Juno News - Trudeau needs to put a stop to airport chaos

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show. This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you

00:00:08.380 by True North. Hello and welcome to you all. This is another edition of Canada's Most Irreverent

00:00:15.620 Talk Show. You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show on Wednesday, June 8, 2022. Hope you are

00:00:21.700 having a wonderful day, afternoon, evening, wherever it is that you are. As you can see,

00:00:27.320 I'm not in my usual spot today. I'm actually traveling a little bit right now and I've not

00:00:33.360 actually used this microphone that I'm using before. I brought like a little mobile unit which

00:00:37.820 I realize is not exactly the same as the studio. I'm hoping it'll function for the duration of the

00:00:43.380 show today. And I am, the reason I'll tell you this, I wasn't going to mention it except it's kind

00:00:48.800 of relevant to the big story I wanted to talk about today. I'm out of the country right now. I'm in the

00:00:53.840 UK. I was here for the Platinum Jubilee. And I realize that getting back in is absolutely no

00:01:01.740 guarantee. You've been seeing the footage all over the news now, finally, of just the absolute chaos

00:01:07.640 at Canadian airports. And Pearson Airport stands out as being particularly the worst for whatever

00:01:14.600 reason. And let me say, when I got back from Davos a couple of weeks ago, I had flown from Zurich to

00:01:20.180 Toronto. And I was just bracing myself for the horror. Because again, I'd heard about this. I'd

00:01:25.080 seen the picture, seen the videos. And for whatever reason, I arrived in Toronto at the exactly right

00:01:32.380 moment. I have a Nexus card. I was able to like hustle when I got off the plane. And I was through

00:01:37.720 customs and in the main, you know, non-international section of the airport within a matter of minutes.

00:01:44.000 But that isn't the experience other people are having. I think statistics would suggest that I had my

00:01:48.780 lucky shot then. And when I come back later this week, that is absolutely not going to be the

00:01:54.480 fortune that I have as well. And no one seems able or willing to solve the problem. There's a lot of

00:02:00.880 finger pointing. You've got the airlines, the airport authority, the government of Canada,

00:02:06.120 Transport Canada, the Canada Border Services Agency, CAATSA, which is screening. I mean, you've got

00:02:11.780 all these different agencies and entities. And with the exception of the airlines, they're all really

00:02:16.560 different arms of government. And even the airlines, while private, are heavily regulated.

00:02:22.120 So I think government has a fair bit of influence in what they do, as we see in the mask mandate

00:02:27.300 situation. But all of that is to say, you've got all of these different entities. And the airlines,

00:02:33.260 to their credit, have been quite good on this. At the very least, WestJet has. WestJet, whose CEO

00:02:38.640 was traveling abroad and pointing out how no one needs to wear a mask on flights in Europe,

00:02:43.760 and who has actually come out very unequivocally and said he wants an end to the mandates that are

00:02:49.940 in place in Canada. Mandates which are very much exacerbating, if not outright causing,

00:02:55.840 a lot of the delays we're seeing right now. And I can walk you through, I mean, the customs process,

00:03:01.380 to even get on the plane to fly to Canada, you need to use ArriveCAN, which is the government's,

00:03:06.600 you know, tracking app where you upload your vaccination information and all that.

00:03:10.100 And then when you get to the airport, you go through customs. And then some people are still,

00:03:15.300 despite the government says there's no testing, they're being subjected to random testing.

00:03:20.180 And that's further bottlenecking and slowing things down. And more importantly, you've got

00:03:25.360 airplane services that have just after two years, been completely overloaded, because everyone's

00:03:32.280 flying, every plane is full right now. Because people after having two years of lockdowns,

00:03:36.980 and all of these other things are saying, okay, I want to travel. So the government has not yet

00:03:42.300 scaled up its operation. This is not new. I mean, there used to be, I think it was like four or five

00:03:47.760 or six flights from Toronto to Heathrow a day. Now there are a couple. So I have a hard time believing

00:03:52.760 that the volume of passengers going through airports is so great now that government can't handle it.

00:04:00.460 No, the issue is that they haven't been able to scale up their operations.

