Juno News - August 09, 2022


Can Ottawa fix Canada’s broken airports？ (ft. Melissa Lantsman)


Episode Stats

Length

7 minutes

Words per Minute

200.52408

Word Count

1,556

Sentence Count

3


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 a committee of members of parliament is looking into the airport situation right now they had a
00:00:14.240 brief meeting today and it sounds like omar al-gabra the transport minister will have to
00:00:18.620 take their questions which is a step in the right direction but it's like the whole 44
00:00:23.380 thing it might be a step in the right direction but i wouldn't call it a solution joining me now
00:00:28.520 is the conservative mp and transport critic melissa lansman melissa good to talk to you thanks for
00:00:34.300 coming on today hey thanks for having me so i mean let's start let's start with the 44 number here
00:00:40.760 is this anything that anyone should be happy with well i i don't think that uh you know that any
00:00:46.740 progress at pearson like you said is is meaningful in any way or has improved in any way for uh for
00:00:52.920 any passenger travel we're still we've made international headlines we're you know pearson
00:00:57.940 being the worst montreal being uh second worst i don't think that's a metric that uh anybody wants
00:01:02.820 to be on and i think you know we're at the peak of travel season still and so the government could
00:01:09.560 let the peak travel season peter out uh and and and claim victory but i i think the damage is uh done
00:01:16.620 on our reputation i know many people who avoid pearson at all costs there's an economic challenge
00:01:23.140 too i mean one area where airlines try to make money is by letting people connect through canada
00:01:28.820 so you could theoretically fly from heathrow to new york and have a layover in toronto i don't think
00:01:34.480 any traveler is booking an itinerary like that now you've got people that and this is anecdotal but
00:01:40.520 it's happening in large enough numbers that i don't think it's inconsequential people that have
00:01:44.500 said you know i i'm just going to hold off on my trip now because i i just am seeing all the horror
00:01:49.660 stories of uh baggage terminals and customs lines and not wanting to do it and you know the reality
00:01:55.620 is that all of these different problems are coming from different places we've got problems with
00:02:01.180 staffing in the airlines and with customs shortages and we've got uh problems that exist at other
00:02:06.300 airports as well i mean heathrow and dublin have had their challenges how much is at the government's
00:02:11.840 feet in your view the canadian government's feet well look the government is uh you know they
00:02:17.120 control katsa which are the guys that check uh that uh screen you they control cbsa which are uh
00:02:23.460 which are primarily the backlogs in uh uh in our customs hall uh you've heard stories uh you've
00:02:30.360 probably you know i've i've seen you i've seen you internationally in the last little while and i i
00:02:35.500 i'm not sure that if you've had uh problems getting up but they're holding people on planes for much
00:02:40.420 longer so the government's abdicated its responsibility by uh by by touting these metrics and
00:02:46.220 we're just not sure you know what these metrics are are based on you know 15 ministers security
00:02:51.120 well is that based on 24 hours where for six or seven of those hours there's nobody that goes
00:02:56.240 through uh security we have a lot of questions for uh for the minister today we had a committee
00:03:00.880 meeting to call the minister we'll see the minister before the 19th of uh uh of august in front
00:03:06.820 of our committee for uh for two hours and uh we'll we'll ask him about the inconsistencies
00:03:11.420 on uh on our check-in standard which is nowhere else in the world does anybody tell you to come
00:03:16.400 to the airport three hours uh uh early or uh you know what he said on on critical issues facing our
00:03:23.100 airports like whether you know he's he he talked about none of this being uh staffing or demand and
00:03:29.280 then he he talked about staffing and uh and demand being the the problem we're not even at a hundred
00:03:34.980 percent of our travel so the fact that we're number one and number two for the worst that's uh that
00:03:40.180 that's a huge problem for our economy it's a huge problem for travel and tourism and it's a huge
00:03:45.320 problem that doesn't seem to be going away for travelers when you mentioned the timeline earlier
00:03:50.200 i think that's a very real issue i mean the big family vacations are going to be done in basically
00:03:54.920 four weeks time when kids go back to school and at that point i think it's a race to see how much we
