The federal government has helped to bring back about 20,000 Canadians who were stranded around the world due to pandemic travel restrictions — but many Canadians abroad are still pleading for help to get home.
The federal government has helped to bring back about 20,000 Canadians who were stranded around the world due to pandemic travel restrictions — but many Canadians abroad are still pleading for help to get home.
Rob Oliphant, parliamentary secretary for foreign affairs, said the repatriation process — which he described as the largest and most complex operation of its kind ever in Canada — is now about 75 to 80 per cent complete.
Oliphant, Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne and hundreds of emergency response staff have been working for weeks on consular cases that demand both diplomacy and nimble logistics. To date, more than 160 flights have been organized to bring Canadians home from 76 countries.
Oliphant said he could not offer a timeframe for getting the rest of the travellers home because the remaining cases will be among the trickiest to resolve.
“We’re getting there, but the last part is tough,” he said.
Many of the Canadians still stuck abroad are in small groups in isolated locations. They include people on private boats who aren’t allowed into port and those on various islands in the South Pacific and off South America, Africa and Southeast Asia.
“We had to have sweeper flights pick up people on dozens and dozens of islands to get them to Manila. The government had closed all transit between islands, among islands, so we had to get special permission to get Philippine Airlines to pick them up,” Oliphant said.
One such flight carried passengers from 13 different locations.
Canada is working with allies to arrange flights. The partnering countries are engaging in “seat swapping,” where one country offers seats on one flight in exchange for seats on an