Pearson airport hosts job fair as air travel in Toronto comes 'roaring back'
More than 2,000 people registered for a job fair at Toronto Pearson Airport following nearly three years of turbulence in the travel sector brought on by COVID-19.
“The air industry was hit hard by the pandemic, but travel is back and the industry is roaring back and we can’t fly without boots on the ground and in the sky,” Karen Mazurkewich, Vice President, Stakeholder Relations and Communications, Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA), said at a news conference Tuesday.
- Download our app to get local alerts on your device
- Get the latest local updates right to your inbox
“This is an incredible industry to be in and this job fair is just a small window on the size of this dynamic economic zone here in the GTA.”
Jobs up for grabs at Canada’s busiest airport include 400 positions in customer service and hospitality, as well as security and baggage handling.
The GTAA said it employed just 1,500 of the 50,000 people who worked at Pearson before the pandemic.
Tuesday’s job fair, which saw registrations top 2,300, looks to fill the spots laid bare in the last three years to set the airport up for future success.
Accompanying the mass-hiring event, which was funded by Ontario’s Ministry of Labour, Training and Skills Development, is a new job portal and pilot project, which Mazurkewich said will fast-track security clearances for employees who need them.
The Greater Toronto Airports Authority hosts a job fair at Pearson Airport on Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2023.
Gurvinder Singh is one of the many prospective employees at Tuesday’s fair and said he will take any work he can get.
“I don’t have any preference. Anything that I find suitable for me, I will go for that,” Singh told CP24.
Toronto Pearson made headlines for all the wrong reasons last summer following months of delays and flight cancellations. At one point, the airport was ranked as the worst airport in the world for delays by CNN.
The unenviable ranking, brought on by staffing issues and COVID-19 travel measures still in effect at the time, seems now to be a thing of the past and the introduction of new tools in recent months have allowed travellers to get through the airport faster.
Charmaine Williams, Associate Minister of Women’s Social and Economic Opportunity, was in attendance Tuesday and celebrated the turnout at the airport northwest of the city, which she described as a major “facilitator of the economy in southern Ontario”
“A job fair is nothing but excellent economic news for the local community and for the people of Ontario who make such great use of this airport,” Williams said.
People wait in line to check in at Pearson International Airport in Toronto on Thursday, May 12, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Large numbers of New York City police officers begin entering Columbia University campus
Large numbers of New York City police officers began entering the Columbia University late Tuesday as dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters remained on the campus.
Poilievre kicked out of Commons after calling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau 'wacko'
Testy exchanges between the prime minister and his chief opponent ended with the Opposition leader and one of his MPs being ejected from the House of Commons on Tuesday -- and the rest of Conservative caucus walking out of the chamber in protest.
Baby, grandparents among 4 people killed in wrong-way police chase on Ontario's Hwy. 401
A police chase which started with a liquor store robbery in Bowmanville Monday night ended in tragedy some 20 minutes later when a suspect fleeing police entered Highway 401 in the wrong direction and caused a pileup which killed an infant and the child's grandparents, as well as the suspect, investigators say.
Freeland leaves capital gains tax change out of coming budget implementation bill, here's why
Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland will be tabling yet another omnibus bill to pass a sweeping range of measures promised in her April 16 federal budget, though left out of the legislation will be the government's proposed capital gains tax change.
Sword-wielding man attacks passersby in London, killing a 14-year-old boy and injuring 4 others
A man wielding a sword attacked members of the public and police officers in a northeast London suburb Tuesday, killing a 14-year-old boy and injuring four other people, British authorities said.
Man dies after suffering cardiac arrest while waiting in ER, widow wants investigation
When an ambulance took David Lippert to the hospital in March of 2023, the 68-year-old Kitchener, Ont., executive was hoping to find out why he was feeling weak and unable to walk. Some 24 hours later, he was found unresponsive in the ER.
CSE says it shared information on Chinese hacking of parliamentarians in 2022
While several MPs and senators say they were only recently made aware of China-backed hackers targeting them, the Communications Security Establishment, one of Canada's intelligence agencies, says it shared information about the incident with parliamentary officials in June of 2022.
WATCH Arnold Schwarzenegger spotted filming in Elora, Ont.
The name of the project has not been officially released although it’s widely believed to be the Netflix series FUBAR.
Eviction for landlord's use was legitimate, despite owners' partial move, B.C. court rules
A B.C. judge has upheld the eviction of a family from their North Vancouver townhouse, finding that the landlords did not take an unreasonable amount of time to move into the home after the tenants vacated it.