00:04:03.420 And there's a lot of conspiracy theory going around about whether this is deliberate,

00:04:08.960 whether government is in fact trying to get people to not fly, because that's ultimately what they

00:04:14.500 want. I mean, whether it's for COVID reasons, climate reasons, who knows. And I don't know if

00:04:19.060 they're that crafty. I never attribute to malice what I can attribute to incompetence. And I think I'm

00:04:25.020 seeing a lot of the latter category here. But it is curious that they haven't decided to make this a

00:04:31.240 bigger issue. I mean, for starters, the mainstream media coverage has been up until this past week,

00:04:36.380 pretty non-existent. I mean, one of the flare ups that I think caused a lot of people to pay

00:04:41.520 attention was some NHL guy who I'll admit, I'd never heard of. I'm not not a, this was like the

00:04:47.320 first and only sports segment I'm ever going to do on the show. And even then it's, it's more sports

00:04:51.820 adjacent. But this NHL guy, I'm told he's not an NHL star, but I've been told by one of my colleagues,

00:04:58.120 don't call him a star. He's an NHL guy, an NHL player of some kind, Ryan Whitney went through

00:05:03.840 and he described like just this third world level chaos that is happening in Canadian airports that

00:05:10.720 he was seeing on a domestic flight. So for people telling me to drive, I can't drive. They have my

00:05:17.540 bags, they won't give them back. So I had Edmonton to Toronto. Yesterday, I landed around three. I then

00:05:23.480 head Toronto to Boston at 830. Customs was about three hours, got through flight canceled from

00:05:29.760 Toronto to Boston. All right. At this point now I go and I see there is a 400 person line with two

00:05:38.260 Air Canada workers. There's a million canceled flights. Everyone's just panicking. So I waited

00:05:43.640 in that line about six hours at near the end of the line. LA, you know how much my feet hurt?

00:05:49.980 Be it near the end of the line, they closed it. They just said, oh, you have to go somewhere

00:05:55.460 else. We had to reenter Canada. We'd go through Canadian customs. So by the time I finally see

00:06:01.700 someone from Air Canada, it's 1am. I said, can I just get my bags? I had a ride to Buffalo all set up

00:06:07.480 and I had a JetBlue flight from Buffalo. I just need to get out of this country, out of this airport.

00:06:12.300 This is the worst airport on earth. I'm telling you, there's no other airport like this.

00:06:17.260 And I mean that tweet got millions, millions of views because obviously he's speaking the truth.

00:06:21.960 What he's saying is resonating with people. But I think it's also just so painfully obvious that,

00:06:26.880 hey, there's a problem here. Why is no one talking about it? And more than that, why is no one fixing

00:06:32.500 it? Now the government has given like the cursory statement of, yes, we're looking into it. We're

00:06:37.120 trying to work with our partners. At one point there was a report that a government, some level of

00:06:42.080 government was asking airlines to cancel flights. And they said, uh, heck no. I mean, they're in the

00:06:47.340 business of making money, not losing money. And after the last couple of years, they're done with

00:06:52.680 the whole bailout thing. They need to actually get people moving. And what was interesting here,

00:06:57.900 Omar Elgabra, who's the transport minister, the guy, if anyone is going to be solving this problem,

00:07:02.700 it's him. He did this video where he talked about the fact that it's World Environment Day,

00:07:07.340 which I didn't even know. We already have Earth Day and Earth Hour. We also have World Environment

00:07:11.460 Day apparently. And that was on, I think, Monday or Sunday. And he does this video about how we need

00:07:16.440 to make our transport sector cleaner for generations to come. And that sounds nice. And I'm like, you know,

00:07:22.320 maybe we just focus on the lines first. Maybe, just maybe we focus on the air travel lines,

00:07:28.920 the airport lines, the custom lines, the security lines, the screening lines, the testing lines.

