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tunnel

Thursday January 5, 2023

January 5, 2023 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday January 5, 2023

Ottawa is passing the buck on this holiday season’s air travel chaos

December 23, 2022

Over the past couple of weeks, air travellers have experienced what will likely be remembered as the most difficult Christmas travel peak in recent memory. For Canadians, it was a sad repeat of the challenges they faced last summer. While much of the chaos air travellers experienced this Christmas can be chalked up to bad weather, those travelling with Southwest Airlines and Sunwing, in particular, saw their plans upended by challenging recoveries in the days that followed.

Both airlines saw their operations turned upside down, leaving thousands of customers affected. But that is where the similarities end. The response of the respective airlines, as well as that of the senior-most transportation official in each country, couldn’t have been more different.

Southwest made the difficult but ultimately correct decision to reset their severely disrupted operations by cancelling upwards of two-thirds of their flights for much of the week following Dec. 23 to get aircraft and crew back in place. By Dec. 30, Southwest resumed near normal operations and started its recovery.

April 23, 2014

Sunwing, on the other hand, correctly, however belatedly, leased aircraft from other carriers to deal with their stranded customers but also was forced to cancel flights until February, including all its flights out of Saskatchewan. While the airline confirms that most stranded travellers have now returned to Canada, the longer-term cancellations make it clear that the airline marketed and sold flights which they did not have enough resources to operate. Where Southwest took the “short-term pain for long-term gain” approach, Sunwing decided that extending and spreading the pain well into the winter season made more sense.

While U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg appeared on virtually every major network news program, Canadian Transport Minister Omar Alghabra took to Twitter to voice his concern.

Against this backdrop of air travel chaos, several key lessons can be drawn. The first and most important lesson is to be pro-active.

Many of the issues faced by travellers were not only predictable, they were predicted. The problems travellers encountered during the summer peak became self-evident by spring yet nothing was done. With its sprawling bureaucracy, it should not be too much to expect Transport Canada to better monitor operational performance so that trends can be more easily identified and appropriately addressed. 

May 25, 2022

Mr. Alghabra spent 2022 playing catch-up rather than leading. He should be the last person in Canada surprised by anything happening at airports during his watch, yet feigning surprise or being firmly in denial, was his and his department’s modus operandi. By being pro-active, he could have helped alleviate some of the long lines at airport security and customs that plagued airports last summer and could have been in a stronger position to encourage Sunwing to repatriate its stranded customers in a more timely fashion. (Continued: The Globe and Mail) 

 

Posted in: International Tagged: 2023-01, airline, airport, baggage, Canada, Family, Flying, hell, International, travel, tunnel

Wednesday February 25, 2015

February 24, 2015 by Graeme MacKay

Wednesday February 26, 2015Editorial cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday February 25, 2015

The ‘sophisticated’ Toronto ‘mystery tunnel’ no one can explain

It’s damp. It’s dim. It’s underground. Welcome to the Toronto “mystery tunnel.”

On Monday afternoon, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation released a breathless dispatch soaked in intrigue, underground hovels and mystery. They had found a tunnel! And no one knows why it’s there!

Nearly eight feet tall, the tunnel extended more than 20 feet near York University in north Toronto. Sitting close to the Rexall Center, which will host the Pan American Games this summer, the tunnel was equipped with lights, a power generator, reinforced walls and ceiling.

Unnamed sources told the Canadian journalists that unknown persons had spent weeks of work on the tunnel of unknown origin. The operators had hauled away the dirt to veil their tunnel-making process. The National Post, another Canadian news outlet that hopped on the story in terrorism-rattled Canada, estimated someone had spent “thousands of dollars” on the tunnel.

Tuesday, January 7, 2014So who was behind it? Well-heeled drug dealers looking for a secluded spot to cultivate a drug empire? No, the CBC found. Not that: “Authorities have essentially ruled out the possibility that the tunnel was going to be used as a drug lab or marijuana grow-op, according to sources…Toronto police have refused to comment on the mystery tunnel.”

Many questions went unanswered. “First and foremost is the question around the context of the tunnel – where is it positioned?” Ray Boisvert, a Canadian security intelligence expert, asked the CBC. “How deep was it? How accessible was it? And what sort of things could be sent through that tunnel, being people or material?”

Boisvert discerned darkness in the mystery tunnel. It seemed to be too close to the Rexall Center. “I would want to be able able to have some sense that we know what the purpose of that particular tunnel was and who was likely – if not who, precisely – was behind it,” he said.

The mystery tunnel, which the CBC called “sophisticated” and has since been filled in, was discovered when a member of the grounds crew saw a slab of corrugated steel and inspected further. He lifted the metal and found a tunnel nearly nine feet beneath the surface. A snow-trodden path led to a nearby tear in a fence, pictures showed.

Authorities are holding a news conference today to discuss the tunnel. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

Posted in: Ontario Tagged: Canada, Climate, cold, groundhog, mystery, Ontario, Pan Am Games, terrorism, Toronto, tunnel, Winter, York University

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Please note…

This website contains satirical commentaries of current events going back several decades. Some readers may not share this sense of humour nor the opinions expressed by the artist. To understand editorial cartoons it is important to understand their effectiveness as a counterweight to power. It is presumed readers approach satire with a broad minded foundation and healthy knowledge of objective facts of the subjects depicted.

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