A Red Deer mother whose son was detained at the Calgary International Airport wants there to be more “accountability.”
Earlier this week, Rebekah McDonald posted a video to Facebook and YouTube to discuss how her 20-year-old son Ethan, who had been living in Arizona, was loaded into a van by masked strangers, who refused to disclose to the family where they were taking him, or when his parents could talk to him, after he arrived at the airport recently.
READ MORE: Calls for more ‘transparency’ after returning Red Deer traveller was detained at Calgary airport
In another video posted Wednesday morning, McDonald said she wants there to be accountability for what happened.
“There was zero accountability. Everybody was quick to put their hands up and nobody wanted to deal with it or to help,” she said.
“I felt extremely helpless and the problem is when you have a one-sided system, like what the federal government has done here, that has no checks and balances, nobody you can call for help, nobody to ask questions to. You go in there under the premises that you’re going to be taken care of and safe, but there’s nobody watching out for that.”
McDonald also said she wants more transparency.
“Why does there need to be the secrecy? It doesn’t need to be there,” she said.
“They made such a big scene about it. It should have never been done that way.”
Earlier this week Premier Jason Kenney said the provincial government understands the need for quarantine requirements, but asked federal agencies to be more transparent.
In the video published Wednesday, which had more than 100 shares by Thursday, McDonald said her son had done two tests, a PCR test and an antigen test, but only had the paperwork for one.
“We only knew of the PCR test being done, so when they gave him a negative result, we assumed that it was test we ordered – the PCR test. We didn’t know that he had both tests done,” she said.
“When he got on the plane with his papers, it was for the antigen test and that is why they pulled him out. They could have told us anything.”
McDonald said while he was being detained he received an email confirming he tested negative in the PCR test.
“So he now had two negative tests sitting there and no way to tell them. He had to wait it out for their third test that they had done in there and be released when they saw fit, when that one came back negative on Monday,” she said.
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