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DEE: To save summer travel, transport minister must act now Back to video
For airline employees, this summer was to be a return to normal. A chance to get back to the skies after being grounded for most of the pandemic.
Little did they know that the government had other plans. From the passport office to airport security. From Customs to the Transport Canada pilot medical clearance office, the hope many Canadians placed in the summer of 2022 has met the reality of bureaucracy and bungling, causing some of the worst airport and airline delays on the planet.
It become apparent in early April when massive lines formed at Canada’s largest airports when there should never have been any. But while it was clear to airline and airport leaders, the federal government remained in denial.
With calls for action growing from April into May, the response from the federal minister of transport, Omar Alghabra, was to lay the blame on so-called “out-of-practice travellers” for the security queues. When that comment was roundly criticized, the minister shifted his position from “no staff shortage” to grudgingly conceding a “staff shortage,” conveniently forgetting his own earlier comments that the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) retained 90% of its pre-pandemic staffing to process “less than 70%” of the pre-COVID traveller volumes. The fact that CATSA had become so inefficient during the pandemic was lost on him.
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