TORONTO —
As Canada strengthens its travel restrictions amid the rise of the Omicron variant, frustration and confusion is ensuing for travellers stuck at quarantine facilities.
Last week, Canada announced travel bans affecting 10 African countries. Canadian citizens and permanent residents who had been in any of the 10 countries are required to stay at a quarantine facility upon returning to Canada, regardless of vaccination status, as they wait for the results of an arrival COVID-19 test. Canadians or permanent residents returning from these 10 countries are also required to present a PCR test result taken from a third country.
For people waiting for their test results in quarantine facilities, some say it goes beyond patience.
Tiffany Gaura and her five- and eight-year-old daughters arrived at a facility with hallways covered entirely in plastic after flying back to Calgary from Egypt, one of the countries covered under the Canadian government’s travel restrictions.
“We get very unhealthy meals dropped at our door, three times a day. There’s a security guard outside the rooms. I mean, you can’t go outside. There’s no fresh air,” she told CTV News.
“I was not at all mentally prepared for that sort of a welcome”
It was a similar experience for Jessica Sirois, who had to stay at a quarantine facility in Toronto after returning from Egypt.
“I spent all night last night trying to call the front desk to get water to my room and some fruit or something healthy because they give you basically carbs,” Sirois told CTV News.
For Sarah Mossad, who also flew back to Toronto from Egypt, her room didn’t even have heating and the only water that was available was from the rusty bathroom faucets. She told CTV News that she had to wait until 4 p.m. the next day for a room change.
“I just had to wear a lot of sweaters that day, which I didn’t have a lot of, coming back from Cairo’s 30-degree weather,” she said.
“You’re in this room with poor ventilation, not knowing when if you’re going to get basic needs like water and things like that.”
Travellers are also reporting that they’re being left in the dark by quarantine officers after they receive their test results.
Sirois had already received her negative results for her arrival test. But as of Monday afternoon, she had not received any word from quarantine officers on when she could go back home.
“I just actually got an email saying that my PCR tests came back negative again. No one has contacted me in terms of when I can go home. Like, I have no idea.” she said. “I don’t have COVID but they’re treating me like a criminal.”
Sirois isn’t the only one who has had to deal with a lack of communication. Mossad had to wait 36 hours to hear from an officer after she got her negative test result.
“I was up all night, waiting for my negative test. As soon as I got it, I called and told them that I had a negative test. No calls were returned, no information,” she told CTV News.
Things got so bad for Mossad, she ended up calling 911 out of panic and frustration after there was no answer from any of the phone numbers that she was provided.
“It was like really mentally tough. You know, I just wasn’t sure if we were going to spend two more days there. I wasn’t sure if we were going to ever leave,” she said.
Public Safety Minister defended the federal quarantine facilities when asked about the conditions on Monday.
“We’re not going to spare any expense or resources when it comes to protecting Canadians, including at the border. We’re going to continue to provide clear travel guidance to all Canadians and others who are travelling to Canada,” he told reporters.
Mark Johnson, a spokesperson for the Public Health Agency of Canada, told CTV National News in an email statement that the agency is working to boost its capacity to let people go home closer to the time they receive their negative test results.
“Every traveller staying at a designated quarantine facility has access to 24-hour support and ongoing medical monitoring,” Johnson said.
There’s no timeline on how long these measures for those coming from the 10 designated countries will remain in place. For travellers who are cleared to leave the quarantine facilities, they’ll have to continue to quarantine at home until it’s been 14 days and get another COVID-19 test on day eight of their quarantine.
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.
