A departure board at Montreal-Trudeau International Airport displays cancelled and delayed flights. Canada’s passenger protection regime has fallen under scrutiny after a recent strike by Air Canada flight attendants.Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press
More than half a year after Canada’s transport regulator proposed that airlines based in Canada provide meals and hotels during the first 72 hours after flight disruptions, including those caused by strikes, there is no clear timeline for the amendments to be implemented.
The Canadian Transportation Agency and Transport Canada, meanwhile, are pointing in different directions when it comes to next steps.
The CTA, a federal regulator that handles air travel complaints, published the proposed changes to Canada’s Air Passenger Protection Regulations last December after consultation with the Minister of Transport.
Its report also proposed a host of other changes, including that airlines provide refunds when required within 15 days, rather than the current 30, among other new rules.
“The proposal seeks to further protect passengers when air travel does not go as planned by clarifying, simplifying and strengthening Canada’s Air Passenger Protection Regulations,” said Transport Canada spokesperson Hicham Ayoun in an e-mail. (The office of the Minister of Transport, Chrystia Freeland, did not directly respond to multiple requests for comment.)
On the status of these proposed changes and timeline for implementation, Mr. Ayoun referred The Globe and Mail to the CTA for next steps. He said the agency has the statutory authority to oversee the regulatory process.
CTA director of external communications Nicholas Lochhead, meanwhile, said that the next steps would be to publish a new set of regulations after approval from the Minister. “But I don’t have a timeline for when that will take place,” he said.
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While the public and stakeholders had until March 6 to provide feedback on the proposed amendments, Tahira Dawood, staff lawyer at the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, said the final stages of amending the APPR can be convoluted and not transparent.
“It should not be that complicated,” said Ms. Dawood. “The Minister and the transportation agency should work together to make sure that the amendments to the Air Passenger Protection Regulations are passed as soon as possible.”
Canada’s passenger protection regime has fallen under scrutiny after a recent strike by Air Canada flight attendants upended travel plans for tens of thousands of Canadians, leaving many stranded at home or abroad.
Countless passengers were left on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars for hotels, excursions and new flights, well beyond the original cost of their airfare.
Nick Manning, who lives in Waterloo, Ont., said he was “stuck in a doom loop” trying to reach Air Canada after his flight cancellation left him stranded during a holiday to France, and he spent more than $3,000 on extra accommodations and other expenses that he hadn’t budgeted for.
Mala Dewan wrote a letter to the Minister of Transport after her 10-day family vacation to Mexico turned into an ordeal that required paying an additional $8,200 for new flights and $1,600 for new accommodations.
“I just want to recoup the out-of-pocket expenses that were not foreseen,” said Ms. Dewan, who also unexpectedly lost her job shortly before the holiday. This added to her family’s concerns about her husband’s lost wages during the extended trip.
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Air Canada spokesperson Peter Fitzpatrick said that with 130,000 customers a day standing to be impacted by this prolonged disruption, it will take time to process the large volume of requests, some of which are complex and require time to review.
The December proposal fell short of proposing that passengers are owed compensation – additional payment for inconvenience – in cases of “exceptional circumstances,” including strikes by airline staff.
This measure, which is included in air passenger protection rules in Europe and Britain when it comes to strikes by airline employees has been a sore point for consumer advocates.
“All Air Canada flights that were cancelled outbound from Europe are eligible [for] compensation,” said John Marzo, co-founder and chief executive officer of Airfairness, a travel tech and consumer protection company. “Not only for those that are stranded but also for those that might not have even begun their journey.”
This is not the case in Canada.
Citing government data, Gabor Lukacs, president of Air Passenger Rights, an advocacy group, said more than one-half of flight delays and more than two-thirds of flight cancellations fall in the category of “exceptional circumstances.”
“We end up with an absurd [number] where the vast majority of the disruptions are declared ‘exceptional,’” he said.
When asked whether there were plans to weigh whether strikes should be a compensable disruption, the CTA’s Mr. Lochhead said he could not comment.
“From a policy perspective, the Canadian Transportation Agency couldn’t give you a statement on what our belief is in terms of what should happen – that would be for the Minister to do.”
But Ms. Freeland’s office didn’t comment. Transport Canada did not address the question directly, either. Speaking to the current amendments, Mr. Ayoun later said that “the regulatory process is still ongoing,” and it would be premature to provide details and an exact publication date.
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