Cabinet ministers have long had lavish tastes

Waiter! Bring me an orange juice!

Many Canadians try to pinch pennies when they travel abroad, looking for bargains on airfare and accommodations. Not federal International Cooperation minister Bev Oda, who found herself in trouble this week for having a grand old time at taxpayers’ expense during a trip to London, England last year.

It was bad enough that the Minister decided that the five-star Grange St. Paul’s Hotel wasn’t up to her standards and canceled her $287 Cdn./night reservation — quite reasonable for a London five-star hotel — in favour of a $665/night reservation at The Savoy, a favourite with visiting heads of state, and stuck the taxpayer with the Grange’s $287 cancellation penalty.

But did she really need a $16 glass of orange juice?

As outrageous as these prices might be, Oda wasn’t the first minister to get busted living the high life before her ministerial years come to an end and the perks and privileges disappear.

Those with long memories might recall Suzanne Blais-Grenier’s love of travel. Now largely a forgotten figure, the then-Environment Minister was blasted in 1985-86 for spending $65,000 ($127,000 in 2012 dollars) on two trips to Europe that seemed to involve more fun than government business.

She was soon demoted by then prime minister Brian Mulroney, and later kicked out of the Progressive Conservative party.

It’s not just Canada that has had problems with ministers who didn’t always appreciate value-for-money.

Ireland’s former Arts, Sports and Tourism minister John O’Donoghue caused howls of outrage in 2009 when it was discovered that he spent over $600 Cdn. on a three-minute limousine ride between two terminals at London’s Heathrow Airport.

An airport shuttle bus could have taken him between terminals at no charge.

The same year, Irish environment minister John Gormley made a point of taking the ferry across to the U.K to reduce his carbon footprint — where he was promptly met by a chauffeured car that had been driven five hours from London to whisk him away. In total, the car and chauffeur cost taxpayers about $3,500 Cdn.

It was the embassy’s fault, he said.

On the continent, France has had numerous problems with ministers’ free-spending ways. Herve Gaymard, the finance minister, handed in his resignation in 2005 after it was discovered that his luxurious 6,500 sq. ft. (!) home near the Champs-Elysee — shared by his wife and eight children — was costing French taxpayers the equivalent of $23,000 Cdn. every month.

To make matters worse, he was simultaneously renting out his other apartment for $3,700 Cdn. per month.

“I have always lived humbly. I don’t have money,” he told a reporter in his own defence.

Five years later, junior minister Christian Blanc resigned after getting caught passing his $18,000 Cdn. bill for Cuban cigars off to the taxpayer.

Though French president Nicolas Sarkozy vowed a crackdown on such lavish spending, he himself was roundly criticized one year later after his son Pierre Sarkozy — better known in rap circles as DJ Mosey – called home from Ukraine complaining of an upset stomach.

The president promptly dispatched a government jet to Ukraine to airlift his son to a French hospital, covering 30 percent of the bill himself and leaving taxpayers on the hook for the balance.

As comical or outrageous as these abuses are, one can only imagine how much worse things would be without Freedom of Information laws.

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On the subject of travel, if you ever wanted to visit Europe at a reasonable price, this is the year to do it.  While gateway cities like London, Paris and Amsterdam will always be expensive, high-quality accommodations in Europe’s secondary cities are so ridiculously cheap right now due to the recession that it can cost about as much to travel to Europe as it would to travel to a major U.S. city if you can catch a seat sale. Consider the following, based on a July 7-14 stay:

Berlin — Park Plaza Prenzlauer Berg (4*): $55 Cdn./night

Copenhagen — First Hotel Copenhagen (4*): $105 Cdn./night

Lisbon — Hotel Lutecia (4*): $63 Cdn./night

Vienna — Rainers Hotel Vienna (4*): $65 Cdn./night

Get the deals while they last.

A Train to Nowhere?

If you read this weekend’s Winnipeg Free Press, you likely came across an article titled Manitoba could join Minnesota in 175-km/h rail link or the accompanying editorial. The article takes a look at the idea of building a high-speed rail link between Minneapolis/St. Paul and Duluth, Minnesota, and suggests that thought be given to extending the link all the way to Winnipeg.

Any such rail link, if it ever becomes reality, is likely decades and billions of dollars away: though early estimates suggest that a Twin Cities-Duluth rail line, about 150 miles (240 kilometres) long would cost about $1 billion to build, rarely has any high-speed rail line been built at anything nearly as low as the proposed $7 million per mile price.

High-speed rail lines rarely cost less than $40 million per mile to build, putting the realistic cost of a Twin Cities-Duluth line at $6 billion or more, and a 380-mile Duluth-Winnipeg connection at a staggering $15 billion or more.

Before governments start being asked for funds to make such an ambitious project happen, there are some serious questions to ask:

Do we really want to go to the Twin Cities that badly? Yes, the Twin Cities are a popular long-weekend destination for Winnipeggers, being the only city within 1,000 kilometres of Winnipeg with a population greater than one million and the amenities that come with that. But a high-speed rail link can’t just exist for long weekend traffic — it would need heavy weekday use as well. There’s little reason to believe that such demand exists.

Do Minnesotans really want to come here that badly?  Much of the tourist trade from the Twin Cities and Duluth is in the form of hunters and other wildlife enthusiasts who are destined for northern Manitoba — the province’s most unique tourist offering — which would be a long, tiring journey by train.

