SoVote

May/19/22 11:15:22 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for raising that important point. It is duly noted. With four major airports to hear directly about what was happening on the ground and to discuss solutions, airports, airlines and CATSA are working to make sure communication to travellers is clear so they can better anticipate processing requirements. TC, PHAC and CBSA are working with airports and air carriers to identify efficiencies that can be gained throughout the travel journey and reduce wait times upon arrival. Our government will continue to work together with all partners to address wait times as a matter of priority. We will continue to take clear and decisive action to ensure the safety, security and resiliency of Canada's transportation system, its employees and its users while supporting economic recovery. We will always be there for Canadians, just as we were during the pandemic. We will continue to protect public health. We will continue to take measures to help our economy recover, and we will continue to help people get from their point of departure to their destination.

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Context: House Hansard - 75 - May/19/22

Mr. Randy Hoback

May/19/22 3:54:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I do apologize for that mistake. I guess what I am saying is that when people are in a rush to catch their flight, they use their NEXUS card and go through security, but they go through the exact same security process as everybody else. In the U.S., people have a preferred traveller status, so when they go to the U.S. and they have their NEXUS card or a global entry card, they get into a separate line. They put their luggage on the rack, put their jacket on the rack, although they do not necessarily have to take their jacket off, it gets pushed through and away they go. People do not have to take their liquids out of their one-litre Ziploc bag and put them into a Toronto-approved Ziploc bag. They do not have to take their shoes off. They do not have to take their belt off. They do not have to take their computer out. They do not have to do any of those things, because they have already gone through the security screening process up front. They are not viewed as a threat. It is just like every time people apply for a NEXUS card, which is also a global entry card in the U.S. Here is an example of what the government could do right now with labour shortages. It could have a specific line for those members, because they are not a risk. They are zero threat. Why would we not take the best practices out of the U.S. and apply them here in Canada to speed up the line? If we speed up that line, we could give more resources to the other lines that are lacking resources at this point in time. In Saskatoon, as I said, when people go through the screening, first of all, they take their jacket off, they take their belt off, they take everything out of their pockets, they take their computer out, they take the liquids out and put them into the one-litre bag they have to use, and then they go through the screening. Then, they get to the secondary screening. There is one thing we are noticing in the airports. For example, in Toronto, with the new system, I call it the scatter system. People go into a line, right next to four other people, and they put their stuff into their bucket. The bucket goes, and then another person's bucket goes, and another. There is actually four to five times more secondary screening in that process because of how it is going through the system. More people are waiting for their bags at the other end, and they are all scattered. How is this becoming more efficient and faster? How can this work when people are bumping into each other and going around each other trying to figure out where their luggage is, where their bags are, where their shoes are, where their belt is and trying to keep their pants up while they are doing it? It is craziness at its greatest. We see that here in the Ottawa airport over and over again. There are some little things that could be changed to make this a lot smoother and a lot more efficient, if the Liberals wanted to. I mentioned the NEXUS card. I go to the gate. I go to board the plane, and I show my NEXUS card. The Air Canada agent says, “Wait a minute, that is an expired NEXUS card.” Yes, I know it has expired. I was told I could use an expired NEXUS card. The agent says I cannot use it for ID. I say that is fair enough and go to apply to renew my NEXUS card. I did it two years ago, and I am still waiting for that interview. I have been online checking to see where I could get an interview done in Canada. I cannot. I live in the Prairies, just north of Saskatoon. Before COVID, I had to go to Calgary or Winnipeg, and now, after COVID, they are saying I would have to go to Buffalo or New York in order to get the interview to get my NEXUS card renewed. Does that make sense? Is that proper planning, knowing that we are going to come out of the pandemic at some point in time? Why is it that way? Coming through the airport, I have seen lots of things, looking at the way things have been operating. I saw one of the more horrific scenes when I was coming in through Montreal. I walked through Montreal airport and looked at the lineups, and they were outside the door, not a line straight outside the door, but weaving back and forth, going around the counters and out the door, to get through security. I asked the security guard what was going on and why it was that way. He said that some of the workers were unvaccinated so they got fired and could not work, some of the workers were laid off and have not been rehired, and the workers who were there were getting so stressed that they were not showing up for work. They are being overworked. He said they are finding it frustrating. They are tired of people yelling at them, because people are at their wits' end by the time they get to the security screening