00:04:00.920 can make this work so business travel can pick back up and then we're looking at you know how
00:04:05.140 thanksgiving long weekend and then christmas but i mean at this point if the government is in denial
00:04:10.920 that there's a problem at least publicly a solution really isn't on the table so how much more can you
00:04:17.540 get from a government that's been you know so ostrichy about this and just sticking its head in the sand
00:04:22.680 and not really addressing this even if the minister is going before your committee in a couple of weeks
00:04:27.140 we want to see that this doesn't happen again or that it doesn't continue to happen uh business
00:04:33.000 travel is uh you know is almost uh is almost back or certainly is returning and you've got to think
00:04:39.340 that if you're coming here from new york or from pennsylvania uh and and it's an hour to get here and
00:04:44.960 you're three hours on the on the tarmac nobody's going to want to come we want to explore issues like
00:04:50.240 arrive can we've we've called for scrapping that uh uh that app and we haven't seen any movement or
00:04:56.240 any even accommodation from uh from the government so again lots of questions lots of things to fix
00:05:01.420 and we want to ensure that if we do face the situation again that we aren't caught off guard
00:05:06.140 like we were yeah i think that's a huge huge problem here and it sounds like someone's in the
00:05:12.220 background's been on the tarmac a little bit too long and i'm totally sympathetic i must say but
00:05:16.480 the arrive can one is huge and again the government is really where the arrive can and they haven't
00:05:22.220 owned up to it but it's clear that they're trying to make this a permanent fixture of travel and
00:05:26.060 again the inconsistency they're telling us this speeds things up it makes things easier but all
00:05:31.180 it does is put more barriers when you have people that haven't traveled in in two and three years that
00:05:36.160 are not particularly savvy they aren't technologically capable necessarily and they're trying to do all
00:05:41.720 this for the first time and you're right i mean you you've traveled obviously i've traveled we
00:05:45.280 we sort of have tried to keep up with what the rules are and stay within them but for a lot of
00:05:50.460 people that haven't done this they turn on the news all they see are the examples of things that
00:05:56.280 are really telling them why now is not the time to travel and it's incredibly unfair to people that
00:06:01.080 for the longest time couldn't travel because of quarantine restrictions vaccine mandates couldn't
00:06:06.400 travel because of the covid situation they didn't feel safe and healthy and now the thing that's
00:06:11.620 holding them up is entirely entirely manageable and preventable for sure the the government has
00:06:18.300 the the government has staked it's it frankly it's its entire border economy again on a 25 million
00:06:25.100 dollar app that they've uh that they've paid for and it's not only just the the non-con people not
00:06:30.400 having confidence in being able to use it there's real issues perhaps you don't have a smartphone perhaps
00:06:34.940 english and french isn't your first language there's been no accommodation even making it voluntary
00:06:39.720 would be at least a step in the right direction that if the government claimed this app would work
00:06:44.840 then maybe the maybe people would actually use it but then we don't have that option and we've seen it
00:06:50.480 uh i've been to windsor i've been to niagara in the last couple of weeks and we're seeing
00:06:54.500 you know there's no american plates at the at the duty-free there's no american plates uh coming over
00:06:59.780 the border uh motor coach traffic is uh is down to you know maybe one or two buses uh a day whereas
00:07:06.320 you would see 40 in this uh peak traveler so the problem is very real and the fact that the
00:07:11.460 government's not addressing it not talking about it and not even acknowledging it suggests that i
00:07:16.520 think they're completely out of touch yeah i think you're very right about that i know you've been
00:07:22.220 putting a lot of the pressure on yourself uh against this government and i would encourage you
00:07:26.020 to keep it up obviously we need some reckoning here and again this is affecting people that aren't
00:07:30.920 conservatives that aren't liberals they just want to live their lives so something's got to give
00:07:34.760 melissa lanceman thanks very much thanks for having me thanks for listening to the andrew
00:07:38.980 lawton show support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news