There is unlikely to be much interest among Duluth or Twin Cities residents in visiting Winnipeg for fun, as Winnipeg pretty much follows the same template as any other medium-sized Midwestern town (Minimal nightlife? Check! Bland gastronomy and early dinnertimes? Check! Can sometimes walk an entire block in broad daylight without passing anyone? Check!), and competes with the similar offerings to be found in Kansas City, Milwaukee, Omaha and Des Moines — and Chicago’s genuine big-city experience — all of which are just as close or closer to the Twin Cities than Winnipeg is.

Will the price be right? Based on advance-purchase prices for similarly long rail journeys such as Winnipeg-Saskatoon, Vancouver-Jasper, London-Scotland and Netherlands-Switzerland, a Winnipeg-Minneapolis one-way trip would cost $100 to $200 each way per person, plus taxes and fees. For a family of four, the cost of taking the train to Minneapolis and back for the long weekend would thus cost $800 or more. Would people pay such a price for the convenience of reaching the Twin Cities in 4-6 hours, and would enough people pay such fares to make rail service viable?

What about Customs and Immigration? There are no pre-clearance facilities for passenger trains between Canada and the U.S., and it’s improbable there would be enough traffic on a Winnipeg-Twin Cities run to justify building such facilities at Winnipeg’s Union Station. Thus, on routes such as Amtrak’s Montreal-New York service, the railway cautions that departure times from the border are subject to delays if there are complications. Since a delay of an hour or two at the border would significantly erode the time-saving advantage of a high-speed rail line and lead to missed connections further down the line, this raises questions about whether or not high-speed cross-border rail is even worth spending the thousands of dollars on for a feasibility study, let alone the billions of dollars required to actually construct a line.

A related issue: cabotage. No, that’s not a mis-spelling of sabotage. Cabotage refers to the right of a foreign airline, railway or bus service to carry people between two points in the same country. For example, Amtrak’s New York-Montreal service stops at St. Lambert each way between Montreal and the U.S. border. But, as Amtrak is not a Canadian company, it is strictly prohibited from selling tickets between Montreal and St. Lambert in either direction. (And the law is enforced: in 2002, a Korean airline was fined $750,000 by American authorities for carrying passengers between Guam and Saipan, two U.S.-controlled Pacific Ocean territories). Thus, passengers would either need to change trains at the border, or the cross-border train service would have to be viable without any passengers being allowed to buy tickets between Winnipeg and Steinbach (if operated by an American company) or between International Falls and Duluth (if operated by a Canadian company).

Can it be justified as a political priority? Make no mistake: a high-speed rail line anywhere will require heavy financial assistance from government, and ongoing political commitment for at least 20 years, assuming a rosy scenario that sees early planning start in 2013, construction start in the early 2020s and service launched in the early 2030s. (If you think this is too broad a timeline, I have just three words: Winnipeg Rapid Transit).

It is difficult to argue that a high-speed rail line to the U.S., for which there is little apparent demand, should be made a political priority for a generation. It is even more difficult to argue that investing in high-speed rail would be nearly as beneficial for the economy as much smaller investments in improving Manitoba’s woeful educational attainment rates, encouraging more research and development, or appointing a provincial Transparency Commissioner to bring honesty and openness in government and Crown Corporations up to the same high standards found in Scandinavia.

Overall, the concept of a Winnipeg-Twin Cities high-speed rail link is definitely imaginative. Political and economic realities, however, suggest that it should be taken no further, as such a rail line would certainly become a “white elephant” under all but the most extreme future scenarios (e.g., a fuel price shock that would make the sharp rises, and the economic troubles they caused, in the ’70s look like a walk in the park by comparison), and is thus impossible to justify as a political priority.

$15 for a boarding pass? It could happen.

A long-fought battle between Canada’s airlines, airports, air navigation system and the federal government might finally be about to come to an end.

Its roots lie in the ’90s, when the federal government began privatizing Canada’s international airports and the air traffic control system, replacing a taxpayer-funded air travel system with a user-pay model.

In many ways, it was a progressive move. No longer would low-income earners who rarely used the system have to subsidize frequent Business Class travelers. Airports and air traffic control, meanwhile, were free to raise funds without having to be as sensitive to political considerations, as was the case in the days when a small regional airport’s careless use of the public’s money could turn into a big headache for the federal Minister of Transport.

But it was also controversial. Somebody would have to collect the money from travelers. Either it would have to be the airports, by charging admission to the departure area, or the airlines, by adding extra fees to the cost of each ticket.

Eventually, the airlines were given the job of collecting the funds and passing them along to others.

This, in turn, raised the ire of passengers, who resented the fact that the sweet $758 fare to Paris escalated to $1,281 after all the taxes, fees and surcharges were added on.

Fare, taxes and surcharges for a Delta Airlines Winnipeg-Paris round trip in April, 2012

After years of complaints, the federal government recently announced that new rules are on the way requiring airlines to show the combined fare, plus taxes and surcharges.

But here’s what will be missing: all the little extras that the airlines have started charging for.

In fact, by putting pressure on the airlines to show the lowest possible fare in their advertisements in order to stay competitive with cross-border rivals, Ottawa might be perversely encouraging airlines to be more ruthless in extracting dollars from other sources.