00:07:33.680 Maybe we focus on all of that first. And then we go to, you know, wanting solar powered airplanes

00:07:39.600 hurling through the sky or something like that. And again, I mean, it's one tweet. But I also think

00:07:46.140 that it's indicative that there is a priority issue here, where this thing that's happening in this

00:07:52.040 country is apparent to everyone, but the government's not interested in solving it. And let me just take

00:07:59.060 an aside here and say that there are a lot of people in this country, as I've talked about

00:08:03.460 relentlessly, I think more than anyone else, certainly anyone in mainstream media, people who

00:08:07.680 still cannot fly, unvaccinated people who still cannot board a plane in Canada. And the vaccine 0.87

00:08:14.500 mandates are absolutely despicable. I've been unequivocal about that. And some people who are

00:08:19.860 in that boat, I've heard from who have said, yeah, you know what, the government's told me I can't fly.

00:08:24.120 So I don't really care if other people have the right to fly. I don't really care if this whole

00:08:30.860 thing is happening and it's making things unpleasant for all these people. And I get that.

00:08:35.500 I absolutely get that. I realize if you're one of the people that the government has deemed a

00:08:39.440 second class citizen, you can't board a plane. It is the epitome of a first world problem to be 1.00

00:08:44.640 complaining about all the difficulties at airports and the difficulties with air travel and all of that.

00:08:50.540 And understandably so. But I think it's all part of the same discussion here. Because for starters,

00:08:55.380 you still have COVID-related mandates who are very significantly affecting,

00:09:02.060 very significantly affecting the flow of air travel and where people can go and how they go.

00:09:08.000 And air travel, which has already been this unpleasant thing for most people. Air travel

00:09:14.280 is already fraught and has been for years, long before COVID, with all of these things that make it

00:09:19.660 just horribly unpleasant. And the government has managed to somehow make that worse.

00:09:25.660 Like the Canadian government has done the unthinkable. They've actually made air travel

00:09:29.800 less pleasant than it was before COVID. And I think there is something to this idea of are they

00:09:37.240 trying to prevent people from flying altogether? Or is it just that it's a happy accident and they

00:09:42.840 don't really care? This is, again, nothing connected to Canada. But Kian Bexty over the counter

00:09:48.220 signal, twigged me to this. And there was a report I came across, which I have to share with you here.

00:09:53.120 This is a report that was funded in part by the UK government. Now, it's not a UK government report.

00:09:58.740 It's a report from a UK advocacy group called Fires. And it's part of this project, this research

00:10:05.760 project called Absolute Zero, which is apparently a push beyond net zero. So you hear net zero about how by

00:10:12.700 2030 or 2050 or, you know, three years ago, we needed to get our emissions down to net zero,

00:10:19.440 which means we're offsetting every ton of carbon emissions for every ton of carbon emissions we're

00:10:24.100 producing. This group says net zero is not enough. We need absolute zero. So forget about the net,

00:10:31.080 which lets you subtract the gross from the offsets. No, no, no. They're saying we need absolute zero.

00:10:35.760 And in their report, they offer some convenient ways to do that. Well, that's helpful. You don't

00:10:41.560 want them to just come to you with problems. You want them to come with solutions. And you look at

00:10:45.780 their solution for flying. And from 2020 to 2029, so we're already a couple of years into that,

00:10:52.620 but in the next seven years, they think the UK should have all its airport except for Heathrow,

00:10:59.980 Glasgow, and Belfast close. So transfers would be by rail, but close all but those three airports. Now,

00:11:08.120 if you're not British, you probably can't name another UK airport. So you think, all right,

00:11:13.400 maybe it's a little bit inconvenient, but you know, Heathrow's a big place, Glasgow, Belfast. Okay,

00:11:17.840 that's fine. Oh, wait for, wait to see what they have planned for you. 2030 to 2049,

00:11:23.120 all remaining airports close. So by 2049, they've closed every single airport in the United Kingdom,

00:11:32.200 which effectively bans flying. And you're like, okay, well, what are they going to do in its stead?

00:11:37.920 That seems a bit odd, especially since you're talking about literal islands. Well, don't worry.

00:11:44.740 They have a plan for you. By 2050, absolute zero. That's the plan. So as you see there,

00:11:50.220 no flying at all in 2050 to meet absolute zero. But then beyond that, beyond that, they're happy.

