Editor:
Re: “Air travel rules defy logic,” Letters, Feb. 12.
Bruce Smith’s claims that Canada’s recent travel restrictions are “outrageous” and “hypocritical,” and “defy rational behaviour,” ignore basic facts.
In a typical year Canadians record three million return visits to Mexico and area (dwarfing travel to U.K. and India), mostly between December and April, mixing with 30 million other foreign nationals and a regional population of over 130 million. Mexico is amongst both the hardest hit and least vaccinated countries in the world. Findings from the 2020 wave support any initiatives to minimize travel to said region this winter.
Only time will tell if these restrictions were sufficient, but given government’s unwillingness to restrict Canadians from travelling, testing upon entry and mandated hotel quarantine is the only way to be confident of transmission prevention, pre-flight testing notwithstanding. If a person cannot afford the $2,000 quarantine, then the rest of us cannot afford the risk of them travelling. Smith’s frustration with Air Canada’s refund policies is reasonable and Air Canada was allegedly in breach of U.S. law necessitating refunds for travel commencing in the U.S.; a class action suit is pending. That said, in a world where airline failures are all too common, Smith’s claim that “shutting down the Canadian airlines is no loss” is a tad flippant. Which is not to say that Air Canada is in the right, and in fact it is merely the largest recipient of a poorly targeted, substantially unaudited, often too-generous amount of federal COVID support – which will cost all taxpayers much more than $2,000 as the years go by. This should concern all Canadian taxpayers. The government’s performance has been terrible (although admittedly Trudeau’s 2018 sherwani wardrobe in India was prescient, given his current pleas to India for vaccine). It’s past time for a federal election.
Alan Donenfeld, Gibsons