An extreme example of this is Ryanair, which has become one of the world’s most profitable airlines by charging extremely low up-front fares, such as London-Rome for £16 ($26 Cdn.), and then hitting passengers up for more money later on.*

Some examples from the Skytrax airline review site include:

• One passenger returning to the U.K. from Gran Canaria was asked by a gate agent to put his bag into a metal basket in order to check its size. When it didn’t fit, he was told that he would have to pay a 40 Euro ($54 Cdn.) penalty.

• Another British passenger en route to Spain reported spending £48 ($77 Cdn.) so that his family could have “priority boarding” privileges — only to find that other passengers who hadn’t purchased the priority boarding option were allowed to barge past them.

• Multiple passengers noted that, if you don’t print off your boarding pass on your home or office printer, Ryanair will gladly print one for you — for   £40 ($64 Cdn.) per boarding pass.

Baggage allowance costs extra on Ryanair — ranging from £15 to £130 ($24 to $209 Cdn.) for the first bag, depending on where and when you fly and whether the fee is collected online or at the airport.

The excess baggage charges kick in, however, at just 15 kilograms (33 lbs.) Exceed this limit, and you’ll be charged an extra £20 per kilogram ($32).

Under Europe’s relatively tough consumer protection laws, it’s all perfectly legal.

Even U.S. and Australian airlines have taken to charging for extras that are still available at no extra charge on Canadian carriers in order to keep their up-front fares as low as possible.

Denver-based Frontier Airlines charges most passengers aside from frequent fliers $6 to activate the in-flight entertainment system, while Australia’s Jetstar charges $3 for a soft drink, another $3 for a chocolate bar, and $10-$15 to use their in-flight entertainment system.

Could Air Canada and WestJet go down that route?

It’s conceivable, if lowering or eliminating the free baggage allowance, free beverages, and free entertainment allowed them to show the consumer a lower up-front cost. After all, the new regulations would presumably only apply to fuel surcharges and fees that the airlines collect on others’ behalf — not to amenities and conveniences.

In fact, it might make sense for the airlines to do that. If someone buys a $500 suit at The Bay, will they throw in a cup of coffee at The Paddlewheel at no extra charge?

Not a chance. So, why should the airlines do so?

Ottawa needs a victory that will allow it to score points with consumers. Airlines need a low up-front fare to “hook” passengers — but still take in enough money to pay their bills. Eventually, something will have to give.

* – For more on Ryanair’s extra charges, see the following courtesy of the BBC’s Panorama documentary program.

Why did some cities suffer more from ’08 financial crisis than others?

It’s been called the biggest economic crisis since the 1929-39 Great Depression.

Yes, it’s true that there has been a sharp rise in the national unemployment rate since the frightening Fall of 2008, when the sub-prime mortgage crisis evolved into a serious threat to the solvency of the banks to which millions of people had entrusted their savings.

Yet the crisis seemed to by-pass Winnipeg.

In the midst of the “greatest crisis since the Depression”, the city still boasts a better unemployment rate today than it did in the mid-to-late ’80s boom (when unemployment was in the 8% range), and remains far below what we suffered through in 1992-94, when Winnipeg was afflicted with three consecutive awful years of 10-11 percent unemployment rates.

Winnipeg's unemployment rate since the mid-'80s (© Centre for Urban Economics and Real Estate, Univ. of B.C.)

Other Canadian cities haven’t been so lucky.

The following chart shows how the median total family income changed in 27 metropolitan areas across the country (28 if you count the Ontario and Quebec parts of metropolitan Ottawa-Gatineau separately, as Statistics Canada does below). In 13 metro areas, the typical family was worse off in 2009 than in 2008.

Percentage change in median total family income between 2008 and 2009 (Source: Statistics Canada)

Why might some cities have been luckier than others?

I revisited an old data file I still have on my hard drive, containing as much data about 25 Canadian cities as I could download from Statistics Canada’s 2006 Census Community Profiles site.

When I entered the 2008-09 percentage change in each community’s median family income, and looked for correlations, an interesting picture began to emerge.*

• The “wealthier” cities took the biggest hit. The higher a city’s typical family income was back in 2005, the more likely that city was to be hit hard by events in 2008-09. Boomtowns such as Calgary and Edmonton, and “auto towns” like Windsor and Oshawa, saw family incomes drop between 2008 and 2009. Cities that were less affluent to start with came through the crisis in better shape.
   
  As higher-income cities tended to have more expensive housing markets, the 2008-09 crisis thus tended to be cruelest to those with the highest monthly mortgage and rental payments. There were also signs that the faster a city’s population grew between 2001 and 2006, the bigger the impact of the crisis.
   
  Note that this should not be taken as a defence of anemic income growth, as even those cities that took the hardest hit remained more affluent afterwards.

• Cities with larger immigrant populations tended to take a harder hit.This probably reflects the tendency for immigrants to flock to cities which are experiencing booms, and to be at a higher risk of being laid off when the economy goes sour.
   
  While continued immigration into Winnipeg from around the world continues to be a good thing — isolated communities in particular need an infusion of new people and new perspectives from time to time — this should serve as a warning that we should use the good times, while they last, to prepare newcomers now so that they have the skills and qualifications to survive a downturn.

• Health care jobs as a shock absorber? Cities with larger numbers of health care workers as a percentage of the local workforce tended to come through the 2008-09 crisis in better shape. Many of these jobs are secure right now thanks to an aging population, and well-paying to boot, so it makes sense that the larger their share of the workforce, the better the community is able to withstand economic shocks.
   