00:11:55.700 They say electric planes may fly with synthetic fuel once there are excess non-emitting electricity

00:12:03.140 supplies. So it's actually great because you can, you can plug in your electric plane and you get a

00:12:08.460 really, really, really, really long cord and they have to get that cord long enough to go across the

00:12:12.680 Atlantic. So the problem with the electric planes now is that by the time you get to Newfoundland,

00:12:16.540 the cord unplugs and the plane just plummets into the ground and eventually winds up near the

00:12:21.200 Titanic. So that's the, so they've got to get a really long charging cable because that's the

00:12:26.660 battery power here. So I mean, look, maybe in, you know, 2475, we may have an electric plane. I know

00:12:33.320 certainly it's something that people have talked about here, but all of the electricity stuff that

00:12:38.360 people discuss, especially with cars, they fail to understand the environmental hazards and harms

00:12:44.260 that come from mining and manufacturing batteries. And I'm just using their own logic against them

00:12:50.180 because it's never enough. It's never enough. And this report is a great example of this. Net

00:12:55.400 zero is not enough. We need absolute zero. We can't just have a net zero that plan that gets us where

00:13:01.520 they say we want to go. We have to ban air travel because that's the only way we're going to be able

00:13:07.440 to move on as a society until we get electric planes. Then once electric planes come, it's a party again,

00:13:12.520 and we can all queue up and wait in the lines at Pearson airport, just like before, but not a

00:13:17.620 moment sooner. So there are people, and I share this so that you understand that there are people

00:13:24.700 out there that would be just as happy if air travel were to vanish. These are the same people

00:13:30.160 that would be very happy if we were to just all stop eating meat. The same people that would be very

00:13:35.280 happy if we all lived in high rises, no one had a car, we all walked to work and that was our life.

00:13:39.940 We sang kumbaya or we are the world or whatever, and that was that. There are people that want this.

00:13:45.040 Now, are those people in our government? Well, I think we have some idealists, but I also don't

00:13:51.400 think that our government wants or can handle the chaos that's going to come when people, and I mean,

00:13:57.460 only vaccinated people. So these aren't even people that the government's used to having mad at it.

00:14:01.240 When vaccinated people are feeling because they're at airports, again, astonishing and disgusting that 0.96

00:14:07.420 that is still how things are in this day and age. But anyway, government doesn't want riots

00:14:12.900 on its hands and chaos from people that are just looking at this saying, what on earth is the

00:14:17.940 challenge? Airlines have very limited power. I mean, they can move around their flight schedule,

00:14:22.840 but again, it's not their problem. They don't want to have to lose money by reducing schedules,

00:14:28.720 which have never yet made it back to pre-pandemic schedules, in part because of staffing considerations,

00:14:33.780 and also because look around and you're like, well, the airport can't handle this. So there's

00:14:37.260 no point in us adding another flight. But every flight I've been on for work in the last few months

00:14:43.380 has been full or virtually full. So people are moving. This is not a new trend. No one can say

00:14:50.200 they were just suddenly shocked and suddenly surprised that all these people showed up at

00:14:54.420 the airports. We didn't know what was happening. But it also shows that government is still in a

00:14:58.860 2020 mindset. Government still thinks it's COVID. And even if their ministers are going all around

00:15:04.820 and Justin Trudeau is going all around. And in all honesty, you look at the, I get the press releases

00:15:09.240 from the ministers. Oh, this one's going to a summit in Venezuela. And this one's going to South Korea.

00:15:14.060 And this one's going to Taiwan. Like they're going in every direction right now. And they seem to be

00:15:20.380 fine with it. They seem to not be affected by this. It's just the rest of us plebs who are affected

00:15:26.060 by it. And they have no interest in solving the problem. Or they just don't have the solutions.

00:15:31.840 But either way, it's not serving Canadians. And one of the people, without exaggeration,

00:15:36.880 who I would love to see doing this, is Duncan D, who's the former COO of Air Canada. And he's been

00:15:43.500 the one talking about this on Twitter, sounding the alarm when no one else has, and has continued to.

