As was stated, my name is Max Brault. I'm a senior consultant at BDO Canada, but I'm not here for my corporate responsibility; I'm here as an individual, and I want to make sure that's clear on the record.
As most of you probably have read about my harrowing trip to Hawaii, what you don't know is that prior to COVID, I used to travel all the time. I used to travel through VIA, through airlines, you name it, but I never complained. I'm here today to talk about two really big things.
First of all, I want to address one thing. There is a myth right now that what you're hearing in the newspapers and what you're hearing in general on the Internet is a one-off. The airlines are giving you a false impression.
When I've experienced travel, I would say that about 40% of the time I experienced issues from lost to damaged wheelchairs, you name it, but I never had an issue until I flew to Hawaii. The singular reason Hawaii was a different trip is that my wife got to experience it, and it made my wife cry. She's in this room today, and I made a vow to make sure that the airlines paid for that particular situation, because they turned her experience from what should have been a great family event into a nightmare.
I really want to touch on the simple fact that what you're hearing is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to people with disabilities travelling. Time and time again, if you were to go into airports, you would see on a frequent basis individuals and families with disabilities encountering issues with the airports and travelling because of various things like their equipment and how they're going to deal with their children or themselves when there are diverse issues.
One thing that is really important is that I can't sit here and tell this committee that x number of people are experiencing x number of issues due to X. Do you know why? It's because we do not as a country calculate this information. We don't tabulate it, and we don't circulate this information around. I could tell you, from where I come from, I have a great number of really smart, analytical people who would love 18 months of getting this information and coming back and telling you what that looks like, but I don't have the ability to do so. However, there is something of a silver lining down the road.
Before COVID, Disney used to say all the time—and, by the way, Disney give me call me to tell me what the new numbers are—that 25 million Americans used to make a decision based on a member of their family having a disability. Since we are a population of about one-tenth of the size, I would assume that anywhere between 2.5 to 5 million Canadian families are making that same decision. Do the math, folks.
What a colleague of mine recently told me is a great analogy. The analogy I'm going to use here is that if the banking industry were to say to this committee, “Look, we deal with $2-trillion worth of funds annually, but you know what, if I'm missing about $200 million, so what? The interest rate will hide that”. That's what it sounds like to my community. The things that are happening to my community are a crisis. If this was a banking situation, everybody here who's listening to me would go, “Oh, wow, we need to have hearings and find out what's happening to that money”.
The first recommendation I would make is that the CTA should have the power and the strength to collect the data about what is going on and to make that information public on an annual basis.
My second recommendation is a little bit off, but think of this—and you've already heard it from two individuals today—I am an individual. As you can see, I've come in an electric wheelchair.
By the way, I would like to introduce you to Roxanne. This is what I call my wheelchair, “Roxanne”. I'll tell you why I call her by name. I never lose sight of her. I'm either sitting in her, or she's in my sight 99% of the time. Even when I go to bed, I have a straight view of my wheelchair being charged. I know where she is all the time. The only few times that I let her go is when I travel with the airlines. When I give my wheelchair to somebody, I expect to see Roxanne at the other side of the road.
For that reason alone, here's my second recommendation. The human rights that I have as an individual need to to be given to my wheelchair, which means that when my wheelchair is damaged—if any accessible equipment is damaged—it is inherently a human rights issue.
For this reason alone, airlines and the travel industry need to recognize the fact that when I give what is essentially my legs to them, they have to respect it the same way as they would a human body, a person. If I gave my kids to the airlines and said, “Can you make sure that they get from point A to point B safely?”, they'd do everything in their power to make sure that those children get there safely. I ask for the same kind of consideration for my wheelchair. Anybody in my community is asking for the same kind of consideration for their equipment—that it has the same human rights that I have the privilege to have.
My last recommendation.... The gentleman who was speaking before me was touching upon this. The reality is that the airlines and the travel industry are not taking their time to talk to us as a community. I can tell you right now that if they were starting to talk to the people who design wheelchairs and design equipment, then we could design better wheelchairs and better equipment that could work with the airline industry. That kind of communication needs to start happening. We need to start training the people who disassemble and reassemble my wheelchair to understand how to do it right because I can't do it.
Look, I'm a policy guy. I'm like you guys. I read things, and I tell you what you need to do. However, once I'm in a third-world nation and my wheelchair shows up in many different pieces, I have no clue how to rebuild it. Neither does my wife—and my wife knows many other things.
Thank you for the time. I'm here to answer any of your questions.
