Jane Wasson is still trying to figure out how an Air Canada flight booked last year in Canada, to fly across Canada, was billed in U.S. dollars and included some U.S. taxes.
But Air Canada said the answer is simple — she was using the U.S. site, where the charges are clearly shown in American dollars and there’s a small U.S. flag at the top of the home page.
The airline stressed she paid the same fare as she would have on the Canadian site, once the currency conversion was taken into account.
But Wasson thought she was paying in Canadian dollars and got a shock when the exchange rate kicked in.
“When you booked online there, was no indication that you were paying in American dollars,” she said.
Jane Wasson went to the ‘Air Canada Official Site’ to book a trip, but was billed in U.S. dollars. The airline said she was on the U.S. version of its site. (aircanada.com)
“There was none at all.”
In August, Wasson sat down at her home computer in Minto, N.B., and booked a September round-trip flight on Air Canada’s website, www.aircanada.com, for her husband to fly from Fredericton to Kelowna, B.C., with stopovers in Toronto on both legs.
The cost was $801.14. It wasn’t until she received her credit card statement in September that she saw Air Canada charged her $1,063.55 for the ticket — an additional $262.41.
She contacted the Air Canada call centre, but said the customer service rep was as mystified by the charge as she was. Wasson was advised to file a complaint, which she did.
She also called her credit card company to dispute the charge. It was removed. However, Air Canada maintained she owed the full amount, so the $262.41 charge was placed back on her account.
Air Canada says the flag at the top of their webpage indicates the currency passengers will be charged. It also says pop-ups alert people to the currency being used. (aircanada.com)
Wasson received an acknowledgement of her complaint from Air Canada, followed by a generic response in November that didn’t address the issue, but offered her a 15 per cent discount on another flight within the next year.
She said she has subsequently booked other Air Canada flights and was charged in Canadian dollars.
“As soon as I learned through my credit card [that I was charged in American dollars], I went back … but I haven’t been able to duplicate the American charge,” she said.
She also doesn’t understand why there was a U.S. flight segment tax and a U.S. transportation tax applied to the ticket for flights that were only in Canada.
Similar situations have happened before
This isn’t the first time an Air Canada passenger has been charged in U.S. dollars.
In December 2018, B.C. resident Doreen Hucal said she was billed in U.S. dollars when she booked her flights on the Air Canada app. At the time, Air Canada said Hucal was using its American website, even though Hucal insisted she was using the app.
In July 2017, the Competition Bureau issued a news release urging people to double-check the type of currency being used by companies online. It referenced purchases including furniture, clothes, jewelry and travel packages.
It said some websites don’t clearly identify which currency they are using, and that the dollar symbol could represent either Canadian or American dollars.
“Ensuring that you are shopping on the company’s Canadian website (with an address ending in “.ca”), or selecting Canada as your country of origin can help, but it does not guarantee that the price shown is in CAD,” said the news release.
CBC News contacted the Competition Bureau to ask whether it has received complaints about airlines charging Canadians in U.S. dollars, how many complaints it’s received and which airlines were involved.
But the Competition Bureau said it wouldn’t answer those questions because it’s required by law to conduct its work confidentially.
Air Canada says U.S. site clearly marked
In an email to CBC News, an Air Canada spokesperson said as an international carrier, the airline sells tickets to people around the world and flights can be purchased in several currencies.
“Aircanada.com has pop-ups asking customers to confirm their country the first time they visit it or if users have not visited the site in a while,” Pascale Dery wrote, adding customers should always check to ensure they are on their preferred site.
Dery said the country is clear because of the flag at the top of the page, and changing countries and currency can be done by simply clicking on a tab.
“Customers are advised several times during the booking process of the currency they are purchasing in, including prior to completing their purchase,” Dery added.
CBC Halifax used the U.S. site to start booking a trip and it did clearly show the charges in U.S. dollars.