00:15:49.980 And he had a tweet the other day, which I wanted to share. It was a string of tweets,

00:15:53.960 which were actually quite fantastic, pointing out what government knew. And one of them is that

00:15:59.740 Katza knew, and this was a Black Locks reporter piece, Katza knew for months that travel volumes

00:16:05.140 were going to double or triple in 2021. And they added just 7% more screeners by the end of June.

00:16:14.540 So there's one thing as well, where government knew, government had access to data,

00:16:18.100 and just didn't do anything to scale up that one part. And Katza is the Canadian version of the TSA.

00:16:25.160 So it's the security screening, which again, is seeing delays. And one thing I would add that

00:16:31.160 Melissa Lansman, the conservative transport critic, so she's the one that holds Omar Al-Ghabra to account,

00:16:36.220 pointed out, is that there is a 25% underuse of their budget. Now, normally, I'd be happy about that,

00:16:43.980 because governments never come in under budget, but they had the money. The government gave them the money

00:16:49.000 and didn't actually do anything with it to solve this problem. But Duncan D also did this great

00:16:55.920 Twitter thread, where he just went through all of the different issues, and how with air travel,

00:17:00.680 any one delay compounds into other delays, because the crew that can't meet you at the gate for one

00:17:06.220 flight, because the other flight's delayed, and then the next one, and the next one. And by the end of the

00:17:10.820 day, especially, and that's what a lot of these problems are happening, it's because all of these

00:17:15.180 other failings have taken place leading up to that moment. This is not rocket science. This is not

00:17:21.180 difficult. It just needs someone that's going to come and scale up this operation in a way that

00:17:26.940 government has been the least interested party in doing. Before I actually left for the UK, sat down

00:17:32.720 with Duncan D, which ties in well. Here's my chat with him about this just airport chaos in Canada.

00:17:40.820 You're tuned in to the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:17:47.380 Joining me now is the former COO of Air Canada, Duncan D. Duncan, good to talk to you. Thanks for

00:17:53.100 coming on today. Thanks for having me, Andrew. So I actually got lucky. I came back through Pearson

00:17:59.520 Airport a week or so ago. And at the time that my flight arrived, there was nothing happening in the

00:18:05.180 customs hall. So I was able to waltz right through. But I know other people have not had that experience

00:18:09.860 as of late. And there seems to be a lot of finger pointing. I mean, you've got airlines,

00:18:14.660 CAATSA, CBSA, Transport Canada, like no one is taking responsibility for this. What's happening?

00:18:20.900 Who's to blame here?

00:18:22.900 Look, I mean, first of all, it's great that you were lucky. And that's what's happening at the

00:18:29.500 airports right now. It's a matter of luck. So if you happen to get the right person controlling your

00:18:36.760 flight when you land and they just decide to put you at the gate and let you walk off the plane,

00:18:43.720 you know, it's it's a matter of luck, which is incredibly frustrating. So who's in charge and

00:18:52.600 what's happening on the inbound side, on the arrival side, like what you experienced, it's 100 percent

00:18:57.960 the responsibility of the cane border services agency, CBSA. But it's not really even their fault.

00:19:05.400 When you look at what's happening with the job that the customs officers have been asked to do,

00:19:11.240 they're being asked to not only do their regular jobs, but they're also being asked to do additional

00:19:16.840 work related to the pandemic, which many other countries have either streamlined or have completely

00:19:21.560 dropped altogether. So you've got a situation where the government has imposed these mandates on

00:19:27.480 international inbound arriving travelers, but they don't have the infrastructure to handle them in

00:19:33.000 any way, shape or form. And then you throw into the mix, the airport authorities here,

00:19:39.880 how much latitude do they have when you are dealing with all of these different stakeholders that we were

00:19:44.680 just talking about to manage these things? I mean, their latitude is really related to the fact that

00:19:52.120 like any landlord, they're the ones that provide the space, the infrastructure that each of these

00:19:59.080 agencies, the airlines and all of the other ancillary services rely upon to do their job.

