Good morning. My name is Colin Stacey. I'm the director general of air policy at Transport Canada. I'm very pleased to answer that question.
The changes in Bill C-47 will have a significant impact on how the air passenger protection regulations are administered, in a couple of ways.
To begin with, they are changing the onus: placing more onus on the air carriers themselves. The way they're doing this is.... Currently in the regulations, there are different categories. There are three categories of incident, two of which allow the air carriers to not provide compensation in instances where there are significant delays or cancellations. Those would be where the carrier interprets that an incident is not within its control or where the carrier interprets that an incident is due to safety.
Those categories will disappear, and instead there will be more onus on the carriers themselves to provide compensation in all incidents, except for those incidents that are deemed to be exceptional. A specific list will be articulated in the regulations themselves. As a result of that, to begin with, there will be fewer complaints.
In addition, the legislation will require that the air carriers cover the costs of complaints that go forward, and that are within scope to go forward, to the Canadian Transportation Agency. Once again, that will provide an additional incentive for the carriers to address complaints directly with passengers before they get passed over to the Canadian Transportation Agency. On top of that, I note there will be a specific timeline required for the air carriers to address those complaints with passengers.
Those are various ways in which we would expect there to be fewer complaints. Beyond that, I note there will also be an improvement in the process so that those complaints will be addressed more quickly.