In light of recent accessibility shortfalls, Air Canada has apologized and pledged to speed up its previously announced three-year accessibility plan.
Ottawa summoned the airline last week following several events involving passengers with disabilities, including Canada’s chief accessibility officer and one man who had to drag himself off a plane in Las Vegas due to a lack of assistance.
Air Canada representatives met with the federal transport and diversity, inclusion and persons with disabilities ministers on Thursday morning.
“The first thing we told Air Canada was that was unacceptable what happened and they agree with us,” said Transport Minister Pablo Rodriguez.
“We told them that they need a clear plan on the short term and long term. We’re going to meet again in December to see how things improve.”
In the meeting, Air Canada notified the ministers of its plan to introduce immediate measures that update its boarding process, training and the way mobility aids are stored, while introducing an app feature that will allow passengers to track their wheelchairs in storage.
“We just would like to apologize to any customers that we’ve let down. We know that we need to do better,” said Tom Stevens, Air Canada’s vice-president of customer experience and operation strategy.
“That accessibility plan has been built with consultation with advocacy groups, with our own customers and external consultants to ensure that we’re getting at the challenging areas that our customers need us to improve in.”
Stevens added that the airline does not provide service to customers with accessibility needs “because we have to,” but rather “because we want to.”
Transport Minister Pablo Rodriguez and Diversity, Inclusion and Persons with Disabilities Minister Kamal Khera respond to questions from the media after speaking with Air Canada, Thursday, November 9, 2023 in Ottawa. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
Disability advocate Maayan Ziv said one of the biggest problems is that airlines treat mobility devices like baggage, instead of an extension of the passenger.
“There is a very big difference between losing a suitcase and losing your independence and your mobility,” said Ziv, who had her wheelchair “damaged beyond repair” during a flight last year.
“This continues to happen every single day to people with disabilities everywhere.”
Gábor Lukács, president of Air Passenger Rights, believes further protections need to be put in place across the country, including regulations that force airlines to pay a minimum fine every time a wheelchair is lost or damaged.
“Good intentions are not enough. What needs to happen is that profit has to be tied to morally good behaviour. That is the whole idea of regulatory law,” he said.
WIDESPREAD ISSUES ACROSS CANADIAN AIRLINES
Data from the Canadian Transportation Agency shows nearly 1,100 passengers have submitted accessibility complaints over the last five years, including 224 in the 2023-24 fiscal year. In total, 16 wheelchairs have been reported damaged by airlines since 2018.
Sarah Turnbull’s four-year-old daughter, Blake, has been living without the comfort of her own pediatric wheelchair for more than a month.
A rim on her wheelchair was bent, according to Turnbull, while the device was stowed away under the airplane on their WestJet flight from Regina to Toronto in early October.
It is an incident Turnbull said she was prepared for, but it is still frustrating.
“I put a wheelchair in and out of a van five or six times a day, but I don’t break a wheelchair every time we go in and out of the van,” she said.
Turnbull was flying with Blake, her two-year-old son and her parents.
Blake, who has spina bifida, which is a neural tube defect, and her grandmother, Elizabeth, both require a wheelchair. When the plane landed, Turnbull and her father went to retrieve the chairs and assemble them, while the rest of the family waited on the plane.
“The plane hostesses kept asking us to leave. Then the pilot asked us to leave the plane,” Elizabeth said.
“We had little choice but to disembark.”
The Turnbulls flew from Regina to Toronto on Oct. 4. (Courtesy of Sarah Turnbull)
Turnbull’s toddler had to walk off the plane himself, while Blake crawled down the aisle.
“They called my daughter a salamander as she was crawling, wriggling off the plane,” Turnbull said.
“I was really upset because my daughter has two medical openings on her stomach and it’s just really filthy.”
Turnbull filed a claim with WestJet, but delays on parts have the family still waiting for the wheelchair to be repaired. It is expected to be fixed in the next two weeks, she said.
In the interim, the Turnbulls were fortunate enough to source a loaner chair from a friend to allow Blake her independence. But Turnbull said not everyone is that lucky.
“You don’t have multiple backup wheelchairs when the first wheelchair already cost you like $7,000,” she said.
WestJet apologized to the family and said it is working on the claim and will cover the costs of the parts and adjustments needed for Blake’s loaner chair.
“We sincerely apologize for the handling failures the Turnbull family had while flying with WestJet. This is not the standard we aspire to deliver,” a WestJet spokesperson said in a statement emailed to CTV News.
“Upon gaining a fulsome understanding of the severity of the situation, we engaged our disability assistance team to conduct a thorough investigation and review of the incident.”
Turnbull said the incident will not prevent her and her family from flying in the future. However, the fear of having a mobility device damaged does make some wheelchair users hesitant about flying.
“Every time that I have an incident, it just adds to that overall anxiety that I experience,” Ziv said.
“Every time I get on a flight, I know that something could potentially go wrong because we just don’t have the proper infrastructure, training or systems in place to protect people like myself from experiencing the type of barriers that we do.”
