Airlines say it goes too far. Advocates say not far enough.
The proposed overhaul of Canada’s passenger rights charter earned mixed reviews Monday after Transport Minister Omar Alghabra laid out measures to tighten loopholes to traveller compensation and toughen penalties.
If passed, the reforms will put the onus on airlines to show a flight disruption is caused by safety concerns or reasons outside their control, with specific examples to be drawn up by the Canadian Transportation Agency as a list of exceptions around compensation.
“This means there will be no more loopholes where airlines can claim a disruption is caused by something outside of their control for a security reason when it’s not,” Alghabra told reporters in Ottawa.
“And it will no longer be the passenger who will have to prove that he or she is entitled to compensation. It will now be the airline that will need to prove that it does not have to pay for it.”
Currently, a passenger is entitled to between $125 and $1,000 in compensation for a three-hour-plus delay or a cancellation made within 14 days of the scheduled departure — unless the disruption stems from events outside the airline’s control, such as weather or a safety issue such as mechanical problems. The amount varies depending on the size of the carrier and length of the delay.
The National Airlines Council of Canada, an industry group representing four of the country’s biggest carriers, denounced the potential scrapping of safety concerns as an exception to compensation requirements.
“No airline should be penalized for adhering to the highest standards of safety, whether that is due to weather, mechanical issues or other safety-related constraints,” said council president Jeff Morrison in a statement.
The route to a better travel experience runs through airport upgrades and greater accountability across the range of aviation players, he said.
“Airlines are being forced to continue shouldering sole responsibility for all organizations in the overall system, over which they have no control,” Morrison said.
Tabled in the House of Commons as part of a budget implementation bill Thursday, the amendments ratchet up the maximum penalty for airline violations to $250,000 — a tenfold increase — and put the regulatory cost of complaints on carriers. In theory, that measure gives airlines an incentive to brush up their service and thus reduce the number of grievances against them.
Alghabra defended placing the financial weight squarely on carriers. “The customer paid the airlines to receive a service. Therefore the airlines are responsible for delivering that service,” the minister said, adding that the federal budget mandates data sharing and thus broader accountability in the aviation sector.
The legislation also demands that airlines institute a process to deal with claims and respond to complaints with a decision within 30 days. The establishment of “complaint resolution officers” at the Canadian Transportation Agency should also expedite the process for complaints, as should a 60-day maximum for the regulator to handle them, some advocates say. It is not clear what the penalty for breaching those timelines might be.
The complaints backlog at the agency now stands at about 45,000, more than triple the tally from a year ago and requiring at least 18 months on average per case.
Some advocates cast doubt on whether the so-called safety loophole for compensation was really shut tight.
“The way it was sold today was, ‘We got rid of the three categories,”‘ — within the airline’s control, outside its control and safety concerns, with the latter two reasons for a delayed or cancelled flight exempting an airline from compensating passengers — said John Lawford, executive director of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre.
Instead of the flight disruption categories, the Canadian Transportation Agency would draft a list of exceptions for compensation, including bad weather, the minister said.
“I’m sure the airlines will say, “‘Well, one of them should be safety,” Lawford predicted.
Gabor Lukacs, president of the Air Passenger Rights advocacy group, questioned confidentiality rules for the complaints process and called for more transparency.
While decisions by complaint officers would mandate the publication of some information, such as a flight number and date and whether compensation was issued — to alert fellow passengers to their own potential payout — “what is not becoming public is the evidence and the reasons and the analysis,” he said.
“What happens with mediation is still a black box,” Lukacs added. “My impression remains that this is essentially a smokescreen, and that it is going to be a secretive process that will cover up the real problems that passengers are facing.”
NDP transport critic Taylor Bachrach, who has tabled a private member’s bill on passenger rights, expressed skepticism as to whether the Canadian Transportation Agency could be entrusted to write regulations reasonable to all sides.
“They’re far too close to the airlines themselves. And so we have a regulator that is in some ways captured by the industry. And we’ve seen that in its decisions over the past number of years,” he told reporters.
The agency dismissed the accusation. “The CTA preserves the level of independence the Canada Transportation Act requires and ensures that parties’ right to an impartial decision-maker is respected,” said spokeswoman Martine Malais in an email.
Bachrach also said the proposed law fails to fully close the so-called safety loophole and falls short of European passenger rights standards.
“When we look at the European model, it’s been working for over a decade. And I can’t explain why the minister hasn’t chosen to emulate that model. He’s trying to reinvent the wheel and it’s not necessary.”
Alghabra rejected this depiction. “We are actually consistent with the EU. In fact, we have stronger measures being proposed in this bill than the EU standards,” he said. The minister pointed to provisions that require airlines to compensate passengers for “delayed” luggage, not just lost or damaged bags.
He said the changes are “not meant to to demonize” carriers or their employees.
“But I really think airlines left government no choice, after what we saw, to further clarify the rules and make sure that passenger rights are protected,” he said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 24, 2023.
NDP Transportation Critic Taylor Bachrach says he’s disappointed by the government’s proposed amendments to air passengers bill of rights. The government has the “backs of the big airlines” not passengers pic.twitter.com/DccnkgLPwZ
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
