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Here is a roundup of stories from The Canadian Press designed to bring you up to speed on what you need to know today…
Tourism operators face heavy debt, even as business roars back
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Passport delays: Canada opens new service sites – CTV News
OTTAWA –
The federal government is adding new passport service locations across Canada as a backlog in processing applications continues.
Social Development Minister Karina Gould announced Wednesday that people can now apply for and pick up passports at Service Canada centres in Red Deer, Alta., Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., Trois-Rivieres, Que., and Charlottetown, P.E.I.
That’s on top of five new locations added in July, and Gould expects to bring another seven to nine locations into the program soon.
“I think this is a really important and long-overdue change,” she said in an interview. “Those of us who live in more urban areas, we don’t realize that we’re so lucky to be close to a passport office.”
The additions should make it easier for people outside large centres to access services and ease stress on offices in regional hubs, she added.
No new federal money was required to make the change, Gould said. Resources come out of a revolving fund made up of passport fees.
Gould said the current crisis and complaints over long wait times have accelerated the work but she was already looking at bringing passport services to more locations before the backlog.
She visited Sault Ste. Marie in April, before media began reporting on complaints over wait times. The local Liberal MP, Terry Sheehan, told Gould that people in the Sault had to drive seven or eight hours to Thunder Bay or Toronto to visit a passport office in person.
Until Wednesday, there was no passport office on Prince Edward Island.
“So I was starting to already look at who is not close, and how can we fix this,” she said. “And then it became that much more acute.”
Nearly 1.1 million applications for new and renewed passports have been filed since April as pandemic restrictions loosen and Canadians resume travelling.
More than one-quarter of those hadn’t yet been processed as of early August.
Government statistics show the system is starting to catch up with demand, as the gulf between the number of passport applications each month versus the number of passports issued is getting smaller.
Call centre wait times have gone down significantly and “triage measures” were implemented at 17 passport offices to mitigate in-person headaches.
Gould said 442 new employees were hired so far this summer and 300 are already trained and working.
But a large backlog remains.
In the first week of August, the number of passports issued within 40 business days of an application fell to 72 per cent from 81 per cent the week before.
That is largely because of mailed applications.
During the first week of August, passports from in-person applications were issued within the government’s 10-day service standard 95 per cent of the time, a rate that has remained steady throughout the summer.
For mailed applications the service standard of 20 days was met only 40 per cent of the time in early August, down from 53 per cent in late July. The government also warns it can take more than 13 weeks to get your passport by mail.
The overall numbers aren’t materially better than in June, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was forced to respond to growing complaints and called the system’s performance “unacceptable.”
The week of June 20, 76 per cent of passports were issued within 40 business days.
The processing times also don’t take into account the wait to get an in-person appointment and there are only a limited number of walk-ins available.
Proof of upcoming travel is required to get service within two months at offices with 10-day processing times, including those announced Wednesday.
Urgent services for people who can prove they need a passport within 48 hours are only available in bigger urban centres — Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Gatineau, Que., and Quebec City.
As the backlash over the wait times continues, some reports suggest Canadians are making “fake” travel plans to show to passport officers, then cancelling their flights once their application is in the queue.
Gould said she’s not aware of this being a “widespread issue” but she has heard about it anecdotally. “I strongly discourage Canadians to do that. It’s unfair, it’s unkind and it’s unnecessary,” she said.
Gould said at the morning press conference that the government failed to predict to what extent demand would sharply spike earlier this year. She insisted an unexpected glut of mailed-in applications is the main culprit in the passport delays.
Although she wouldn’t comment on the specifics of its deliberations, she said a cabinet committee stood up earlier this year — the Task Force on Services to Canadians — is looking at how to make sure that services under federal jurisdiction are being delivered in “a timely and effective way” that takes the toll of the pandemic into account.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 17, 2022.
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Published Apr 23, 2024 • 3 minute read
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Canadian tourism operators says the tourism sector hasn’t returned to what it was pre-COVID.
Many businesses report carrying a heavy debt load, with Vancouver-based ecotourism company Maple Leaf Adventures saying it’s carrying it’s heaviest debt load in 38 years.
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Co-owner Maureen Gordon says while she and her competitors are recovering, higher interest rates are putting a damper on the post-COVID rebound.