  It’s also worth noting that communities with larger numbers of people employed in “social science, education, government service and religion” — a number of these being university towns and/or smaller provincial capitals — seemed to come through the 2008-09 crisis in better shape, though the correlation is just shy of the cut-off I’ve used here.

* – Pearson correlations of 0.500/-0.500 or stronger. Based on 24 of the 25 cities in my data file, thanks to Statistics Canada’s inconvenient splitting of metropolitan Ottawa-Gatineau into two parts.

 

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Australia, like Canada, has so far come through the global economic crises in fairly good shape — which means that Australians remain prodigious travelers. One of them is the Sydney Morning Herald‘s Ben Groundwater who, with little fanfare, talked his way past border security — suspicious as they are of Australians going to Winnipeg, of all places, on holiday — and dropped in to take a look at our city through a fresh set of eyes.

His candid observations for the benefit of his readers back home in Australia, from the “ghost town” feel of Winnipeg’s strangely empty streets to Osborne Village’s “cool” artistic vibe, is worth reading if you’re interested in getting a grasp on how outsiders view our city and what the “ideal” Winnipeg should be like. (A tip of the hat to James Hope Howard of Slurpees and Murder for bringing this to my attention.)

Recreating the “Bilbao Effect” easier said than done. Just ask Helsinki and Sheffield.

The Guggenheim Bilbao Museum (© Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa)

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) “will be Canada’s fifth national museum and the first to be built outside of Ottawa,” an article in the Spring 2011 edition of Downtown Winnipeg magazine noted.

“Conservative estimates suggest more than 250,000 people will come to Winnipeg each year to visit the museum providing an economic benefit of more than $25 million.”

“Once the museum is complete, the structure will rival that of the Sydney Opera House, the Guggenheim or the Eiffel Tower,” the article quoted museum CEO Stuart Murray as saying.

It would certainly be a boon to the city’s tourism industry if those goals were to be met.

From the beginning, there have been hopes that the CMHR would pay for itself by creating a “Bilbao Effect” in the city, a phenomena named after the working-class Spanish city which suddenly became a major tourist destination after the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum opened to the public in 1997.

A 2007 report noted that the Guggenheim attracts an average of about 800,000 non-Basque visitors per year to Bilbao, the leading city of Spain’s northern Basque Country region, “possibly a world record for any third- or fourth-tier city”.

Can it be done in Winnipeg? There are some major challenges to be overcome.

The first will be to avoid having the “Bilbao Effect” turn into the “Sheffield Syndrome”.

Like the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, the National Centre for Popular Music in Sheffield, England was to be a custom-designed iconic building drawing visitors from all over the British Isles and continental Europe when it opened in 1999.

Sheffield is, in some respects, similar to Winnipeg: an inland city about 270 kilometres north of London with a metro area population of 641,000.

The Centre opened with the expectation that 400,000 visitors per year would walk in off the street. That might have seemed like a reasonable estimate at the time, with 5 million people living within a 100-kilometre radius of Sheffield.

It soon became obvious that those projections were wildly optimistic. By its first anniversary, the National Centre for Popular Music had only drawn 150,000 visitors, plunging the Centre into a financial crisis.

There would be no second anniversary. The National Centre for Popular Music closed in June 2000, after only 15 months in operation.

Why did visitors flock to Bilbao and not to Sheffield?

Poor reviews were certainly one reason. “At Sheffield, instead of sex, drugs and dodgy business deals, we get neat videos depicting the history of dance from jive and jitterbug through the twist,” The Guardian‘s Jonathan Glancey wrote. “Nicely made, but soulless.”

Nicholas Barber of The Independent was blunter: “The fact that it offers you the chance to edit a Phil Collins live video only confirms my worst suspicion: this millennial celebration of popular music is stuck in the 1980s.”

Another probable reason, pithily summed up by British Conservative MP Michael Fabricant: “Sheffield is not sexy. It is old and dirty.”

The idea of a trip to Spain for the long weekend, however, just oozes sexiness.

Discount carriers offer London-Bilbao round trips — about 600 miles each way — for $200 to $300 Cdn., including taxes, fees, insurance and luggage charges.

Spain is also sunny and warm, and Bilbao itself is well-regarded for its architecture and gastronomy.

Climate can be a tremendous asset, or liability, as discovered by a research project which sought to understand why relatively few Europeans travel to Finland.

The research found that Finland suffered from a reputation as being a cold, summer-only destination with nothing particularly interesting, attractive or special to see. (Similar comments were made about Winnipeg in a 2008 focus group report prepared for the Department of Canadian Heritage.)

This contributed to problems faced by Helsinki’s architecturally stunning Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, a must-see if you actually make it to Helsinki.

Kiasma drew about 300,000 visitors through its doors annually when it first opened in the late ’90s, only to see numbers drop precipitously once the novelty wore off.

In 2009, only 174,000 visitors visited the Kiasma, partly due to the termination of a weekly “free admission day” program in order to address the museum’s revenue problems. This followed a 2008 study which concluded that only 30 percent of tourists even visited Kiasma while in Helsinki, despite a moderate admission rate for adults (10 Euro/$14 Cdn.) and free admission for minors.

This should raise questions about the ability of a museum to act as a powerful tourism generator in the absence of a wide variety of other activities or an exotic setting.

