Only 22 per cent said they would be OK with flying under the newly relaxed rules.
Seat distancing was never intended to be in place permanently or throughout the pandemic.-WestJet Statement
In response to criticisms, WestJet forwarded The Canadian Press a statement from a July 3 blog post regarding changes to its seat distancing policy.
“The blocked middle seat was introduced at the beginning of the pandemic before the myriad of safety measures were put in place and mandated on board,” the statement reads.
“Seat distancing was never intended to be in place permanently or throughout the pandemic.”
The post notes a number of measures WestJet has taken to help stop the spread of COVID-19 on its flights, including mandatory masking, pre-boarding questionnaires for all passengers, temperature screening, thorough cleaning of aircraft between flights, and the restriction of in-flight dining services.
As of Tuesday afternoon, Air Canada did not respond to a request for comment.
However, the company has also denied it’s putting passengers and staff at risk by filling flights up, pointing to other safety measures as mitigating the risk of spreading COVID-19.
Yet some passengers report first-hand experiences in which masking protocols were not followed.
‘Risking their life’
Maureen Isabel Green, 31, flew from Vancouver to Fredericton three weeks ago with Air Canada to visit her family, and said she was shocked by the lax use of masks by both airport employees and the passengers on her two connecting flights.
“I just think of all the people who are getting on a flight and risking their life, or risking the life of the people they’re going to visit, because some people don’t want to wear a mask for a few hours,” she said.
Green, who is a health-care worker, said there were numerous instances on her flight from Vancouver to Montreal where a group of young, male passengers took off their masks when flight attendants were not present.
While at the Montreal airport, Green said a man was able to board a flight without wearing a mask, simply by telling attendants he had a medical condition that prevented him from doing so.
Air travel has been at the centre of several headline-grabbing incidents throughout the pandemic — particularly since travel restrictions have been eased in some regions.
On July 2, health authorities in B.C. warned the passengers of four separate flights that they may have been exposed to COVID-19.
Just a day before — on the exact day the airlines ended their social distancing policies — the Nova Scotia Health Authority warned passengers of a Toronto-to-Halifax WestJet flight from the previous week that they may have been exposed to COVID-19.
And on Sunday, a Halifax man reportedly walked off of a St. John’s-bound flight after learning he was the only passenger travelling within the so-called “Atlantic bubble,” sparking discussion about the effectiveness of airlines’ COVID-prevention policies.
OTTAWA –
The first instalment of the 2024 Canada carbon rebate will be delivered to some Canadians Monday as long as they filed their taxes by the middle of March.
Canadians living in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and all four Atlantic provinces will receive the first of four instalments Monday if they filed their 2023 taxes by March 15.
Those who filed their taxes since March 15 will see their first instalment on May 15, while those who file after Monday will wait until June or July.
The payments are based on household size and for a family of four range from $190 in New Brunswick to $450 in Alberta.
Ottawa also has just launched a new online estimator that shows how much you should get from the rebates.
In a bid to make the rebates more understandable Ottawa renamed them the “Canada Carbon Rebate” this year but is still negotiating with the big banks about changing how the deposits are labelled when they show up in your account.
Ottawa has been battling with banks about how the deposits are labelled since they moved to quarterly payments for the rebates in 2022.
Many Canadians were confused, or didn’t realize they even got the rebate, when payments showed up with vague labels including “EFT deposit from Canada”, “EFT Credit Canada.” or sometimes just “federal payment.”
The federal government asked the banks to help label them with the old moniker — the climate action incentive payment — but some didn’t arguing they had a 15 character limit for deposit description.
The deposits will be labelled different depending on where you bank, with some going with the full Canada Carbon Rebate name, others shortening it “CDACarbonRebate” or “Canada CCR/RCC.”
In French, the labels could be “Carbone RemiseCA” or “Dépôt direct/Remise canadienne sur carbone.”
The rebates are sent to offset what people pay in carbon pricing when they buy fuel so they’re not left worse off as a result.
People who do things to lower their fuel use are even better off because they still get the same rebate but pay less in carbon pricing.
