The federal government is introducing new measures that it says will deal with airport delays, which have forced some passengers to wait on planes for hours after arrival and miss flights altogether.
Airport workers – from taxi drivers to baggage handlers – are struggling to keep up with demand now that more Canadians are traveling as COVID-19 restrictions have been lifted, Transport Minister Omar Algabra said.
“What we are seeing is a significant jump in supply and demand,” the Ottawa minister said Monday.
Algabra announced new measures on Friday to ease pressure on airports, which include:
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Accelerated training of 400 new security officers to work at airports across the country by the end of June.
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Allow security officers who are not yet certified to perform work without inspection.
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Add 25 new border service pavilions at Pearson International Airport in Toronto to speed up processing time.
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Elimination of mandatory random tests for COVID-19 for passengers with international connections.
Transport Minister Omar Algabra spoke to reporters on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on May 11, 2022. Algabra announced new measures on Friday to ease the pressure on airports in Canada as more people start traveling again. (Justin Tang / Canadian Press)
“People had to put food on the table”
Beth Potter, president and CEO of the Canadian Tourism Association, says labor shortages are the biggest hurdle for the travel industry right now. The industry has lost about 400,000 of the two million workers it hired before the pandemic.
“Many of them took their skills and went to other industries during the pandemic, which were much more stable and could offer guaranteed hours and guaranteed pay,” Potter said in an interview.
“Our industry was affected by changing constraints, you know, closed, open, closed… People had to put food on the table.”
She said the government was making progress in increasing staff, but would also help invest in housing and transportation infrastructure and remove the vaccine mandate for federally regulated industries.
People are waiting in line to check in at Toronto Pearson Airport on May 12, 2022. The federal government recently announced new measures to address the long waiting times caused by rising demand and labor shortages. (Nathan Dennett / Canadian Press)
The shortage of staff, combined with the increase in accumulated demand and public health measures, such as the mandatory use of the ArriveCAN application, has led to increased waiting times at airports.
The Greater Toronto Airport Authority says it kept 2,204 planes from abroad on the runway in April, compared to just eight in the same period before the pandemic. In the second week of May alone, some 18,000 international passengers arriving in Pearson were detained for more than 30 minutes, and 3,000 were detained for more than 75 minutes.
The government says some waiting times are already starting to improve.
“Since the beginning of the month, the number of passengers waiting 30 minutes or more for an outbound check-in at our largest airports (Toronto Pearson International, Vancouver International, Montreal Trudeau International and Calgary International) has been halved at all four airports.” Friday statement from Transport Canada.
Wait for passports to be renewed as demand grows
But one agency not mentioned in the government’s announcement is Service Canada, which processes passport applications. Service Canada warns Canadians on its website that the waiting time is longer than normal due to the large volume of applications.
Jonathan Ratcliffe wanted to celebrate graduating from high school with a trip to Europe. The trip was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and then postponed for the second time when his passport did not arrive on time. (Submitted by Jonathan Ratcliffe)
Jonathan Ratcliffe, 18, is stuck in British Columbia while his friends stay in a castle in Ireland because his passport did not arrive on time.
Ratcliffe says he applied for his passport on March 3 and was assured by a Service Canada employee that he would arrive before his flight to London on May 10. But he didn’t come.
“It’s ridiculous,” he said. “We need to have a system in place to withstand heavy application loads.”
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