This message sometimes pops up on the Air Canada website. At other times, it does not. Wasson says it did not appear on her screen while booking and has not appeared when she made subsequent bookings. (aircanada.com)
CBC then cleared the cache of the computer and attempted to book again on the following day, which yielded a pop-up message that said, “You are about to open the aircanada.com edition for UNITED STATES, but it looks like you’re located in or your previous selection was CANADA.“
Dery said that message isn’t a new feature, but Wasson insisted there was no pop-up on her reservation.
Meanwhile, Dery said all tickets are fully refundable within 24 hours of purchase, so customers should check the itinerary receipts sent to them at the time of booking to ensure everything is OK.
Air Canada said it’s willing to refund the $16.80 US flight segment tax to Wasson and has provided a link for her to submit her claim.
TORONTO – A group of hotel service workers in Toronto is set to hold a rally today outside the Fairmont Royal York to demand salary increases as hotel costs in the city skyrocket during Taylor Swift’s concerts.
Unite Here Local 75, the union representing 8,000 hospitality workers in the Greater Toronto Area, says Royal York employees have not seen a salary increase since 2021, and have been negotiating a new contract with the hotel since 2022.
The rally comes as the megastar begins her series of six sold-out concerts in Toronto, with the last show scheduled for Nov. 23.
During show weekends, some hotel rooms and short-term rentals in Toronto are priced up to 10 times more than other weekends, with some advertised for as much as $2,000 per night.
The union says hotel workers who will be serving Swifties during her Toronto stops are bargaining for raises to keep up with the rising cost of living.
The union represents hospitality workers including food service employees, room attendants and bell persons.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 14, 2024.
WASHINGTON – President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to slap an across-the-board tariff of at least 10 per cent on all imports including from Canada is unlikely to apply to Canadian oil, energy experts are predicting.
The threat of the tariff is causing a lot of concern north of the border, where the Canadian Chamber of Commerce said such a tariff could take a $30-billion bite out of the Canadian economy.
Rory Johnston, a Toronto-based oil market researcher and founder of Commodity Context, said he believes there’s a very small probability that Trump’s fees would apply to Canadian oil, but it is “quite a potentially damaging one.”
“Canada is uniquely vulnerable to market pressure posed by U.S. refineries given our lack of alternative egress,” Johnston said during a panel for the Canadian Global Affairs Institute Wednesday.
Michael Catanzaro, a former Trump energy adviser, told a forum in Washington, D.C. last week that he doesn’t expect Trump’s campaign vision of energy dominance and lower energy costs will exclude Canada.
“We should double down on the fact that the U.S. and Canada together can be this powerful force,” he said at the North American Energy Preeminence Forum hosted by the right-leaning Hudson Institute in Washington on Nov. 8.
More than 77 per cent of Canadian exports go to the U.S. and trade comprises 60 per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product. A significant proportion of that comes from oil and gas.
Canada is also the largest source of U.S. energy imports, and almost all Canadian crude oil exports went to its neighbour in 2023. Most of that makes its way through pipelines to the Midwest, where the key battleground states flipped for Trump on promises of making life more affordable.
Without exemptions for Canadian crude, many experts agree that the cost at American pumps is certain to increase. It’s unlikely the Republican leader would take action that’ll make gas cost more, Johnston said.
Johnston added there could be a situation where Canada sees a boon from Trump’s tariffs. If the Republican leader puts those fees on all oil imports except Canada “that is actually a net good thing for Canadian exports.”
But all of this comes with the caveat that there’s been a rocky relationship between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Trump, and the Liberal government in Canada has been at odds with the Republican politically on a number of fronts including climate action and renewable energy.
Catanzaro recalled a meeting with Canadian officials after Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Climate agreement, an international treaty to cut greenhouse gases, during his first administration — a move the president-elect has promised to repeat.
“They were very hostile to us and to the administration,” Catanzaro said.
The Canadian reaction set the bilateral relationship back for some time, Catanzaro said.
Fen Hampson, a professor of international affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa and co-chair of the Expert Group on Canada-U.S. Relations, said he’s not certain the Republican leader would be willing to give a tariff concession under Trudeau.