Another challenge for the CMHR will be to attract repeat visitors.

Repeat visitors will be important for the Museum because of Manitoba’s reliance on internal tourism. In 2008, 83 percent of all tourists in Manitoba were fellow Manitobans according to Travel Manitoba. Ten percent were from other parts of Canada, six percent were from the U.S., and one percent were from other countries.

The most likely possibility is that there will be some more tourism from other parts of Canada after the CMHR opens, as the museum and an expanded Convention Centre make the city more competitive as a convention destination.

While the CMHR will add significantly to the overall assortment of things to see and do in Winnipeg, it will likely only lead to a small rise at best in the number of Canadian or U.S. vacationers destined for Winnipeg, largely in the form of people visiting friends and family, small-towners coming in for a weekend in the city, and people passing through.

For more distant Canadians and Americans without ties to Winnipeg, a three-day holiday is uneconomical at round-trip airfares of $300-$700 per person and $100-$200 per night in accommodation costs, and a week-long holiday requires some careful planning in order to avoid running low on unique things to do, especially if you’re not into rural or wilderness tourism.

International visitors will likely continue to make up about one percent of tourists in Manitoba due to Winnipeg’s distance from the country’s main international gateways in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.

If the Canadian Museum for Human Rights can overcome these challenges and succeed — and I hope they do — Winnipeg will be a much better place for it.

But replicating Bilbao’s rapid ascendancy as a “hot” tourist destination is easier said than done. Just ask Sheffield and Helsinki.

H/T: Winnipeg, Bilbao and Valencia (Anybody Want a Peanut?, Jan. 10, 2011)

Should Manitoba restaurants and food retailers post their health inspection reports?

Use your precious 2-3 weeks annual vacation to get out once a year and see something of the world, I would exhort of any Manitoban. By exploring someone else’s living space, you’ll have a better idea of what’s good and what’s not so good about your own community, and you might even come back with some ideas for doing things differently around here.

To that end, a recent trip to Toronto proved fruitful.

I could write about the value of having an urban plan that emphasizes doors and windows at street level, as can be found on Toronto’s Yonge Street, and Queen Street West, and Bloor Street, and Spadina Avenue and in Kensington Market. (In fact, wasn’t Portage Avenue much like some of these Toronto streets in its glory days — a bit dishevelled and raffish, but interesting?) But that would just repeat what was recently discussed in another post about Winnipeg’s Corydon Avenue.

So, let’s talk about food safety instead.

One thing that was quite interesting about Toronto is that restaurants and other places selling food are required to post their latest health inspection report in a place readily visible to customers. Offhand, it seems like a good idea. It’s a bit more transparent than the City of Winnipeg’s Diner’s Digest system (a good idea in itself), and it helps consumers make informed choices.

For example, here’s a report showing that Alexandria at 421 College St. happily passed its latest health inspection in January 2011.

Regrettably, another business over on Dundas St. — now seemingly closed, but with its latest inspection report still posted — didn’t do so well in a 2009 inspection. As the following report shows, they were dinged for improper maintenance and sanitation in their washrooms and on their non-food-contact surfaces and equipment, and for inadequate pest control.

Should the same practice be introduced in Manitoba, now that the provincial government is taking over responsibility for health inspections in all parts of the province?

Incidentally, Toronto is an interesting, lively and diverse city. Well worth a visit sometime, as you can easily spend a whole week there without getting bored. It’s also one of the less expensive cities to fly to from Winnipeg (typically about $400/person round-trip) and accommodations are competitive in both price and quality during the summer months.

Welcome to Canada. May I see your toothbrush, please?

“Wow, that was fast,” I thought as the bus pulled away from the terminal destined for central Dublin.

It was October 2008, and I had just arrived in Ireland, an island with a difficult history, where I would have understood completely if I had been greeted by sniffer dogs (as in Australia), required to have my belongings x-rayed (as in New Zealand), and forced to wait in line for an hour or two in such a heavily secured environment that you’d think we were all waiting in line to see the President (as at U.S. Customs and Immigration in Los Angeles).

Alas, Ireland actually welcomed me as a visitor than as a suspect.

Off the plane. Pick up my suitcase at baggage claim. Clear immigration after a short wait in line and a few questions from a courteous officer. Take a minute to decipher Ireland’s customs clearance procedure — go through the green channel if you have nothing to declare, the red channel if you do, and the blue channel if you’re travelling within the European Union. Walk through the green channel. Buy a ticket and board the shuttle bus into town.

All in the space of about 15 minutes.

Within an hour of the seatbelt sign being turned off at Dublin Airport, I was checking in at my accommodations in the centre of town.

Fortunately, clearing both Canadian and U.S. customs formalities at Winnipeg Airport is usually just as straightforward as it is when entering Ireland.

It undoubtedly helps that most of our international flights in Winnipeg are on regional jets typically carrying fewer than 100 passengers.

Going through customs at a major port of entry such as Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver could become even more of an irritation, though, if the Canadian and U.S. Chambers of Commerce have their way.

“In a joint submission, the Canadian Chamber of the Commerce and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are asking Ottawa to grant front-line customs officials the authority to search cross-border shipments and travellers for products that imitate brand-name goods or steal their copyrighted material,” the Globe and Mail reported on Tuesday.

