Canadian Tourism Minister Randy Boissonnault says it could take weeks for the federal government to ease congestion at the nation’s airports.
Tempers have been boiling over for some time as Canadians revert to 2019 travel patterns, only to be faced with long lineups at security and customs and a shortage of staff in the tourism and travel industry.
Speaking to CTV’s Question Period, Boissonnault said he’s not happy with reports of Canadians waiting hours to get through travel checkpoints, particularly at Toronto Pearson International Airport.
“I’m going to be very blunt. I’m not happy with the situation. I don’t want Canadians waiting in lines. I don’t want international travellers stuck on the tarmac. We’ve got an issue, we need to fix it, and we’re leaning in on this hard,” he said.
“I want to see this done in a matter of weeks, not a half a year or a year. I want to make sure that this summer season is a summer season that people are going to remember for the experience that they have once they’ve left the airport, not a negative experience once they’re at the airport,” Boissonnault said.
The Trudeau government on Friday announced it will temporarily end random, on-arrival testing at Canadian airports until June 30. Unvaccinated travellers will be subject to random testing at airports during this time.
After June 30, Ottawa said it will go back to random testing of arriving passengers, but that the tests will be conducted somewhere away from the airport.
Federal officials say that will help ease congestion issues, but it also could hurt tourism in that would-be travellers will face unknown delays to get to an off-site testing facility. Details of the off-site testing have yet to be revealed.
Canadian travel and tourism leaders have called on the Trudeau government to permanently end on-arrival testing and ease other travel-related COVID-19 measures.