The rebate amounts are set annually based on how much carbon price Ottawa expects to collect in each province.
British Columbia, Quebec and Northwest Territories have their own carbon pricing system for consumers so residents there don’t receive the federal payment. Yukon and Nunavut use the federal system but have an agreement to distribute the proceeds themselves.
The parliamentary budget officer says about 80 per cent of Canadians get back more from the rebates than they pay.
He also says though that the economic impact of carbon pricing could lower wages over time, erasing that benefit for some Canadians. The government however argues that climate change itself can cause economic harm if it is left unchecked.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 15, 2024.
Since Meta blocked links to news in Canada last August to avoid paying fees to media companies, right-wing meme producer Jeff Ballingall says he has seen a surge in clicks for his Canada Proud Facebook page.
“Our numbers are growing and we’re reaching more and more people every day,” said Ballingall, who publishes up to 10 posts a day and has some 540,000 followers.
“Media is just going to get more tribal and more niche,” he added. “This is just igniting it further.”
Canada has become ground zero for Facebook’s battle with governments that have enacted or are considering laws that force internet giants — primarily the social media platform’s owner Meta and Alphabet’s Google — to pay media companies for links to news published on their platforms.
Facebook has blocked news sharing in Canada rather than pay, saying news holds no economic value to its business.
It is seen as likely to take a similar step in Australia should Canberra try to enforce its 2021 content licensing law after Facebook said it would not extend the deals it has with news publishers there. Facebook briefly blocked news in Australia ahead of the law.
The blocking of news links has led to profound and disturbing changes in the way Canadian Facebook users engage with information about politics, two unpublished studies shared with Reuters found.
“The news being talked about in political groups is being replaced by memes,” said Taylor Owen, founding director of McGill University’s Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy, who worked on one of the studies.
“The ambient presence of journalism and true information in our feeds, the signals of reliability that were there, that’s gone.”
Young people on Instagram will face new barriers if they send or receive nude photos. The move is intended to protect kids against abuse and blackmail, but child advocates say parent company Meta isn’t doing enough.
The lack of news on the platform and increased user engagement with opinion and non-verified content has the potential to undermine political discourse, particularly in election years, the studies’ researchers say. Both Canada and Australia go to the polls in 2025.
Other jurisdictions, including California and Britain, are also considering legislation to force internet giants to pay for news content. Indonesia introduced a similar law this year.
Blocked
In practice, Meta’s decision means that when someone makes a post with a link to a news article, Canadians will see a box with the message: “In response to Canadian government legislation, news content can’t be shared.”
Where once news posts on Facebook garnered between five million and eight million views from Canadians per day, that has disappeared, according to the Media Ecosystem Observatory, a McGill University and University of Toronto project.
Although engagement with political influencer accounts such as partisan commentators, academics and media professionals was unchanged, reactions to image-based posts in Canadian political Facebook groups tripled to match the previous engagement with news posts, the study also found.
The research analyzed some 40,000 posts and compared user activity before and after the blocking of news links on the pages of some 1,000 news publishers, 185 political influencers and 600 political groups.
A Meta spokesperson said the research confirmed the company’s view that people still come “to Facebook and Instagram even without news on the platform.”
Canadians can still access “authoritative information from a range of sources” on Facebook, and the company’s fact-checking process was “committed to stopping the spread of misinformation on our services,” the spokesperson said.
‘Unreliable’ sources
A separate NewsGuard study conducted for Reuters found that likes, comments and shares of what it categorized as “unreliable” sources climbed to 6.9 per cent in Canada in the 90 days after the ban, compared to 2.2 per cent in the 90 days before.
“This is especially troubling,” said Gordon Crovitz, co-chief executive of New York-based NewsGuard, a fact-checking company which scores websites for accuracy.
Crovitz noted the change has come at a time when “we see a sharp uptick in the number of AI-generated news sites publishing false claims and growing numbers of faked audio, images and videos, including from hostile governments … intended to influence elections.”
School boards in the Greater Toronto Area and Ottawa are taking some of the largest social media companies to court over their products, alleging they are harming students and the broader education system. CBC’s Dale Manucdoc dives into what we know so far about the lawsuit.
Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge in an emailed statement to Reuters called Meta’s blocking of news an “unfortunate and reckless choice” that had left “disinformation and misinformation to spread on their platform … during need-to-know situations like wildfires, emergencies, local elections and other critical times.”
Asked about the studies, Australian Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones said via email: “Access to trusted, quality content is important for Australians, and it is in Meta’s own interest to support this content on its platforms.”
Jones, who will decide whether to hire an arbitrator to set Facebook’s media licensing arrangements, said the government had made clear its position to Meta that Australian news media businesses should be “fairly remunerated for news content used on digital platforms.”
Meta declined to comment on future business decisions in Australia but said it would continue engaging with the government.
Facebook remains the most popular social media platform for current affairs content, studies show, even though it has been declining as a news source for years amid an exodus of younger users to rivals and Meta’s strategy of de-prioritizing politics in user feeds.
In Canada, where four-fifths of the population is on Facebook, 51 per cent obtained news on the platform in 2023, the Media Ecosystem Observatory said.
Two-thirds of Australians are on Facebook and 32 per cent used the platform for news last year, the University of Canberra said.
Unlike Facebook, Google has not indicated any changes to its deals with news publishers in Australia and reached a deal with the Canadian government to make payments to a fund that will support media outlets.
More than 800 workers responsible for providing food and beverages on flights leaving Toronto Pearson International Airport are on strike.
The Gate Gourmet workers, an airline catering and logistics company, went on strike Tuesday after voting 96 per cent to reject a final offer from the company, Teamsters Local Union 647 said in a statement.
“Our members accepted a wage freeze during the pandemic to help this company survive,” said Martin Cerqua, lead union negotiator and president of Local Union 647.
“Now their managers brag about how profitable their operations have become at Pearson, while proposing wage increases as low as 89 cents an hour.”
The union expects many flights leaving Toronto will have little to no food on board; impacted airlines include WestJet, United Airlines, Delta Airlines, TAP Air Portugal, Air India, Aero Mexico, SAS Scandinavian Airlines, Jetlines, as well as Air Canada, which the union said will be most affected by the strike.
The union added Gate Gourmet workers are paid on average between $17.69 and $20 per hour, below other airline catering companies in Toronto and Gate Gourmet workers in Vancouver. The union also claims slashed staffing levels have put workers at risk.
In a statement, Gate Gourmet Canada said it’s “disappointed” that a strike is underway.
“On Friday, the union informed us that they would cease negotiations and demanded a final offer, which Gate Gourmet Canada presented. The union walked away from the negotiating table, despite our belief that Gate Gourmet’s offer is fair and market competitive,” it said, adding the company was offering a 12 per cent pay raise over three years.
“At our operation in Toronto, we have established contingency plans with our airline customers to minimize any impact on them and their passengers. We remain committed to doing right by our employees and ending the strike so that we can continue to partner with our airlines customers and serve the travelling public.”
Air Canada, WestJet respond to strike
Air Canada and WestJet, Canada’s largest airlines, said in separate statements they’ve prepared for the work stoppage.
“We anticipate there will be no impact on our international flights, but we plan to make some adjustments to food and beverage service on certain North American flights departing from and, in some cases on shorter routes, returning to Toronto,” an Air Canada spokesperson told Global News Toronto in a statement Tuesday.
“Short-haul flights of less than two hours duration being most impacted.”
The airline added that flights over two hours within North America will have fewer menu options, while flights under two hours will not have hot meals available; snacks and water service will remain.
Meanwhile, WestJet said its Boeing 737 flights leaving Pearson will be impacted.
“Guests who are eligible to receive an inflight meal including those in the Premium cabin or extended comfort seating, and all guests travelling on transatlantic flights will receive either an alternative option or a food and beverage voucher for use in the terminal, pre-departure,” the company said in a statement on its website.
“In addition, WestJet is advising guests travelling to or from Toronto to plan ahead and bring an extra snack and/or beverage for their journey.”
More on Toronto
© 2024 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
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