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 Read more
Randy Boissonnault
Canadian travel and tourism experts says Ottawa needs to permanently remove arrival testing and other COVID-19 restrictions. The Trudeau government on Friday said it will temporarily suspend random COVID-19 testing of incoming international passengers at Canadian airports. Random testing at airports will be temporarily suspended at all airports starting on Saturday, June 11 until June 30, for those who are fully vaccinated. But the government said the rule changes are only for a few weeks, and that testing will continue after June 30, albeit off-site and not on airport property. Officials said they need to continue random testing so they Read more
Tourism Weeks kicked off in Ottawa today. Randy Boissonnault, Minister of Tourism and Associate Minister of Finance, Beth Potter, President and CEO of the Tourism Industry Association of Canada (TIAC), and the Parliamentary Tourism Caucus officially launched National Tourism Week at a press conference in the nation’s capital. For more than 10 years, Tourism Week has been presented by TIAC to encourage all tourism partners to come together to celebrate tourism as vital to the Canadian economy and to the social and cultural fabric of communities across the nation. The seven-day awareness campaign invites private- and public-sector partners in Canada Read more
The Trudeau government is working hard on Canadian airport congestion problems, and an announcement is likely coming soon, Tourism Minister Randy Boissonnault said today. Speaking at a press conference at Rendez-vous Canada, a tourism session being put on by Destination Canada, Boissonnault said he’s been speaking daily with Transport Minister Omar Alghabra and other ministers about lineups at Toronto Pearson and other airports. “Minister Alghabra I think will have announcements on that,” he said. “We are very seized by this idea of increasing the number of agents we have at Canadian airports. And it’s not just airports. It’s the Great Read more
It’s a small change, but an important one. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau today announced that he is appointing a Minister of Tourism for his federal cabinet. Trudeau said Edmonton MP Randy Boissonnault will be Minister of Tourism and also Associate Minister of Finance. For years, even decades, tourism ministers in Ottawa have had their tourism duties lumped in with other things, such as small business; even though tourism is a big business that accounts for roughly 10% of our GDP. Now, however, we won’t have a “Minister of Agriculture, Children’s Shoes and Tourism,” but a real “Minister of Tourism.” Read more
