'He's in our hearts': Family and friends still seek answers one year after Nathan Wise’s disappearance
It’s been a year since Nathan Wise went missing and his family is no closer to finding out what happened to him.
A relaxing vacation in Belgium quickly turned into a 19-day fiasco when Laura Pichette’s luggage failed to make the trip — just one example of the trials currently plaguing travellers and airport staff.
For nearly three weeks, Pichette waited for her bags.
“We waited and we waited and we waited, and of course the luggage did not show up,” she told CTV National News.
The cruise and vacation consultant’s luggage was lost for the entirety of her trip, only to be returned a week after she landed back in Ottawa.
"The interesting thing is we were not alone — there were about 8 or 10 other passengers in the same situation,” she said.
The experience is one in a litany of recent frustrations for passengers, many caused by staffing shortages.
Why are there so few staff right now? According to workers, some of the big reasons are that they’re not being treated well, and their pay is not sufficient for how difficult the job is.
“There are so many screening officers that have quit because of low pay and poor working conditions that the airports are severely understaffed,” David Lipton, representative of the USW union in Ottawa, told CTV National News.
On Monday, screening officers at 42 airports across the country are taking job action, dressing in casual clothes instead of uniforms to protest wages and working hours.
“Workers are working hours and hours and hours without breaks, in many cases with forced overtime,” Lipton said. “Their rates of pay are just not up to par. Many senior employees are leaving to find other employment as a result.”
These challenges are coming at a time when staffing is so short that some unions are offering screening staff hundreds of dollars a week if they don’t take a vacation or sick days. The union says improving working hours and conditions needs to happen as soon as possible.
With some experts raising caution about new Omicron subvariants, and the vaccine mandate dropping for domestic flights on June 20, there is concern that this could lead to even more staff leaving the job.
Lipton says in Ottawa there are usually 350 security screeners, but the airport is currently operating with just over 200.
It’s having a measurable impact on travellers, underlining how crucial these job positions are.
“There’s been more and more pronounced delays, one to two hours just to get through security,” Hunter Dickson, who was travelling from Phoenix, told CTV National News.
The upcoming job action is not expected to impact security waits and won’t take place in Toronto, Vancouver or Calgary, where staff are under a different union.
The federal government also announced on Tuesday that they are aware of the delays and are working on solutions, adding that nearly 900 screening officers have been hired since April across Canada. They stated that wait times are going down, with around 10 per cent of departing passengers made to wait more than 15 minutes at Toronto Pearson International Airport in early June compared to 23 per cent in mid-May.
But after a nightmare endeavour, some travellers are ready to give up flying altogether until airlines have fixed the problems causing staff to flee the job.
“What I would say as a vacation consultant is, don’t go now,” Pichette said. “I mean, this will rectify itself, but it’s going to take time.”
It’s been a year since Nathan Wise went missing and his family is no closer to finding out what happened to him.
Dozens of Ontarians are expressing frustration in the province’s health-care system after their family doctors either dropped them as patients or threatened to after they sought urgent care elsewhere.
An Ottawa pizzeria is being recognized as one of the top 20 deep-dish pizzas in the world.
Amazon's paid subscription service provides free delivery for online shopping across Canada except for remote locations, the company said in an email. While customers in Iqaluit qualify for the offer, all other communities in Nunavut are excluded.
The fire burning near Fort McMurray grew from 25 hectares to 5,500 hectares over the weekend.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin began a Cabinet shakeup on Sunday, proposing the replacement of Sergei Shoigu as defence minister as he begins his fifth term in office.
Police are searching for a male suspect after a man was “slashed in neck” on Sunday morning in downtown Toronto and died.
There were some scary moments for several people on a northern Ontario highway caught on video Thursday after a chain reaction following a truck fire.
Health Canada announced various product recalls this week, including electric adapters, armchairs, cannabis edibles and vehicle components.
English, history, entertainment, math and geography: high school trivia teams could be quizzed on any of it when they compete at the Reach for the Top Nationals in Ottawa in June.
An Ottawa pizzeria is being recognized as one of the top 20 deep-dish pizzas in the world.
A family of fifth generation farmers from Ituna, Sask. are trying to find answers after discovering several strange objects lying on their land.
A Listowel, Ont. man, drafted by the Hamilton Tigercats last week, is also getting looks from the NFL, despite only playing 27 games of football in his life.
The threat of zebra mussels has prompted the federal government to temporarily ban watercraft from a Manitoba lake popular with tourists.
A small Ajax dessert shop that recently received a glowing review from celebrity food critic Keith Lee is being forced to move after a zoning complaint was made following the social media influencer’s visit last month.
The Canada Science and Technology Museum is inviting visitors to explore their poop. A new exhibition opens at the Ottawa museum on Friday called, 'Oh Crap! Rethinking human waste.'
The Regina Police Service says it is the first in Saskatchewan and possibly Canada to implement new technology in its detention facility that will offer real-time monitoring of detainees’ vital health metrics.
Just as she had feared, a restaurant owner from eastern Quebec who visited Montreal had her SUV stolen, but says it was all thanks to the kindness of strangers on the internet — not the police — that she got it back.