At the beginning of August in 2022, my husband and I flew from Ottawa to San Diego on Air Canada flights. All did not go well.
Canadian airlines, including Air Canada, cancelled most direct international flights in 2020, so they could save money by routing as many passengers as possible through Toronto’s Pearson Airport and Montreal’s Trudeau Airport. Thus, the only way for my husband and I to get to San Diego was through Pearson. We took the earliest possible flight out of Ottawa, leaving at 5:45 AM, which should have given us more than an hour and a half to get through security and customs in Toronto and make our connection to San Diego. We would have given ourselves even more time, but the flights leaving Ottawa earlier or leaving Toronto later simply didn’t exist.
An hour and a half should have been sufficient.
But, of course, the flight out of Ottawa was slightly delayed taking off and further delayed when we had to wait on the ground for a quarter hour to get a gate.
We should still have had enough time. However, Pearson is one of the worst laid-out airports I’ve experienced. To get from one gate to another, you walk for miles. But even that wasn’t enough to delay us significantly We were still on track to make our flight until we reached the American customs. There, you get put in different queues, depending on your nationality. Americans get the short line, Canadians get the long line. What makes the Canadian line long? There were four agents assigned to service the American line, one agent assigned to service the Canadian line. One other agent was assigned to service flight crews. Occasionally Canadians were allowed to use the flight crew agent, but more often, flight crews were given over to the single agent servicing Canadians. When that happened the Canadian line stalled, sometimes not moving at all for several minutes.
And, needless to say, the single agent servicing the Canadian line was in no hurry. He scanned boarding passes (which had already been scanned many times at other stations) took everyone’s picture, asked trivial questions, examined their passports, and stamped them, People standing in line for over an hour were in tears, watching their scheduled departure times approach and then pass while they were still stuck in line. And watching Americans in the short line cruise on through, with no delays or problems.
We got to the gate five minutes after our flight departed. Tough luck sucker. You almost made it, but no cigar today. But don’t worry. Any Americans who got the short line at customs got on board, so it’s all right.
Because we’d passed through American customs, we had to pass back through Canadian customs to get re-routed through Vancouver. Canadian customs is an entirely different experience. One line for everyone, no matter if you’re American, Canadian, or coming from Timbuktu. In Canada, all men and women are created equal. And the agents don’t have to waste time posing people to get photographed, don’t ask irrelevant questions like who you’re visiting in Canada, and don’t engage in meaningless small talk. They just check that you’re not a security risk and let you go.
It’s great to live in a country that gives believes equal treatment means something real. It’s a pity that I sometimes have to travel to a country where those are just empty words that mean nothing.
Allowing American customs to preclear travelers at Canadian airports is a privilege that Canada has extended to Americans. Maybe it’s time for the Canadian government to revoke permission for American customs to pre-clear travelers in Canadian airports. If the Americans had to staff customs agents at every one of dozens of American airports where Canadians might land, they might be motivated to treat Canadians better in the couple of Canadian airports where they’ve been permitted to pre-clear travelers.
Ashley Zacharias' Musings 