By Ken Pole | May 28, 2018 Estimated reading time 4 minutes, 20 seconds.
The Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) is wasting no time in organizing public consultations on air passengers’ rights, and Transport Minister Marc Garneau says that once the federal cabinet has had a chance to review the CTA’s recommendations, “it will be a matter of months” before new protections are in place.
Only three working days after Garneau had said on Parliament Hill that he hoped the new rules would be crafted “in simple-to-understand language,” he told reporters at Ottawa International Airport (YOW) on May 28 that “when Canadians buy an airline ticket . . . it’s a contract for service and it imposes obligations on both the airlines and the passenger.”
He said the government will ensure “that airlines treat their passengers with the respect they deserve” and that the eventual regulations “will establish clear and consistent standards of treatment for all flights operating in Canada.” Moreover, “in certain circumstances it will include compensation . . . when things do not go as planned, when a flight is delayed, cancelled or overbooked, and it is considered to be within the airline’s control.”
The updated Canada Transportation Act, amended as part of a multi-modal modernization bill, C-49, which Parliament passed into law May 23, retains financial penalties. However, CTA chairman Scott Streiner, joining Garneau at YOW, explained that it is up to his enforcement officers to assess fines or other penalties for non-compliance with the legislation or the regulations which will flow from the consultation process. He said the new rules will include “a clearer set of obligations against which compliance can be measured.”
A former assistant deputy minister for policy at Transport Canada and then a cabinet secretary until his July 2015 appointment to the CTA – which is Canada’s longest-standing independent quasi-judicial tribunal – Streiner acknowledged that air travel, whether for business or pleasure, is “integral to modern life” and noted that most of it is uneventful.
“But when something goes wrong, it can be very frustrating,” he added. “Partly this is because we have little information on the reasons for the delay and a sense of little control over the event. Partly it can be because we don’t know what our rights are, and aren’t sure who we can turn to for explanations or recourse.”
He agreed that a surge in passenger complaints indicated “that a tariff-only approach did not always result in airline obligations that were as clear, as transparent, as consistent, and as fair as Canadians have a right to expect.” The amendments in C-49 had given the CTA a mandate to establish “standard responsibilities for airlines when your flight is delayed or cancelled, when you’re denied boarding, when your bags are lost or damaged, when your plane is delayed on the tarmac for an extended period, when you’re travelling with children who need to be seated near you, or if you’re transporting musical instruments.”
As to defining “extended,” Streiner pointed out that C-49 included a requirement that the CTA develop regulations designed to take effect when an aircraft is held on the tarmac for longer than three hours. “We would expect that at the end of the day, there will be some general provisions for delays and then there will be some additional supplementary provisions for delays of three hours or longer.”
As an immediate starting point for the public consultations, the CTA has set up a dedicated website, which includes a discussion paper, a questionnaire and a link for written submissions.
In addition to passenger surveys at airports across the country and meetings with carriers, local airport authorities and other stakeholders, the CTA has scheduled public hearings in eight cities. They begin June 24 in Toronto and end July 4 in Ottawa. The intervening dates are Vancouver, June 18; Calgary, June 20; Yellowknife, June 22; Winnipeg, June 25; Montreal, June 27; and Halifax, June 29.
While that process will be wound up by July 5, the overall consultations will continue until Aug. 28.
Seat Pitch.. there has to be a minimum set seat pitch for ANY carrier that operates in Canada ( even the foreign carriers)