Transport committee  My understanding is that we don't generally have what I'll call the internal complaint numbers. I'll note that in the banking industry, the regulations were just changed to require internal complaints to be logged and then provided to the Minister of Finance so that groups like ours and folks like you can keep an eye on whether internal complaints are being handled.

Transport committee  Yes.

Transport committee  The regulations were just changed at the start of September. I wouldn't swear to that, but it used to be that way; you're correct.

Transport committee  I still think you have to fix the “in the control of” problem, because that's a factual ground you have to establish and the airlines will fight it on every case. Just take it away unless there are exceptional circumstances. It's all within your control. For the other stuff, 80% of the claims are going to go through.

Transport committee  That was a method the Department of Transportation used to try to balance out a lot of problems for the smaller airlines and a lot of complaints when this was being brought forward in negotiations over the regulations. For example, regarding what we heard before about crew and staffing shortages—and the airlines in the north do have fewer crew; it's true—the idea is that we still want them to follow these regulations, but we recognize that they might have some other challenges, and therefore they only have to pay half.

Transport committee  On the last question, I don't know if it's broken down by airline. I do know that the total compensation figure is given by the CTA. For the total number of complaints, there's not a lot of granularity. I'll compare it to the CCTS—again back to telecommunications—where it is broken down by telecommunications carrier, the type of complaint, the period we're talking about and the resolution rate.

Transport committee  I believe so.

Transport committee  Again, I'm back to the telecom regulator that is very open. It provides open access to the spreadsheets the frontline staff use. A few fields are blocked for sensitivity, but otherwise, it's almost exactly what the investigators and the management at the CCTS see. That could be made available publicly because it's been done in another industry.

Transport committee  I was referring to some troubles with ArriveCAN and also to do with the staffing of border control, CBSA staffing, on the front end coming in with the scanning. The airports would be better at answering this than I am, but there were certainly not just airline staffing issues. It was unfortunate, but there were knock-on effects for a number of other systems.

Transport committee  The first question is easier to answer. One thing I would suggest, which doesn't involve a lot of back-and-forth and changing the act that creates the CTA, is to do what the CRTC did. There was a directive from the government asking if they could make a consumer complaints agency, and we were waiting.

Transport committee  I used the Canadian Transportation Agency annual reports and other reports to come up with that number, so 16,000 to 20,000 were at least a year old. As pointed out by one of the other members, they were in the more adjudicative stream at the Canadian Transportation Agency, meaning they were looking at them in detail.

Transport committee  Yes, there are some newer ones too. There are always more.

Transport committee  No, I wouldn't be able to give you a firm figure on that.

Transport committee  Each airline market recovered at a different rate. I think in the Canadian experience, there was a rush to try to service people a little too quickly, especially this last summer season. The U.S. market recovered in a more staged manner. I'm not sure whether they had better labour management.

Transport committee  My bottom line here today is that passenger protection regulations are fine. We worked on them, and they have the substantive stuff we need for resolving most Canadian complaints. The trouble is that the system they've been shoved into is an old-fashioned tariff system that isn't built to process a lot of these claims.