“There’s obviously a lot of counterfeit handbags or contraband cigarettes and so on that cross the border,” the Globe quoted Chris Gray of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce as saying.

“Those are the things that everyone thinks about. But what people aren’t thinking about are the counterfeit toothpaste and toothbrushes and brake parts” flowing into Canada, he said.

It’s important to note that this isn’t government policy — it’s merely part of a private organization’s wish list, one of thousands of such wish lists that get thrust in Ottawa’s face every year, along with the usual exaggerated tales of impending hardship and doom if Ottawa doesn’t act right now.

The Canadian Chamber’s wish list begs one question: How much consultation has really been done with the front-line officers who would be expected to take on an additional workload to enforce this policy?

For the record, the article notes that Ron Moran, president of the Customs and Immigration Union, has heard complaints from union members who are “frustrated they can’t take direct action when dealing with obviously fraudulent goods.”

The CIU, however, is hardly a disinterested party, as the additional workload that more intensive traveler checks would bring could be used to justify the need for more CIU-represented staff.

Furthermore, there is no indication of how widespread these complaints are or how much of a priority this matter is in comparison to, say, preventing illegal immigration or stopping people from bringing non-native pests and diseases into the country.

Millions of people, Canadians and foreigners alike, enter this country every year, the vast majority of whom are both law-abiding and of no harm to the country. On entry, they are interviewed by a trained professional, their travel documents are inspected, and they can be held back for further examination until customs officers are either satisfied that they can be safely cleared to enter Canada or have established just cause to deny entry or to prosecute.

That’s already a substantial safeguard.

More can be done to safeguard our borders — such as better detection of ships carrying human cargo toward Canadian shores and better inspection of cargo entering the country.

This does not necessarily have to involve further afflicting the afflicted, a category into which just about every Economy Class passenger arriving in Canada after a trans-oceanic flight falls into.

It’s up to the Canadian and U.S. Chambers of Commerce and the Customs and Immigration Union to make a truthful declaration of their own interests in this matter and put whatever evidence they have, if any, that more rigourous inspection of passengers would be in the broader public interest on the table for inspection.

It’s also up to them to declare how the changes they would like to see would impact travelers, including those who are bringing perfectly legitimate goods into the country.

Otherwise, how ironic would it be if the same government that favoured eliminating the long-form census in order to get government off people’s backs were to be the same government responsible for subjecting jet-lagged travelers — who’ve already been through the U.S. TSA Shoe Carnival or its overseas equivalents — to additional grief from a Toothbrush Inspection Brigade.

What’s hot and what’s not in international travel

Springtime is here, the time of year when many Canadians turn their thoughts to travel. In fact, more Canadians are traveling further from home than ever.

Canadians spent more than 118.3 million nights away from home in foreign countries other than the U.S. in 2009 according to Statistics Canada, a robust 30 percent increase from the 91.4 million nights Canadians spent away from home in 2004.

More interesting still is that Statistics Canada’s data show that our travel patterns are changing.

Bermuda

We love the sun! Hot and sunny destinations made the most notable gains in market share between 2004 and 2009, with the Bermuda-Caribbean region’s share of Canadians’ visitor-nights growing from 16 percent in 2004 to 18 percent in 2009.

Cuba led the way here, with Canadians spending 3.2 million more nights in the island nation in 2009 than they did in 2004, a healthy 62 percent increase. We also spent 2.7 million more nights in the Dominican Republic, an increase of 57 percent.

Though they continued to grow in terms of absolute numbers, other Caribbean countries lost market share between 2004 and 2009 by not growing as quickly as the market as a whole

Mexico was also an increasingly popular destination between 2004 and 2009, gaining 4.3 million visitor-nights from Canadian travelers, a 53 percent increase.  Mexico accounted for 10 percent of Canadians’ nights spent away from home in 2009.

Cape Town, South Africa

Africa on the grow. Canadians spent 5.9 million nights in Africa in 2009, a booming 110 percent increase from the 2.8 million nights we spent on the continent in 2004. This boosted Africa’s market share from 3 percent in ’04 to 5 percent in ’09, drawing almost as many visitor-nights out of Canadians as Greece and Italy combined.

Some of this growth can be attributed to the fact that the average Canadian visitor’s 19-night stay in Africa was far longer than the average 11-night stay in Europe and 8-10 night stay in Mexico or the Caribbean.

Africa was also one of the more affordable destinations, with Canadian visitors spending an average of just $79 per night there.

Shanghai, China

China’s hot, Japan’s not. China enjoyed impressive growth as a destination for Canadian visitors, who spent 2.2 million more nights there in 2009 than they had in 2004 — a 67 percent increase, giving the country the same market share as the “Other Caribbean” countries, i.e., excluding Cuba and the Dominican Republic.

The same cannot be said for Japan, whose efforts (if any) to promote itself as a destination for Canadian visitors during 2004-09 were an unmitigated disaster.

Even as Canadians’ appetite for long-haul travel led them to spend nearly 27 million more nights away from home in 2009 than they did in 2004, Canadians actually spent 749,000 fewer nights in Japan in 2009 than they did in 2004 — a 36 percent drop, the biggest loss of market share suffered by any long-haul destination (though just slightly ahead of the big drop experienced by the South Pacific outside of Australia. More on that later.)

