Jarvis: It’s good when cabinet ministers come to Windsor, it’s better when they take action.

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Top moxie note for Federal Transportation Minister Omar Alghabra.

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He got into the storm when he arrived in Windsor on Wednesday.

But what did he really do?

Little.

Windsor had just been omitted from the list of eight more airports authorized to resume acceptance of international flights. Hamilton, Waterloo, Regina, Saskatoon, Kelowna, Abbotsford, Victoria and St. John can accept international flights again starting November 30.

But not Windsor.

Only 10 airports, most in larger cities like Toronto, Vancouver and Ottawa, can currently accept international flights due to the pandemic.

So all of southwestern Ontario remains grounded.

Can we fly somewhere warm this winter, as the government has removed travel advisories at many destinations? No, unless Windsor is added to that list.

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Will international airlines that flew in from Windsor move to other airports that are open? That is a big concern.

What will happen to attempts to attract other international operators? That is another big concern.

Meanwhile, the airport, which used to pay a $ 1 million annual dividend to the city, has lost $ 3.5 million this year.

“This is a serious problem that cannot be postponed any longer,” Mayor Drew Dilkens told Brian Cross of the Windsor Star on Tuesday.

Alghabra said Wednesday that it understands why Windsor wants to resume international flights. But the government must be “prudent” due to the pandemic, he said. You need to monitor the impact of opening up more of the country to international travel.

That is understandable.

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But Alghabra knows well how important Windsor Airport is to this city. He heard a lot when Windsor successfully fought to maintain its air traffic control tower this year. He learned of the 300 percent increase in passengers during the decade before the pandemic, the record 383,000 passengers in 2019, the remarkable change from losing $ 60,000 a month to paying an annual dividend of $ 1 million.

So it’s fair to ask, why is Windsor omitted from the list, as opposed to Hamilton or Waterloo? And what are the criteria for resuming flights?

Perhaps Windsor is not on the list because the United States, which has a higher COVID-19 infection rate and a lower vaccination rate, is opening its land border to non-essential travel from Canada on Monday, and the government wants to monitor the impact. of that.

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But only people with the money to pay for quick test results or time to wait for cheaper tests that take longer can afford the COVID-19 molecular test required to return to Canada.

Which is another topic that has been all the rage here that Alghabra was unable to adequately address. Especially the silly provision that Canadians traveling to the US for less than 72 hours can take the test here, even before they leave, which obviously does absolutely nothing to prevent the virus from entering this country.

The government will “constantly evaluate and reevaluate what measures we can adjust,” Alghabra said Wednesday.

“But for now it’s an integral part of our approach,” he said of the testing requirement.

So case closed.

Except for Friday, Canada’s chief medical officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, said, “I think this all needs to be re-examined.”

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Finally, Alghabra walked through the Ojibway Prairie Complex with Mayor Drew Dilkens. The Mayor highlighted the importance of including Ojibway Shores, the last natural shoreline on the Canadian side of the Detroit River, in the proposed new Ojibway National Urban Park. And he urged the government to secure the land, federal land owned by the Windsor Port Authority, rather than leave the city to keep trying to negotiate and have to stake money on it.

“I would love to see this finalized and finally designate the park as a national urban park,” Alghabra said, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, at the United Nations conference on climate change, pledged to end deforestation by 2030. .

It was as if this was out of Alghabra’s hands, just like saving the air traffic control tower was out of their hands, until there was enough pressure.

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The thing is, Alghabra may save Ojibway Shores. He is the minister responsible for the port authorities. He announced the appointments to the Windsor Port Authority board of directors this year.

This problem is not new to Alghabra either. You were asked about it when you were here in July.

“Today is to say that there is going to be a national urban park here,” said former International Development Minister Karina Gould when she arrived in Windsor in August to announce that the government and the city had signed an agreement to collaborate on the park.

But the fate of Ojibway Shores remains unresolved, as Dilkens wrote to the new Environment Minister, former Greenpeace activist Steven Guilbeault, on Monday.

“The federal government has the power to resolve this problem quickly and with purpose by administratively transferring ownership of Ojibway Shores from the Windsor Port Authority to Parks Canada,” Dilkens wrote.

Therefore, it is not enough for Alghabra to say that “he would love to see this”, as if he were simply a spectator.

It is always good when cabinet ministers visit Windsor and meet with local leaders, as Alghabra did on Wednesday. But it is better when they act.

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