An “international disgrace”, “travellers treated like laboratory rats”… The opposition parties were not kind to the federal Minister of Transport, Omar Alghabra, during his testimony before the parliamentary committee on the chaos at airports. He repeatedly maintained that the situation was improving.
Updated yesterday at 4:56 p.m.
The minister defended the application ArriveCAN that travelers must use to show proof of their COVID-19 vaccinations when entering Canada, which has been hampered over the summer. “I can assure you that if we suspended ArriveCAN today, it would significantly complicate the congestion we experience in airports today,” he said. It would then be necessary to check the vaccination status of each traveler manually.
“It’s still surprising because you’re the only one to say thatArriveCAN shortens delays,” Bloc Québécois MP Xavier Barsalou-Duval pointed out to him. “I feel like you’re messing the world up and putting together a program that’s not ready, it’s not final, and it’s impacting the lives of real people who are getting falsely saying to self-quarantine because there is no justification. »
The government is the only one supporting its use.
Melissa Lantsman, Conservative MP
Tory MP Melissa Lantsman called the unwarranted quarantines “house arrest”. “With the overwhelming evidence of its problems and the criticism it has drawn, why don’t we drop the mandatory use ofArriveCAN and why make it permanent? »
A practical, but imperfect tool
Minister Alghabra recalled statements by the Member of Parliament last winter that mandatory vaccination imposed on the transport sector was going to create food shortages in grocery stores and was the cause of unusually long wait times in the airports. “She was wrong,” he exclaimed.
ArriveCAN does not contribute to congestion at airports. It is a useful tool that allows the vaccination status to be checked before an individual arrives at our borders.
Omar Alghabra, Federal Minister of Transport
He maintained that his utilization rate at international arrivals at airports was 99.5%, but acknowledged that the app was problematic for those who frequently cross the land border.
The Minister of Transport also came under criticism from the Bloc Québécois and the New Democratic Party for the ineffectiveness of the Passenger Charter. The chaotic situation at airports has exposed the flaws in these regulations, which began to be phased in in 2019. Airlines are expected to pay travelers compensation for flight delays and cancellations, but The Canadian Press reported at the start. August that Air Canada was trying to avoid meeting its obligations.
The Canadian Transportation Agency is inundated with complaints and struggles to process them. The federal government paid him an additional $11 million to reduce this backlog.
Minister Alghabra said the aviation sector had seen a 252% increase in demand after two years of the pandemic, greater than industry players and the government had anticipated.
He said the situation at airports was improving. Last week, 98% of scheduled flights at the country’s four main airports took place and 86% left either on time or less than an hour late.