MONTREAL – Travel company Transat AT Inc. reported a loss in its latest quarter compared with a profit a year earlier as its revenue edged lower.
The parent company of Air Transat says it lost $39.9 million or $1.03 per diluted share in its quarter ended July 31.
The result compared with a profit of $57.3 million or $1.49 per diluted share a year earlier.
Revenue in what was the company’s third quarter totalled $736.2 million, down from $746.3 million in the same quarter last year.
On an adjusted basis, Transat says it lost $1.10 per share in its latest quarter compared with an adjusted profit of $1.10 per share a year earlier.
Transat chief executive Annick Guérard says demand for leisure travel remains healthy, as evidenced by higher traffic, but consumers are increasingly price conscious given the current economic uncertainty.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
Dollarama Inc.’s food aisles may have expanded far beyond sweet treats or piles of gum by the checkout counter in recent years, but its chief executive maintains his company is “not in the grocery business,” even if it’s keeping an eye on the sector.
“It’s just one small part of our store,” Neil Rossy told analysts on a Wednesday call, where he was questioned about the company’s food merchandise and rivals playing in the same space.
“We will keep an eye on all retailers — like all retailers keep an eye on us — to make sure that we’re competitive and we understand what’s out there.”
Over the last decade and as consumers have more recently sought deals, Dollarama’s food merchandise has expanded to include bread and pantry staples like cereal, rice and pasta sold at prices on par or below supermarkets.
However, the competition in the discount segment of the market Dollarama operates in intensified recently when the country’s biggest grocery chain began piloting a new ultra-discount store.
The No Name stores being tested by Loblaw Cos. Ltd. in Windsor, St. Catharines and Brockville, Ont., are billed as 20 per cent cheaper than discount retail competitors including No Frills. The grocery giant is able to offer such cost savings by relying on a smaller store footprint, fewer chilled products and a hearty range of No Name merchandise.
Though Rossy brushed off notions that his company is a supermarket challenger, grocers aren’t off his radar.
“All retailers in Canada are realistic about the fact that everyone is everyone’s competition on any given item or category,” he said.
Rossy declined to reveal how much of the chain’s sales would overlap with Loblaw or the food category, arguing the vast variety of items Dollarama sells is its strength rather than its grocery products alone.
“What makes Dollarama Dollarama is a very wide assortment of different departments that somewhat represent the old five-and-dime local convenience store,” he said.
The breadth of Dollarama’s offerings helped carry the company to a second-quarter profit of $285.9 million, up from $245.8 million in the same quarter last year as its sales rose 7.4 per cent.
The retailer said Wednesday the profit amounted to $1.02 per diluted share for the 13-week period ended July 28, up from 86 cents per diluted share a year earlier.
The period the quarter covers includes the start of summer, when Rossy said the weather was “terrible.”
“The weather got slightly better towards the end of the summer and our sales certainly increased, but not enough to make up for the season’s horrible start,” he said.
Sales totalled $1.56 billion for the quarter, up from $1.46 billion in the same quarter last year.
Comparable store sales, a key metric for retailers, increased 4.7 per cent, while the average transaction was down2.2 per cent and traffic was up seven per cent, RBC analyst Irene Nattel pointed out.
She told investors in a note that the numbers reflect “solid demand as cautious consumers focus on core consumables and everyday essentials.”
Analysts have attributed such behaviour to interest rates that have been slow to drop and high prices of key consumer goods, which are weighing on household budgets.
To cope, many Canadians have spent more time seeking deals, trading down to more affordable brands and forgoing small luxuries they would treat themselves to in better economic times.
“When people feel squeezed, they tend to shy away from discretionary, focus on the basics,” Rossy said. “When people are feeling good about their wallet, they tend to be more lax about the basics and more willing to spend on discretionary.”
The current economic situation has drawn in not just the average Canadian looking to save a buck or two, but also wealthier consumers.
“When the entire economy is feeling slightly squeezed, we get more consumers who might not have to or want to shop at a Dollarama generally or who enjoy shopping at a Dollarama but have the luxury of not having to worry about the price in some other store that they happen to be standing in that has those goods,” Rossy said.
“Well, when times are tougher, they’ll consider the extra five minutes to go to the store next door.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
TORONTO – The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has ordered TD Bank Group to pay US$28 million for repeatedly sharing inaccurate, negative information about its customers to consumer reporting companies.
The agency says TD has to pay US$7.76 million in total to tens of thousands of victims of its illegal actions, along with a US$20 million civil penalty.
It says TD shared information that contained systemic errors about credit card and bank deposit accounts to consumer reporting companies, which can include credit reports as well as screening reports for tenants and employees and other background checks.
CFPB director Rohit Chopra says in a statement that TD threatened the consumer reports of customers with fraudulent information then “barely lifted a finger to fix it,” and that regulators will need to “focus major attention” on TD Bank to change its course.
TD says in a statement it self-identified these issues and proactively worked to improve its practices, and that it is committed to delivering on its responsibilities to its customers.
The bank also faces scrutiny in the U.S. over its anti-money laundering program where it expects to pay more than US$3 billion in monetary penalties to resolve.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