One of Japan’s problems is cost. On a per-night basis, it’s more than 20 percent pricier than Europe, nearly 50 percent more expensive to visit than China, 67 percent more costly than Hong Kong and 85 percent more expensive than the rest of Asia.

Hong Kong and other Asian countries stagnated, continuing to grow in absolute terms, but not fast enough to gain market share. These are, however, some of the most affordable countries to visit on a per-night basis, with Hong Kong being only three-quarters the cost of Europe or the Caribbean, and the rest of Asia being only two-thirds as expensive as Europe or the Caribbean.

Bruges, Belgium

Netherlands and Belgium, ja! Germany and Austria, nein! Europe,  long  a favourite of first-time overseas travelers, has experienced mixed fortunes recently. The good news: Canadians spent 6.4 million more visitor-nights in Europe in 2009 than they did in 2004. The bad news: That wasn’t enough growth to maintain Europe’s share of the Canadian long-haul-traveler market, which dropped from 43 percent in 2004 to 38 percent in 2009 — though Europe is collectively the single biggest long-haul destination by far.

Some countries fared better than others. Belgium and Greece might have only a tiny market share, but the number of nights Canadians spent in these countries grew by 82 and 69 percent respectively. The Netherlands (up 50%), Portugal (up 44%) and Italy (up 33%) also did better than the market as a whole in 2004-09. Spain (up 28%) didn’t quite keep up with the market, but came close.

Other popular countries saw growth in absolute terms, but lost market share by not keeping up with the overall growth in Canadians’ appetite for travel: Canadians spent 16 percent more visitor nights in Ireland — reckoned to be Europe’s friendliest country — and spent 13 percent more nights in France, 10 percent more nights in Switzerland and 8 percent more nights in the U.K.

Austria and Germany need to do some serious work promoting themselves here in Canada. Despite the boom in Canadians’ long-haul travel, Canadians spent less time in scenic Austria in 2009 than they did in 2004 — a loss of 9,000 visitor-nights. Germany’s efforts to attract Canadian visitors were somewhat more catastrophic, with that country’s market share declining from 4 percent to 2 percent amid a loss of more than a quarter-million Canadian visitor-nights.

South Island, New Zealand

Come and say G’day — or maybe not. Australia and New Zealand should be ideal destinations for Canadians. Australia has great beaches, New Zealand has spectacular scenery, and both are fairly friendly countries.

Alas, our cousins in the southern hemisphere haven’t benefitted so much from the growth in Canadians’ long-haul travel, despite solid advertising campaigns. Canadians’ visitor-nights in Australia grew by 11 percent between 2004 and 2009, an improvement in absolute terms but well below the market average. The number of nights that Canadians spent elsewhere in the South Pacific (mainly New Zealand) went into free-fall, however, dropping by an alarming 35 percent — the second-biggest mass loss of interest in a destination after Japan.

Those Canadians who did venture Down Under stayed there longer, though: an average of 24 nights in Australia, and 20 nights in N.Z. or other South Pacific destinations.

Playa del Este resort, Uruguay

¡Hola! Finally, we come to Latin America. Thanks to better air connections, Canadians have been spending more time in South America — 1.1 million more visitor-nights in 2009 than they did in 2004, or a robust 51 percent increase.

Central America also continued to grow as a destination, with a 20 percent increase in visitor-nights, though at a slower rate than Canadians’ demand for long-haul travel as a whole. With better promotion, this less-explored region of the world has growth potential.

Sources: Statistics Canada Catalogue No. 66-201-X, 2004 and 2009

Economic problems in Europe offer Winnipeggers a chance to see the world

After an unusually pleasant autumn, the brutal winter has once again set in on Winnipeg, treating the city to two big dumps of snow in as many days, leaving traffic snarled and sidewalks buried.

It’s about this time of year that Winnipeggers turn their thoughts to their winter vacations. Most years, this means a trip to one of the old standbys for those seeking a break from the snow and the extreme cold: Florida, Arizona, Las Vegas, California, Hawaii, Cuba, Mexico, Jamaica or the Dominican Republic.

If you’re open to something a bit different and a bit more adventurous  — someplace not necessarily English-speaking and where you won’t be segregated from the locals — this might be the year to consider going to Europe.

Europe’s economic troubles have depressed the tourism industry in some countries, forcing hotels to mark down hotel rooms to bargain-basement rates that bring the cost of a short trip to Europe down to a level competitive with vacations closer to home.

Since these bargains are poorly publicized in North America — you have to know where to look — few Canadians even know about the opportunities within their grasp to get out and see something of the world.

In some cases, you can get an entire week in a comfortable hotel room (no slumming it) for well below $1,000. Even with airfare thrown in, your total cost for round-trip airfare and accommodations to Europe this coming Spring Break (Mar. 26 to April 3, 2011) can be kept below $2,000 — taxes and surcharges included.

Prices below are based on Expedia.ca and Hotels.ca searches for flights leaving Winnipeg on Saturday, Mar. 26, 2011 and returning the following Saturday, April 2, and for accommodation in three- or four-star hotels — and a minimum customer rating of 8 out of 10 or better — between Mar. 27 and April 2.

And don’t worry too much about the jet lag. Just don’t plan to do much on the day of arrival aside from rest and the other five full days will be fine.

Barcelona, Spain (Catalonia) (© Robert de BCN / Panoramio)

 

Barcelona, Spain

Round-Trip Airfare: $1,187 to $1,308

Travel Time: 14-20 hours (typically requires two connections en route)

Accommodations (Fira Congress Barcelona): 325-425 Euro for 6 nights ($437-$572 Cdn.)