00:20:06.280 None of the airports in Canada, frankly, none of the airports anywhere on the planet,

00:20:10.520 were designed to accommodate the amount of time it's taken for the CBSA to process customers.

00:20:18.280 It's an impossibility. Just to give you an idea, the average processing time for each traveler now

00:20:27.320 arriving into Canada is four times longer than it used to be. So it used to be between 60 and 90 seconds,

00:20:35.240 more or less per traveler. If you've increased that to over five minutes for every traveler,

00:20:41.320 there's just not enough customs agents and not enough space to accommodate all of these people coming 0.99

00:20:47.080 all at once. Yeah. And it compounds to like the flight that I came in on where, as I said,

00:20:54.040 I got lucky. I think like five minutes later, there was one of those jumbos wide body planes

00:20:58.920 that landed from Frankfurt. So if you know my plane caused there to be a lineup, that next plane was

00:21:03.880 going to add to it and so on and so on. And that's why by the time you get to the end of the day,

00:21:08.680 some of these things are particularly bad. So I know that airlines are in the business of making

00:21:13.800 money so they don't want to be canceling flights. We know that demand is up. I just don't understand

00:21:19.160 why no one has been able to or willing to scale up all of these things that are right now threatening

00:21:25.960 that demand, I'd say. Oh, it's absolutely threatening that demand. And as you said,

00:21:31.240 it's a cascading effect. So you've got these aircraft that arrive late, they get to the gate,

00:21:37.400 they can't be processed, those aircraft operate another flight, maybe an hour or two hours later.

00:21:43.480 So that flight then becomes late. And then so that goes over to, let's say Europe, by the time it gets

00:21:50.040 turned around there, even if it arrived there, not as late as it was, it doesn't get back to Toronto in

00:21:57.640 time to do its next flight. So it just keeps on going on and on and on. In a normal situation like

00:22:04.520 a thunderstorm or an ice storm or whatever, those are singular one day events. This has been going

00:22:09.800 on in Canada for almost two months now. We're nearing two months when the government hasn't been able

00:22:16.200 to process this. So in the airline sector, it's called demand destruction. This is demand destruction.

00:22:22.840 This is your giant billboard showing the world that you shouldn't travel to Canada because Canada

00:22:29.800 can't handle the crowds. Yeah. And I think that's the big problem here is that just looking at mask

00:22:36.520 mandates alone, and I know mask mandates are not necessarily slowing things down, but I think they're

00:22:40.920 a reminder of other restrictions that are in place. You know, if you're flying to Canada from somewhere

00:22:47.080 else in the world that doesn't have a mask mandate, as I understand, your flight is mask free. But

00:22:51.880 if you get on an Air Canada flight or a WestJet flight, doesn't matter where, you're still bound by that

00:22:56.920 Transport Canada thing. So there is this this increasing embarrassment, I think, that Canada

00:23:01.800 is still living in this 2020 world when everyone else has moved beyond it.

00:23:07.880 I think that, you know, when the UK started, I think they were the first country, peer country,

00:23:15.960 that dropped the mask mandate. The EU followed suit. The US courts ruled that they couldn't do it

00:23:22.200 anymore. Canada really is the last the last man standing. And when you know, when I talked about

00:23:28.200 earlier about these billboards that basically don't come to Canada, this is just another thing

00:23:33.240 that irritates maybe not all people, but some people. And you layer on top of that, the fact

00:23:39.720 that the Canadian government has decided, oh, we're going to impose these mandates. But at the same time,

00:23:44.680 they can't handle them, you know, like, it's, it's, it's silly, on one hand, for them to have these 0.76

00:23:50.680 outdated mandates, it's even sillier, on the other hand, that they don't have the capacity to manage

00:23:56.280 the mandate mandates that they've decided to impose. Yeah, that's actually a very good point.

00:24:01.800 It's like, if this is so important, so critical to public health and public welfare in Canada, then

00:24:06.920 come up with a plan to accommodate it, because you see all of these different stages in it. I mean,

00:24:11.640 I remember for the longest time, even if you got through the customs hall, you'd then have this

00:24:15.880 other delay in going through the mandatory on arrival testing. And now they've made that a

00:24:21.320 little bit easier. So it's just a random selection. But even then that slows things down as well.