Hampson said Trump would know that giving Canada an immediate exemption would provide Trudeau a powerful argument about his ability to negotiate with the president-elect ahead of Canada’s looming election. The Republican leader would not be happy with that outcome, given their notably rocky relationship during Trump’s first administration, Hampson added.
Trump called Trudeau “weak” and “dishonest” after the prime minister criticized the president’s 2018 tariff actions at the G7 summit in Quebec. There was another blow-up when Trudeau and other NATO leaders appeared to be on video talking about a Trump press conference the following year. Trump called the prime minister “two-faced.”
Robert Lighthizer, Trump’s then-trade representative, recounted in his book that U.S.-Canada relations were “at their lowest ebb since the failed American invasion of Upper Canada during the War of 1812.”
The Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement, negotiated under the first Trump administration, will come under review in 2026. Hampson said Trump could use the tariffs, or a threat of them, to force Canada into concessions.
Wilbur Ross, the former U.S. commerce secretary who was involved in the negotiation of that trilateral agreement, recently told CBC that Trump is likely to carve out exemptions for sectors such as Canadian oil and gas.
Eric Miller, president of Rideau Potomac Strategy Group, said politicians run for office in poetry and govern in prose, agreeing that wide-reaching tariffs on Canadian energy were unlikely.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 14, 2024.
HALIFAX – The director of a democracy watchdog says that if Nova Scotia’s electoral officer had more power to levy fines, it would discourage situations such as campaign managers giving Tim Hortons gift cards to voters.
The Liberal party has complained to Elections Nova Scotia after a Progressive Conservative campaign manager in Lunenburg, N.S., handed out gift cards each good for a single cup of coffee at a drive-thru while candidate Susan Corkum-Greek greeted voters as they exited.
The campaign manager resigned earlier this week and issued a statement saying he’d handed out 25 of the $2.07 cards.
Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch, says Nova Scotia needs law reform to permit its chief electoral officer to directly order a fine in such cases, rather than lengthy, costly and often ineffective court cases.
“We need to discourage violations of election laws, even small ones, as much as we discourage illegal parking,” he said.
He said there may be significant violations of the Elections Act where the public prosecution service should be called in, but often minor cases in provincial jurisdictions can drift on for months and end up being abandoned.
The Liberals have argued providing the gift cards violated Section 327 of the provincial Elections Act, which prohibits offering “a bribe” to influence a person’s vote.
The party has also filed a petition seeking a declaration by the Nova Scotia Supreme Court that the incident constitutes corrupt practices under the Elections Act. However, a spokesperson for the judiciary said the case won’t be heard until after the Nov. 26 election.
Conacher said law reforms in Nova Scotia could result in similar cases being dealt with summarily, as occurs with parking tickets, particularly if they are isolated and less severe.
Asked about such a potential reform, Tim Houston, leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, said it’s important to keep in mind the person involved in Lunenburg was a party volunteer.
“Let’s not lose sight of the fact these are people volunteering their time to help the process …. I think it’s a very slippery slope to kind of weaponize the legal system against a party volunteer who maybe made a mistake,” he said.
Conacher said he does not think his proposal would discourage people from volunteering for political parties.
“It’s more important to discourage violations of the law. I don’t think you discourage volunteers. It just makes them pay more attention to following the rules, and as a result you get fairer elections,” he said.
The NDP and Liberal leaders didn’t immediately provide comment on the proposed law reform.
Unlike the federal system, in Nova Scotia there is no commissioner appointed to levy administrative penalties under the Nova Scotia Elections Act. Conacher said it’s preferable to have separate roles, with chief electoral officers focusing on running elections while the election commissioner focuses on monitoring any violations of the legislation.
However, he said he recognizes this system is more costly, and that it’s possible for chief electoral officers to take on the function of levying administrative fines as well.
“The lack of penalties for many violations can just encourage more violations. You don’t want to tie up the courts with all these minor things,” said Conacher.
Naomi Shelton, a spokeswoman for Elections Nova Scotia, says the Tim Hortons case remains under investigation.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 14, 2024.
