Man denied boarding flight home with niece over lack of certified consent letter

When Dex Clarke tried to return to Jamaica with his niece, Air Canada separated them. Erick Espinosa finds out why young S'naia should have been allowed to board the plane home with her uncle.

By Erick Espinosa

It’s not uncommon to see parents extend an invitation to their child’s best friend or closest cousin to join them on a family trip.

With that in mind, Dex Clarke and his sister Simone Pratt knew what it meant to include S’naia, Clarke’s eight year old niece, in his plans to visit family in Toronto with his young son and daughter.

“My daughter could go now and spend a week and everybody would come back together. It was the girls dream to travel together,” Pratt tells CityNews in an interview from Jamaica where the family lives.

She knew from her daughter’s past travels to the United States that her brother could be asked for a consent letter from the parents or guardians for a designated adult or group to supervise a child when travelling abroad by Canadian border officials.

“So I wrote the letter. I hand wrote the letter. I put in my contact information, email address, my telephone number and I signed the letter,” said Pratt, who is S’naia’s legal guardian, anticipating she could be contacted by a border officer or airline agent.

Clarke tells CityNews that when the four of them arrived at Pearson Airport from Montego Bay, he handed the letter to a Canadian immigration officer.

“So they took her. I stepped back and the officer asked her a few questions. They asked where was she going? Who was I to her? And she just let us through. And so everything was fine.”

But a week later when the family was set to return home is when they found themselves in a situation at the Air Canada check-in counter that left S’naia behind.

“I proceeded to give him the same letter I used upon entry. Before even reading it, he looked at it saying ‘no this needs to be certified,'” explains Clarke, “I said why? You know this is what we used to enter the country, so why can’t we leave now?”

According to Clarke, the Air Canada employee continued to reiterate that S’naia could not board the plane with him unless he had a hard certified letter from her parents or guardian, emphasizing it was a travel requirement.

But according to immigration lawyer Colleen E. Coleman Wright, no such requirement exists for Jamaican national minors returning home.

“The constitution of Jamaica guarantees that all Jamaican nationals with a passport, a passport holder, has automatic right of re-entry. So I’m not aware of any policy, any regulation, any law, that requires a letter of authorization to be notarized and as such to deny a minor the right to board a flight,” Wright tells CityNews.

While she says there is no stated requirement for the letter to be notarized or certified, she does advise to take that extra step in hopes of preventing these types of scenarios.

“The letter issue is how it relates to coming to Canada because it is a Canada requirement. Jamaica doesn’t require a letter for a minor to travel back to Jamaica.”

CityNews reached out to the Consulate General of Jamaica as well as Jamaica’s Passport, Immigration and Citizenship Agency to confirm but did not hear back in time for publication.

Letter need not to be certified, but is strongly recommended

Canada’s Immigration and Citizenship page outlines the requirement if a minor child is travelling with a person other than their parents or legal guardian, stating that “the letter does not need to be certified” for entry into Canada

Similar information is written on the Global Affairs Canada website, “There is no Canadian requirement to have the consent letter witnessed by a notary public. However we strongly recommend doing so, as border officials will be less likely to question the authenticity of the letter.”

CityNews reached out to Air Canada inquiring about the rules in relation to a Jamaican national minor returning home with a non certified consent letter.

While Air Canada declined to comment on this specific case, they noted that the obligation is on the customer to ensure they have the correct documents, that each situation is unique and customers alone are positioned to know their particular circumstances, referencing the travel documents for children tab on their website.

  • A parental consent letter or affidavit authorizing travel (if the child is travelling with one parent, the letter must be signed and dated by the other parent; if the child is travelling without his parents, the letter must be signed and dated by both parents.)

“You should also be aware that airlines that transport people who do not have the correct travel documents may be subject to fines.”

But what confused Clarke is that the Air Canada agent did not request a signed certified consent letter for his two children, as he was the only adult travelling with the minors.

“Nothing came up. There was no question there. There was no question at all. No inquire,” he said. “I don’t know, then again because the names are the same. Maybe they just looked at that.”

Clarke called his sister in Toronto to return to the airport to come pick up S’naia, an already stressful situation made more difficult as airline staff allegedly rushed him to make a flight that his eight year old niece couldn’t board.

“The option was, there wasn’t really an option. Are you going to go now? You need to decide now because the plane is ready to be boarded. That was basically it. It wasn’t like get something at a later date. It was just like, decide now.”

Pratt was on the phone with her brother from Jamaica who had called from Toronto Pearson Airport as all this was unfolding.

“This is happening, at no point did the supervisor say, ok let’s put them on a later flight and see if we can get the letter up or something. I offered to send the ecopy and they said they couldn’t take it on the phone,” she explained, adding that an Air Canada representative confirmed with her by phone later that day that an electronic copy would’ve been acceptable.

S’naia had to stay in Toronto and returned to Jamaica a week later after arrangements were made for her to fly as an unaccompanied minor, costing Pratt an additional $175 Canadian which included the change fee.

Clarke adds that he understands the need for the letter saying, “We wouldn’t want a lapse of security to cause anything or for someone to get trafficked.”

But that consideration should’ve been made in that it was the same letter used to enter Canada, with the same family and that she was returning home with a Jamaican passport in hand.

“I think it was a little bit traumatic for S’naia to be left alone. I mean we were with family still. But we were all looking forward to travelling together.”

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