process. I can understand why they are frustrated and why it is a problem. People get through that process, and then they get through secondary screening. I was at the gate at 9:30 at night, waiting for my flight at 10:30, and I saw these four ladies running to beat the devil. They were sweating and they were upset, because they had just found out their flight had gone without them. The door had just closed. In fact, they were looking out the window at that plane. They were trying to get back to Toronto to their family on a Sunday night. They could not spend the night. One lady said out loud that she was a diabetic and she did not have any more insulin with her for the evening. They had spent four hours in the lineup. They took it out on that poor agent. They were mad, and rightly so. They were yelling and screaming and demanding action. What could he do? The plane had left. The reality is that the fault lies with the government. It lies right at the Liberals' feet and it lies at their feet in so many aspects of what is going on right now. The government cannot be proactive on anything. It will not react until the crisis hits such a level that it is forced to react. We knew this was coming. We knew that Canadians were going to start travelling again. There is no question about that. The airlines knew that. If the airlines had been given a bankable schedule, they could have scaled up accordingly. They are doing the best they can to accommodate the number of people who want to travel again. Now the bottleneck is our airports, our airport security and the processes that we have to go through in order to board that plane. The Liberals could have preplanned that. For example, on passports, the Liberals could have said, “We have a lot of people who have 10-year passports coming up for renewal. Maybe we should start approving and processing passports.” They could have said that a year ago. Maybe they should have had things in place so they would not get bottle-jammed right until now and try to do it all at once. When I hear people tell me that they get faster service if they go through their Liberal MP's office than they do through a Conservative MP's office, I get very concerned because that should not happen. I have heard of two instances of that happening now. When I look at that, I think that if they had planned properly, they could have avoided that. If they had properly planned for NEXUS cards being renewed, they could have avoided people not having interviews and waiting and waiting for their interviews. If they had properly planned for bringing the airports back into service, we would not have seen the lineups we have in place today. CBSA would have been able to start hiring and training people sooner if the Liberals had a proper plan. These people do not plan. When they do not plan, what do they get? They get failure, and that is what the government has produced time after time. What can the Liberals do now? They say they are protecting Canadians and they are following the science. They say it is very important to follow the science, and they think they are doing everything right to protect Canadians, which is fair enough. The Saskatchewan public health officer does the same thing. It is the same with the person in Quebec, in Alberta, in Ontario and in B.C. They are following the science, and they are actually being transparent with the science. They are saying that based on the science they can do this and they are allowed to open it up to this level or that level. We have seen that just lately in Quebec, where they made decisions based on what their needs were to reopen their economy accordingly. It was transparent. People knew what was going on, when it was going to happen and why it was going to happen. The government will not give us a plan. Not only that, it will not give us the dataset or the points it is using to make the decisions it is making. Then the Liberals wonder why people are suspicious. They wonder why people do not trust them. All they need to do is show some transparency, which the Prime Minister, in 2015, said he would show an abundance of. With this issue, when it is health-related, why would the government not have transparency? What is the reason the Liberals want to hold back the dataset they are using to make their decisions? There should be no reason. They should be able to do that without any type of qualms. If they showed the dataset and said, “Here is the justification. This is why we have to do what we are doing today”, and showed the science to back that, we probably would not be having this debate today, but they are not. The hypocrisy is that the Liberals are saying that the science says we need to do all this stuff, yet they are letting everything go back to normal and they are not following with it. Yes, we needed to have lockdowns. I can remember being in the Toronto airport in November of last year, I think, and looking down the hallways. I could have said my name and it would have been echoing through the hallways because there was nobody there. There was nobody travelling. Let us also keep in mind what we did not have then. We did not have any therapeutic treatments. We did not have vaccinations. We did not know what we know today. There are lots of things the government can do. I will end it there and I look forward to the questions.

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Context: House Hansard - 75 - May/19/22

Ms. Melissa Lantsman (Thornhill, CPC)

May/19/22 4:32:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I listened to that speech and parts of it made very little sense in this House in terms of what we are talking about today, but I want to ask the member a pointed question. Is he aware that the president of the Public Health Agency of Canada told airports, carriers and airlines that testing would be out of airports in January? Is he aware that it is May, and the government has done nothing about it?

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