A sincere call for more Cabinet-level airport freak-outs

Lots of schadenfreude going on with two Conservative ministers getting in trouble for airport freak-outs. I like a bout of karmic comeuppance as much as the next person, but, actually, it’s kind of nice to see these ministers acting like normal human beings.

Let’s face it: since roughly eight-and-a-half years ago, using Canadian airports has become a nightmare in which travelers are forced to undergo one indignity after another, all in the name of better security – security that any sane human being knows we’re not getting. Instead of security, we have a ridiculous mishmash of insane policies designed to provide what one expert in such matters might refer to as "the illusion of security." As Mary Lou Finlay colourfully puts it, we have a "system that … subjects little old ladies and parents with babies to the stupidity of removing their coats and jackets and shoes and belts while some minimum-wage ape paws through their personal belongings in search of a stray nail file with which the owner undoubtedly intended to take out an airliner."

Flying – or, rather, getting to your plane – has become incredibly stressful, with the long lineups, security checkpoints staffed by minimum-wage rent-a-cops, and arbitrary rules limiting how much toothpaste we can bring on a plane. The surprise isn’t that these two Cabinet ministers flipped out. The surprise is that this doesn’t happen more often.

Granted, Helena Guergis sounds like she completely lost her marbles in her Air Canada-directed freak-out, but again: there’s not a Air Canada customer alive who hasn’t been driven to violent frustration by what passes for customer service from that airline. Let he who is without sin… .

So Jean-Pierre Blackburn tried to take more than 100 mL of tequila onto a plane. Good for him: after dealing with Canada’s insane and insulting airport security rules, I’d need more than 100 mL to calm down, too.

(Seriously: how would you use a bottle of tequila to hijack a plane? I know I’d also need at least two sticks of gum and a piece of string.)

One of the ugliest things one human being can do to another is to force a person to submit to their will. The only thing worse than this is when the dominated person is forced to do something that she knows is stupid, wrong and/or counterproductive. Daily, thousands of Canadians at airports across the country are forced to submit to rules that any thinking person knows are ridiculous and humiliating.

Secondaried because your last name is Russian, 15 years after the end of the Cold War? Check.

Had the book you're reading searched and its title noted? Check.

Forced to take off your shoes and walk barefoot through a metal detector? Check.

Forced to remove your belt and have your pants fall down, all because your belt, like pretty much all belts, has a metal buckle? Check.

Forced to have your picture taken, naked, before you can get on a plane? Check.

Forced to give away a bottle of perfectly fine tequila that will end up who-knows where, because some idiot somewhere decided that people could only bring 100 mL of liquid on a plane? Check.

Flying has become a exercise in ritual humiliation and shaming, as people who know better are forced to shut up and take it in the name of being allowed to travel freely. As far as I’m concerned, we need more Cabinet-minister airport freak-outs, not fewer. Maybe if our betters are humiliated enough times, they’ll try to restore some sanity into our airport security systems.