Ottawa is moving to fix Canada’s airport delays. What will that mean for travellers — and will it help?

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This article was published 29/05/2022 (941 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

From adding security screening officers to rolling back mandatory random COVID-19 testing, the federal government is moving quickly to address the chaos at Canadian airports, which have been plagued with delays as air travel ramps up ahead of the summer months.

The delays, which have been attributed by unions to preventable labour shortages, have caused long lines at security checkpoints for departing travellers.

As well, industry representatives have called for COVID-19 screening measures to be rolled back, as they are contributing to delays for arriving international passengers.

For example, the number of international flights delayed on arrival at Toronto Pearson International Airport jumped exponentially in April compared to the same month in 2019, according to the Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA) — to 2,204 from eight.

In the second week of May, almost 20,000 arriving international passengers at Pearson waited on the tarmac for longer than half an hour, and 3,000 for longer than 75 minutes.

“Without government intervention to reduce screening and border processing times, passengers would be facing even further congestion and lengthier holds onboard planes — a situation which is already untenable,” said GTAA spokesperson Ryan White in an email.

Transport Minister Omar Alghabra and public safety minister Marco Mendicino said in a statement Friday that there are approximately 400 additional screening officers in different phases of their training across Canada who will be deployed between now and the end of June.

According to the statement, Transport Canada has created an outbound screening committee to try to address the ongoing bottlenecks. The committee includes the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA).

CATSA contracts out security screening work to third-party companies like GardaWorld and Allied Universal.

While training and security clearance for these officers can take weeks or even months, the government said the new recruits will be subject to a more flexible onboarding process so they can start work as soon as possible. CATSA is nearing its target for new screening officers, the statement said.

“While more remains to be done, these efforts are paying off through declining wait times for screening. Since the beginning of the month, the number of passengers waiting 30 minutes and more for outbound screening at our largest airports (Toronto Pearson International, Vancouver International, Montreal Trudeau International and Calgary International), has been halved across all four airports,” the statement reads.

Meanwhile, the government is lifting the requirement for mandatory random COVID-19 testing for passengers connecting from an international flight to a domestic one. The CBSA and Toronto Pearson International Airport are also adding 25 kiosks to help speed up processing, while CBSA is working to increase officer capacity, according to the statement.

The government urged international arriving travellers to Toronto and Vancouver to use the ArriveCAN app to make their customs and immigration declaration before travelling to speed up the process.

As the summer months draw nearer, the Canadian Airports Council predicts demand for air travel will only go up.

With files from The Canadian Press