Tourism Industry Association of Canada C-E-O Beth Potter says while the sector brought in 109-billion dollars in revenue last year, the federal government must help out by bringing in a new low interest loan program.
Tourism Minister Soraya Martinez Ferrada has said tourism operators have been affected by the warmest winter on record, but will be helped by the federal carbon rebate.
Here’s what else we’re watching …
Trudeau to make announcement in Saskatoon today
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will be in Saskatoon today, where he will make an announcement highlighting measures focused on youth, education, and health that were contained in last week’s budget.
Joining Trudeau at the announcement in Saskatchewan’s largest city are minister for northern affairs Dan Vandal and Women and Gender Equality and Youth Minister Marci Ien.
Trudeau has faced conflict with the Saskatchewan Party government, whose leader, Premier Scott Moe, has been a vocal and long-standing opponent of the federal carbon levy.
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Moe is one of several premiers who have asked Trudeau to host a meeting to discuss alternatives to the consumer carbon price.
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‘Perfect storm’: Quebec farmer protests continue
Quebec farmers are continuing a series of protests that have brought slow rolling tractors to communities across the province’s agricultural regions.
The president of Quebec’s farmers union Martin Caron says producers are struggling with higher interest rates, growing paperwork and fees on plastic products, like containers of seeds, fertilizer and pesticides.
His organization is asking the current Coalition Avenir Quebec government to ensure farmers can get loans with interest rates of three per cent.
A spokesperson for Quebec’s agriculture minister says farmers can get emergency financial aid through a new program and that the government is consulting with the farmers union about reducing paperwork.
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Study shows caribou growth at wolves’ expense
New research suggests western Canada’s caribou population is growing.
But the same study also shows the biggest reason for the rebound is the slaughter of hundreds of wolves, a policy which will likely need to continue.
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Thirty-four researchers compared notes on herds in Alberta and British Columbia based on a study in Ecological Applications and found between 1991 and 2023, the caribou population dropped by half.
However, over the last few years the numbers have begun to slowly rise, as it’s estimated there are now more than 1500 caribou than there were had not restoration effort been made.
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Second World War hangar in Edmonton burns in fire
An aircraft hangar built during the Second World War at Edmonton’s former municipal airport has been destroyed by fire.
A spokesman for the City of Edmonton says in an email firefighters were called to Hangar 11 just before 7 p.m. Monday.
The city’s email says 11 fire crews were dispatched to the scene to deal with the heavy smoke and flames and the wooden building later collapsed.
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How a Newfoundland town shaped creepy ‘King Tide’
A new movie shot in Newfoundland showcases a community heavily reliant on a magical child.
“The King Tide” is about an isolated villagers having their lives forever changed after a mysterious infant washes up on their shores, the sole survivor of a devastating boat wreck.
They name the baby Isla, raise and learn she has healing powers promising immunity from injury and illness.
As the years pass, they become reliant on Isla’s abilities, but when her powers start to fade, a panic sets in as the community begins to fracture.
The movie was shot by Newfoundlander Christian Sparkes in Keels, Newfoundland, a former bustling fishing community which he says he’s been looking to film in for years, but couldn’t until recently due to the cost.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 23, 2024.
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We're still stockpiling reusable bags. Big grocers have adopted solutions, but experts have concerns – CBC News
Canada’s plastic bag ban has had an unintended consequence: a proliferation of reusable bags piling up in basements, closets and, eventually, landfills.
“They’re everywhere,” said environmental researcher Tony Walker. “We’re drowning in them, and we shouldn’t be.”
To combat the problem, several of Canada’s big grocers have introduced solutions. Last week, Walmart launched a free national recycling pilot program for the retailer’s reusable blue bags. Competitors Sobeys and chains owned by Loblaw Companies Ltd. use recyclable paper bags for grocery delivery.
But some environmental experts argue that paper bags are also problematic and that the best solutions are those that help customers actually reuse their reusable bags.
“We just can’t keep giving [them] out,” said Walker, a professor at Dalhousie University’s School for Resource and Environmental Studies in Halifax. “We’re only meant to have a few of them, and we’re meant to use them until they fall apart.”
