TORONTO – An estimated 25,000 Canadian passport holders and PRs remained in India at the time the lockdown to help curb spread of Covid-19 was imposed and as international flights petered out, there was no opportunity for them to return to Canada.
But Canada’s recently announced first 6 flights at a steep cost of $2900 for one-way return to Canada is not particularly attractive to the large contingent of Indo-Canadians stranded in India with many opting to wait and see after India lifts it’s lockdown on April 14.
The Canadian government said this week that it will organise half-a-dozen flights home from India for its citizens and permanent residents who have been stranded due to the 21-day national lockdown .
The arrangement came about after discussions between the two governments including between India’s external affairs minister S Jaishankar and his Canadian counterpart Francois-Philippe Champagne.
There will be six flights: Of these four will depart from Delhi and the other two from Mumbai. The first of these flights will depart on Saturday and the last will leave India on Tuesday.
An estimated 25,000 Canadian passport holders and PRs remained in India at the time the lockdown to help curb spread of Covid-19 was imposed and as international flights petered out, there was no opportunity for them to return to Canada.
But that changed this week, as Champagne tweeted, “We have facilitated a series of commercial flights from Delhi and Mumbai for Canadian travellers stranded in India to return home.” These flights are not being operated by Air Canada but by a foreign airline. The price for the ticket is also steep, at CA$ 2900 for the one-way journey.
The flights will be via London and those who will be allowed to board them are Canadian citizens, PRs, or their closest relatives like spouses, parents, children or grand-children. Canada continues to impose a ban on the arrival of foreign nationals, which was announced in mid-March by its Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as the Covid-19 pandemic gripped the world.
All those who return to Canada will have to place themselves into self-isolation for a mandatory period of 14 days.
Several persons have petitioned the Canadian government to make these arrangements including Ritu Sihota, a resident of Mississauga in the Greater Toronto Area, who collected more than 15,000 signatures for her effort. In that petition, she wrote, “I am calling on Justin Trudeau to get these stranded Canadian back onto Canadian soil ASAP.”