00:24:26.520 And it's a rarity in the world. Like when I got to Switzerland a couple of weeks ago,

00:24:30.840 no one checked anything. I got off the plane, I went through passport control, which took all of,

00:24:35.160 you know, 15 seconds, and then, then on I went. So this week, Duncan, I mean,

00:24:39.400 the CEO of WestJet took a picture of himself on a European flight without a mask and tweeted out

00:24:44.600 about how, you know, it was, you know, just mask free on European flights. And he's also come out

00:24:49.480 against the vaccine mandates that he says are harming the travel industry in Canada.

00:24:54.680 How much clout do airlines have in Canada when it comes to the regulatory environment? Or do they just

00:25:01.160 basically have to go along with whatever the government says?

00:25:03.560 Well, look, they don't have the clout to simply ignore the regulation. They're subject to

00:25:11.960 significant fines and penalties, if they simply say we're not going to do what the government's

00:25:17.720 asking us to do. They do have a lot of lobbying clout in the sense that they're huge employers. 0.71

00:25:23.720 There are over 100,000 people directly employed with the airlines and the airports in Canada. You've

00:25:30.760 got all sorts of businesses that rely on airlines, whether it's the hotel industry or others,

00:25:36.200 that rely on airlines bringing in customers to keep their businesses alive. So from the perspective

00:25:41.800 of influence, they've got a lot of that, but nothing seems to be moving the dial with the

00:25:47.080 government. You can't make any health and scientific argument to them. You can't make any economic

00:25:53.880 argument to them. You can't really do anything to convince them that what they're doing is bonkers. 0.59

00:25:59.560 And you've got this situation now where they've got these mandates where fewer and fewer even

00:26:06.280 Canadian entities, governments, are following them. So provincial governments have done away with

00:26:12.680 pretty much every mandate now. I mean, provincial government employees can work without vaccinations,

00:26:18.520 I believe, in pretty much every province. And then you've got the big five banks that just announced

00:26:24.520 earlier this week that they're no longer going to be enforcing their own vaccine mandate

00:26:32.760 starting sometime later in June. So they are the last man standing on the mask mandate and on the

00:26:42.920 vaccine mandate. And it just seems to be out of spite or out of politics that they've decided this is what

00:26:48.680 they want to do. Yeah. And I think the airlines have been generally pretty cautious at wading into

00:26:54.840 this. And I know that some of the travel industry associations have been a little bit more forceful

00:26:59.880 with wanting an end to these things. But I would assume, and perhaps I'm overly idealistic here,

00:27:04.120 that if you had WestJet and Air Canada, which I mean, including their their subsidiaries,

00:27:08.280 they're pretty much the, well, not pretty much, they are the vast majority of the airline sector in Canada,

00:27:13.960 both coming out and saying, you know, we want an end to the vaccine mandate and end to the mask mandate

00:27:18.840 and end to, you know, the other things that are harming them. I don't see how the government doesn't

00:27:23.560 fold. But at the same time, I also think that it's a government that has been particularly brazen at

00:27:29.080 ignoring common sense and ignoring public sentiment on this file. So I might be overly optimistic in that

00:27:34.760 regard. I think you are being overly optimistic, Andrew. I mean, the big five banks, the big five banks,

00:27:40.840 like these are, you know, the guys, and they're mostly men, I guess. So the folks that run the

00:27:49.000 banking system in Canada have all federally regulated. So it's not like they can say, well,

00:27:53.800 we're we're listening to the provincial government of whatever province. You know, these guys have

00:27:58.920 come out and said, no, we're not going to abide by a vaccine mandate anymore. I think the airlines are

00:28:05.560 making their representations, probably largely privately. I know for a fact that a few meetings

00:28:12.440 have been held. But the federal government just seems completely oblivious to the tremendous damage

00:28:18.280 this is doing, not just to the airlines, but the tourism sector.

00:28:22.840 Yeah, and that's the whole thing. Because right now, you've got the tourism sector that's not wanting

00:28:27.480 a bailout. They don't want government to give the money. They just want people to be able to go there.

