An Air Canada employee tried to export drugs through an unsuspecting couple’s luggage
Jan Baumann, one of the wrongfully detained passengers, said the airline should screen its employees carefully
Last month, an Air Canada employee was arrested for allegedly trying to export 60 kilograms of cannabis through the luggage of unsuspecting travellers at Pearson International Airport.
According to the RCMP, two passengers were pulled aside by the Canada Border Services Agency and subsequently arrested after cannabis was discovered in their suitcases. It was later determined that neither of the passengers had actually checked those bags in.
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The employee is accused of attaching luggage tags with the passengers’ names to suitcases intended to export the large quantity of cannabis. Though the travellers were eventually released, they told CTV News that the experience left them with shaken trust in the airline. The issue is not only that they were swept up in a crime, they said, but that it will affect their future travel.
“We packed how we should pack,” said Jan Baumann, one of the passengers. “...We have to trust that the company will handle it properly.”
He continued, saying, “The border control also confirmed that we are now flagged, for not doing anything. For frequent travellers, this is not a good situation.”
Baumann and his partner, Charlene Ranadheera, had been en route to Frankfurt. They told CTV that they were able to assure the RCMP that they weren’t involved with the suitcases by sharing home security footage, which showed them leaving their house with different bags.
Baumann said Air Canada should more closely screen its employees. “The people working for the company should be security checked and do their job as they should, not smuggle drugs,” he said.
The airline employee, a 32-year-old woman from Mississauga, has been charged with possessing cannabis for the purpose of export and conspiracy to commit an indictable offence.
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Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