In late 2022, the federal government rolled out a ban on the manufacture, import and sale of several single-use plastics, including checkout bags. The regulations are being contested in court, but in the meantime, they remain in effect.
The regulations have made single-use shopping bags scarce in Canada, but they’ve also led to the proliferation of reusable bags, especially for grocery delivery.
“It just creates more waste, which is what we’re trying to avoid in the first place,” Walmart customer Udi Sela said in a CBC News interview in late 2022.
At the time, Sela, who lives in Maple, Ont., estimated his family had acquired about 300 reusable Walmart bags via grocery delivery.
“We can’t return them, we can’t do much with them.”
Now, a little more than a year later, Walmart has launched a pilot project to address the problem.
It allows customers to pack up their unwanted reusable Walmart blue bags and ship them — at no charge — to a facility where they’ll get a second life.
How it works
According to Walmart, bags in good condition will be laundered and donated to charity, primarily Food Banks Canada. Damaged bags will get recycled into other materials. Reusable bags typically can’t go in blue bins because they’re costly and difficult to recycle.
Customers must sign up for Walmart’s program, and enrolment is limited.
Jennifer Barbazza, Walmart’s senior manager of sustainability, said the retailer will fine-tune the details as the program progresses.
“[We] know that some customers have more reusable bags than maybe they need,” she said. “One of the things that we’re really excited to learn about from the pilot is customer acceptance and customer feedback.”
WATCH | Is your home overrun with reusable bags? Join the club:
Reusable bags are living rent free in closets and car trunks across the country. Most major retailers made the switch away from single-use plastic bags about a year ago, but it’s taking time for some customers to catch on. They’re forgetting to bring their bags with them, and buying more every week.
Udi Sela has already signed up.
“I definitely think it’s a step in the right direction,” he said in an interview on Friday. “It’s something that needed to be done a while ago. God knows we’ve got a ton of bags kind of piled up.”
He said he’s concerned that some customers may find mailing the bags a hurdle. However, it’s not deterring Sela, who soon plans to ship hundreds.
Passing the buck?
Not everyone is keen on Walmart’s project. Emily Alfred, a waste campaigner with Toronto Environmental Alliance, said donating the bags to the food bank is just passing on the problem.
“We need to remove waste from the system entirely, and just sending these somewhere else for someone else to deal with is not really a solution,” she said.
Alfred said a better option is a program Walmart piloted in Guelph, Ont., in 2022. For a fee, customers could check out reusable bags from an in-store kiosk and later return them to be cleaned and reused.
“That’s a real circular reuse system,” she said.
Walmart’s Barbazza said the retailer is continuing to explore different reusable bag programs, including ones placed in stores.
She also said she’s confident Canada’s food banks will make good use of the bags.
“There’s definitely a need for sturdy items to distribute materials to the food bank clients.”
The paper problem
Among Canada’s major grocers, only Walmart offers a reusable bag program for all customers.
Loblaw recently switched from reusable to recyclable paper bags for grocery delivery. Sobeys did not respond to requests for comment, but according to its website, the grocer also uses paper bags and “reusable options” for home delivery.
Several environmental experts say paper bags aren’t a good solution, because their production leaves a sizable carbon footprint.
“Paper bags are a problem,” Alfred said. “It takes a lot of energy to recycle paper, takes a lot of trees and energy to make new paper.”
Loblaw said it continues to explore a variety of more sustainable solutions. “It’s a challenge we’re committed to addressing,” spokesperson Dave Bauer said in an email.
Both Walker and Alfred applaud Metro for its grocery delivery program, because the grocer, which operates in Ontario and Quebec, reuses delivery materials.
Metro said customers can get their goods delivered in a cardboard box or reusable bags, which can be returned and used for another delivery. Or customers can opt for a plastic bin and remove their groceries from it upon arrival.
Metro does not offer similar programs for in-store shoppers.
Alfred said the federal government should introduce regulations that mandate retailers adopt effective reusable bag programs for all customers.
“It’s up to our governments and people to demand that these companies do better,” she said.
But Walker suggested that the regulations would be hard to enforce and that incentives could be a better tactic.
For example, if retailers increased the price of reusable bags, shoppers might be less likely to forget them when they head to the store, he said.
“When the cost is a disincentive to do an activity, people change their behaviour.”
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