00:28:31.800 They want people to be able to travel and go to hotels. And and right now, if you're a Canadian

00:28:36.520 that has some money burning a hole in your pocket, and you want to travel, it's a heck of a lot more

00:28:41.080 enticing to take that money abroad than within your own country right now. And if you are someone in

00:28:45.800 another country, Canada, as you mentioned, is not looking the most desirable right now.

00:28:50.920 And look, the stake in the heart to an airline guy like me is the fact that, you know, a Canadian can 0.98

00:28:56.280 drive across the border without even having, you know, they have to be vaccinated, but they

00:29:00.760 they don't need any testing, drive across the border and catch an American airline to go anywhere

00:29:06.600 they want without having the hassle of a long security line and when they return the hassle of

00:29:12.280 a long customs line. And, you know, what's happening is in Canada, whether or not Canadians realize this,

00:29:21.160 the only time that the tourism sector really makes money in the entire country is during the summer.

00:29:30.280 You know, international tourists don't come to most of the country any other time of year. There's maybe

00:29:35.640 the ski destinations that make money during the ski season. But outside of that, it's a very, very small

00:29:42.280 window where you've got the airlines, the hotel sector, the tourism operators that make money. And

00:29:50.280 that's that's now. And the government has just, you know, from a timing perspective, made it nearly

00:29:56.760 impossible for them to promote themselves and to to give themselves a chance for the first time in

00:30:02.440 probably three years to make some money. Yeah, very well said. Absolutely shameful. Thanks so much

00:30:09.320 for your continued advocacy on this. Duncan D, former COO of Air Canada, but you can follow him on

00:30:15.080 on Twitter at Duncan D. And I would encourage you to do that. Duncan, thanks very much for your time today.

00:30:20.440 Thanks, Andrew.

00:30:21.000 That was Duncan D, former COO of Air Canada. And again, one of the only people talking about this

00:30:36.840 when no one else seems to be in government paying attention. And even now they're not offering

00:30:42.600 anything in the way of solutions. And I would go back to what I said earlier. If you're one of these

00:30:47.240 people that's been banned by the government from flying, I understand if you don't care.

00:30:51.320 But I think this is all part of the same discussion. This is all part of the same thing. And again,

00:30:56.040 one thing I would add here, I mean, I said where I was, I'm in the UK, I have to take a roundabout way

00:31:00.920 home, I'm going to Dublin first to fly from Dublin to Toronto. And I'm flying Aer Lingus, which is a an

00:31:07.720 Irish the Irish flag carrier airline. And the reason I tell you this is because if you look at

00:31:14.120 Aer Lingus' website, I was wondering, ooh, do I get to like fly without a mask? I was really excited

00:31:18.520 about that when I realized this was the flight. I'm like, do I get to fly without a mask? And I went

00:31:22.600 on the Aer Lingus website and they have their rules. They're mask free, but it depends on where they're

00:31:27.960 going. And if you look at their website, they're like, oh yeah, if you're flying from the UK to Ireland,

00:31:32.600 you don't need to wear a mask. If you're flying to these places in Europe, you don't need to wear a mask.

00:31:36.120 And then for international, it's if you're flying to Canada, you need a mask.

00:31:39.960 And that's because of Transport Canada. That's because of the Canadian government's

00:31:44.600 unwillingness to budge from this, this approach that it's taking that is just punitive. They're

00:31:50.360 just trying to make it unpleasant. They can't point to one iota of science, one iota of data

00:31:55.720 supporting anything they've done. And we all have to live with the consequences in perpetuity.

00:32:00.920 It's shameful. It's nonsensical. And it's, I mean, this just goes beyond left and right. This is just

00:32:07.080 plain incompetence. We've got to end things there. My thanks to you all will be back tomorrow

00:32:11.640 with another edition of Canada's most irreverent talk show here on True North.

00:32:15.800 This is the Andrew Lawton Show. Thank you. God bless and good day.

00:32:18.760 Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:32:21.160 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - June 08, 2022

Trudeau needs to put a stop to airport chaos

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