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05/14/2008: "One More Reason To License Parents"
I'm a single guy without kids, so I have to be careful with what I say next, as I have no first-hand experience in parenting. But it's pretty clear to me that in a society where we license drivers, we license business owners - hell, I even need a license to fish - we need to license parents. I won't even get into the pathetic reasons some people use to justify having children, or the horrific abuse brought upon society by those who insist it is their right to have 6, 7, or God knows how many kids.
No, today we're just going to talk about those whose parenting skills are so demonstrably bad that they should never have been allowed to procreate (and I'm not even going to mention Britney Spears ... oops, just did!). We've seen all kinds of bad behavior, from overly-agressive sports parents to the ones dressing their kids like whores for "beauty contests" - the examples are everywhere. But I have one that might even top those.
I fly for business fairly often, so I understand the stressful routine that the airport terminal has become. Because of that, I prepare accordingly - I pack per the TSA requirements, I make sure I get to the airport in plenty of time for my flight, I wear clean socks, and I don't do anything that would attract any unwanted attention from the screeners. As a result, my passage through the airport is relatively painless. But not everyone is so prepared - sometimes with disasterous results.
A family was immigrating from the Philippines to Canada, and were rushing from one flight to another in Vancouver. They had issues getting through the airport, having to repack their luggage, and were lucky to make their connecting flight to Winnipeg. Too bad not everyone made it to the plane, as they left their 23-month child behind in the terminal.
"We were called by [security] who told us one of the security people had a toddler in tow," said Angela Mah, an Air Canada representative. "He doesn't speak English, so we found a Tagalog-speaking agent who has been looking after him."
There was no boarding pass for the youngster because he did not have a separately assigned seat, so there was no indication in the airline's computer system that someone had missed a flight, nor had there been any panicked calls from anyone on a flight missing a child, Mah said.
That's because the family was scattered in different parts of the plane to Winnipeg and still didn't know the child had been left.
Air Canada staff began checking flights that had left, and "we eventually determined who his parents might be ... and the flight crew talked to them," Mah said. "They didn't realize until then that the baby had been left behind.
To the airlines' credit, they paid to fly the father back to Vancouver and both to Winnipeg afterward. Assuming Canada has a better immigration system than we do - perhaps one based on worth to the the country, for example - I'd have been tempted to put them all on a plane back to Manila ... 
