TORONTO — Rogers Communications Inc.’s move to credit its customers with the equivalent of five days of service following the massive outage that crippled its network last week is “wholly inadequate,” a legal expert said.
“Five days is predicated on the possible belief that damage to individuals and small and medium-sized businesses can be quantified solely on the basis of a portion of a monthly fee,” Richard Leblanc, a York University governance, law and ethics professor, said in an interview Wednesday.
Payments could not occur, sales were missed, meetings were missed, work could not be done, and businesses could not operate fully, so damages would be broader than that, Leblanc explained.
Rogers made the announcement via a statement posted on Twitter on Tuesday saying that it was “a first step” in earning back its customers’ trust.
“They’re keeping the door open to do more and showing goodwill as an initial first step, but it’s a minimum,” Leblanc said.
In the statement, Rogers said it was listening to its customers from across the country and recognized how significant the impacts of the outage were for them.
Rogers wireless and internet customers were left without service in the outage that began early Friday morning and led to widespread disruptions. The outage affected 911 services as well as financial networks and other critical services.
The company said the disruption that shut down its mobile and internet services across much of the country came after a maintenance update in its core network, which caused some of its routers to malfunction.
As the next step, Leblanc believes Rogers should look to tailor its compensation strategy to better fit individual, household and business customers because “the damages are not equal” across the board.
Rogers is already facing a class-action lawsuit filed Monday by Montreal-based LPC Avocat Inc. on behalf of customers with a contract with Rogers, Fido Mobile or Chatr Mobile who didn’t receive services on Friday or Saturday, as well as “persons in Quebec who could not operate with their own device or make transactions because of the outage” during that period.
Yuka Sai, a lawyer with the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) said consumers deserve a say in what constitutes fair compensation when mass outages occur.
PIAC has requested the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) open a public consultation on how customers should be treated by telecom companies in the event of a service outage.
“This public hearing should set industry-wide rules on baseline emergency planning, notification and refund requirements, and other protections for both retail and wholesale-based customers,” Sai said.
Jasmin Guénette, vice-president of National Affairs at the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), said for small and medium-sized businesses, the five-day reimbursement is “likely to be insufficient to cover the revenue lost.”
Rogers should be compensating businesses with a full month of free service, he added.
On Tuesday, the CRTC asked Rogers to provide a detailed explanation for the service outage by July 22, including why and how it occurred and what measures it is putting in place to prevent it from happening again.
Federal Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne met with Rogers chief executive Tony Staffieri and the heads of several other telecom providers on Monday and directed them to come up with a crisis plan, including agreements on emergency roaming, a “mutual assistance” framework during outages and a communication protocol to “better inform the public and authorities during telecommunications emergencies.”
Staffieri issued an updated apology Wednesday afternoon.
“Our network outage last Friday was unacceptable. Simply put, we failed on our promise to be Canada’s most reliable network,” he wrote on the company’s website.
The CEO said the company has “to make things right.”
“You have my personal commitment that Rogers will make every change and investment needed to help ensure that it will not happen again.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 13, 2022.
Demands for government intervention in Air Canada labour talks could negatively affect airline competition in Canada, the CEO of travel company Transat AT Inc. said.
“The extension of such an extraordinary intervention to Air Canada would be an undeniable competitive advantage to the detriment of other Canadian airlines,” Annick Guérard told analysts on an earnings conference call on Thursday.
“The time and urgency is now. It is time to restore healthy competition in Canada,” she added.
Air Canada has asked the federal government to be ready to intervene and request arbitration as early as this weekend to avoid disruptions.
Comments on the potential Air Canada pilot strike or lock out came as Transat reported third-quarter financial results.
Guérard recalled Transat’s labour negotiations with its flight attendants earlier this year, which the company said it handled without asking for government intervention.
The airline’s 2,100 flight attendants voted 99 per cent in favour of a strike mandate and twice rejected tentative deals before approving a new collective agreement in late February.
As the collective agreement for Air Transat pilots ends in June next year, Guérard anticipates similar pressure to increase overall wages as seen in Air Canada’s negotiations, but reckons it will come out “as a win, win, win deal.”
“The pilots are preparing on their side, we are preparing on our side and we’re confident that we’re going to come up with a reasonable deal,” she told analysts when asked about the upcoming negotiations.
The parent company of Air Transat reported 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 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.
It attributed reduced revenues to lower airline unit revenues, competition, industry-wide overcapacity and economic uncertainty.
Air Transat is also among the airlines facing challenges related to the recall of Pratt & Whitney turbofan jet engines for inspection and repair.
The recall has so far grounded six aircraft, Guérard said on the call.
“We have agreed to financial compensation for grounded aircraft during the 2023-2024 period,” she said. “Alongside this financial compensation, Pratt & Whitney will provide us with two additional spare engines, which we intend to monetize through a sell and lease back transaction.”
Looking ahead, the CEO said she expects consumer demand to remain somewhat uncertain amid high interest rates.
“We are currently seeing ongoing pricing pressure extending into the winter season,” she added. Air Transat is not planning on adding additional aircraft next year but anticipates stability.
“(2025) for us will be much more stable than 2024 in terms of fleet movements and operation, and this will definitely have a positive effect on cost and customer satisfaction as well,” the CEO told analysts.
“We are more and more moving away from all the disruption that we had to go through early in 2024,” she added.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