Typical Late March Weather: Daytime highs of about 15C, overnight lows of 7C-9C. Weather starts to warm up from March onward;but a sweater might come in handy.

Languages: Catalan, Spanish

Of Particular Interest To: Those with an interest in art, architecture, museums, religion and proximity to the sea.

 

 

Dublin, Ireland (© Vivi / Panoramio)

 

Dublin, Ireland

Round-Trip Airfare: $1,225 to $1,356

Travel Time: 12-17 hours (1-2 connections en route; most direct route is via Chicago)

Accommodations (Louis Fitzgerald Hotel): 450-510 Euro for 6 nights ($606-$686 Cdn.)

Typical Late March Weather: Daytime highs of about 10C, overnight  lows of 3C-4C. Lots of rain year-round, so bring an umbrella.

Languages: English (with many signs also appearing in Gaelic/Irish)

Of Particular Interest To: People interested in pub life or literature and not afraid of the rain.

Athens, Greece (© MihalyZoltan / Panoramio)

 

Athens, Greece

Round-Trip Airfare: $1,339 to $1,436

Travel Time: 14-20 hours (typically requires two connections en route)

Accommodations (Classical Baby Grand Hotel): 368-528 Euro for 6 nights ($495-$710 Cdn.) Breakfast included.

Typical Late March Weather: Daytime highs of 16C-19C, overnight lows of 9C-12C. Transitional period; can mean rainy days or sunny days.

Languages: Greek

Of Particular Interest To: People interested in history and museums.

Lisbon, Portugal (© Pilago / Panoramio)

 

Lisbon, Portugal

Round-Trip Airfare:  $1,115 to $1,275

Travel Time: 15-20 hours (typically requires two connections en route)

Accommodations (Hotel Mundial): 548-598 Euro for 6 nights ($737-$805 Cdn.) Breakfast included.

Typical Late March Weather: Daytime highs of 18C-19C, overnight lows of 10C-11C. Usually sunny.

Languages: Portuguese

Of Particular Interest To: Those interested in museums and culture, proximity to the sea, and a warm climate

Three sites that could make your summertime air travel less of a pain

Copyright © Macchupicchu-Inca.com

It was all smiles at Winnipeg’s James Richardson International Airport as Iceland Express’s first flight to Winnipeg landed in early June. For a non-North American carrier to start scheduled service to a medium-sized midwestern market like Winnipeg is almost unheard of, and many Winnipeggers were captivated by promotional fares offering the promise of a trip to Europe for less than $1,000 round-trip.

In less than a month, however, the “old-fashioned” way of getting from Winnipeg to Europe — paying a network carrier $1,000 and up and making connections in Toronto, Montreal, Chicago or the Twin Cities — would start to look good again.

This change came as passengers learned the hard way that the cheapest flight is sometimes the worst bargain of all.

On June 25, the Winnipeg Free Press reported that Iceland Express’s twice-weekly Winnipeg flights had been plagued by cancellations due to “weak ticket sales”. Five days later, CBC Manitoba reported that passengers’ holiday plans were being reorganized as Iceland Express reduced Winnipeg service to just one flight per week with plans to suspend service entirely in September before re-launching the Winnipeg-Iceland link again next year.

Could passengers have avoided the headaches? The answer is yes.

Even before Iceland Express’s arrival in Winnipeg last month — even before the Iceland volcano caused travel havoc in Europe — there were warning signs that Iceland Express was an airline with severe reliability problems, flying as it were on a wing and a prayer.

Skytrax, a popular beefs-and-bouquets site for air travelers, has documented a series of trip reports that show that the problems experienced by Winnipeg travelers — canceled flights and no one being available to help make alternate arrangements — are nothing new.

Skytrax is the first site that could help passengers avoid air travel headaches. Along with raves about in-flight entertainment systems and rants about delays, the site is also filled with anecdotal information about airline reliability, baggage charges, whether or not you’ll get a large enough meal to keep hunger at bay on an overseas flight, and even on which airports you should aim for and which ones you should avoid when making a connection.

In addition to Iceland Express, Skytrax also has reviews on Air Canada, CanJet, Delta, Sunwing, United and WestJet as well as their codeshare partners.

The second site worth checking out is a unique search engine called Inside Trip. While most search engines focus on price, departure time and trip duration — the three things people tend to look at first when making a reservation — Inside Trip adds what it calls “flight quality” to the mix. Thus, a flight with roomier seats and a good on-time departure record will be ranked higher than a flight with more cramped seating and a spotty on-time record.  You can customize this search engine to include those amenities that mean a lot to you and exclude those that count for nothing.

The third useful site is Flight Stats. If it’s vital that you arrive at your destination on time or make a connection, Flight Stats allows you to compare the on-time record of multiple flights on a given route, as this examination of the Winnipeg-Toronto route shows. This site could also have tipped off travelers to Iceland Express’s reliability problems, as shown in this overview of the airline’s historical operating statistics. (Even if you make allowances for the disruption caused by the Icelandic volcano, it still suggests that passengers should leave time in their schedules for long delays.)

Now that you have these three tools at your disposal, your outlook for a (relatively) problem-free flight this summer has just improved considerably. Happy traveling!