Though hundreds of Canadians were repatriated on a flight from Morocco on Saturday, thousands more remain stranded abroad over tight travel and border restrictions put in place to fight the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Speaking to Mike Le Couteur on Global News’ The West Block, Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne shed some light on Canada’s efforts to repatriate those desperate to get back home.
He described the operation as “on a scale that we’ve never seen” before.
According to Champagne, Canada’s operation centres have received at least 14,000 emails and 10,000 phone calls within the last 48 hours and they have 600 people staffed around the clock to answer those calls for help.
“You know, if you look at the scale of what we’re trying to achieve, Canada and any other country, this has never been seen in the history of the world, where you have all these issues at the same time: air space closure, airport closure, martial law in some countries,” said Champagne.
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Champagne said that Canadians should expect more updates on their work to bring citizens home as the process remains extremely complicated.
Canada needs to obtain landing permissions, ensure safe passage for the crew and then make sure only asymptomatic passengers are boarding, Champagne explained.
Those who are returning from international destinations have to self-isolate for 14 days.
“So there’s a lot of things happening, but obviously what you hear, sometimes is those are the most difficult cases. You know, we have people in Guatemala. We have people in Ecuador and there, that’s where I need to intervene almost on an hourly basis because countries change the rules. … Situations on the ground are moving. We need to make sure people can get to these airports, so that’s what we’re doing on a 24/7 basis.”
In a tweet on Sunday, Champagne confirmed that they were working with Canadian airlines to organize flights from Peru, Spain, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in the coming days.
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OFFICIAL ADVICE TO CANADIANS ABROAD:
We are working with Canadian airlines to have more commercial flights in coming days to bring Canadians home coming from:
— François-Philippe Champagne (FPC) ?? (@FP_Champagne) March 22, 2020
Champagne was also asked what he’d say to those Canadians who felt abandoned by their government following Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s comments on Saturday that the government wouldn’t be able to get all Canadians home.
“So what we have to accept is that there’ll be some Canadians who can’t come back home,” he said, echoing Trudeau. “And what we’ll do with our missions around the world is to provide them services, to assist them the best we can.”
Kristina Stoyanova, a Canadian currently stranded in Honduras, told Roy Green Show guest host Shane Hewitt that the situation there is fairly calm and that many international travellers were accepting that they might be stranded there for some time.
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“I think we went through a little bit of a wave of panic as a lot of the closures were being announced, and the commercial airlines were cancelling their flights, but I think now we’re sort of past that stage and just all sort of accepting our fate and that we might be stranded here for an extended period of time,” said Stoyanova.
1:49 Coronavirus outbreak: Canadian government’s efforts to fly Canadians home continue
Coronavirus outbreak: Canadian government’s efforts to fly Canadians home continue
Champagne previously said at a press conference on Saturday that officials were working with and in touch with “hundreds of thousands” of Canadians abroad.
The foreign affairs minister also tweeted on Saturday night that he had spoken with his counterparts in the U.K., Australia, Brazil, Germany, Morocco, Turkey and Peru on how to repatriate Canadians abroad — including the estimated 4,000 still stuck on cruise ships.
— François-Philippe Champagne (FPC) ?? (@FP_Champagne) March 21, 2020
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Canada’s borders were closed to most foreign travellers on Wednesday, while a mutual shutdown to non-essential travel between the U.S.-Canada border went into effect Saturday morning — all in an effort to stem the spread of the virus.
To date, there are more than 1,300 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Canada and 20 deaths linked to the disease, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada and provincial governments. (The death toll was lowered from 21 after Quebec announced that one deceased person believed to have contracted the virus tested negative.)
Champagne tested negative for the virus earlier this week after he said he felt flu-like symptoms following an international trip.
“I was nervous, but I mean in a sense, I knew that at the end of the day, I had a job to do,” he said.
“You know, we’re facing unprecedented circumstances and in this case, like many of our folks who are on the front line, you don’t think too much about yourself. It’s about serving. It’s about making sure we have thousands — tens of thousands — of Canadians who depend on me and my team to fly them back home.”
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.
