Human Resources Committee on Feb. 5th, 2024

[Terry Beech, Liberal, Burnaby North—Seymour, BC]

I recently had the opportunity to visit the flagship office in North York and look at some of the more modernized services that they're providing, and really, it is an inclusive space where people are being handled in a very convenient way with technologies that weren't available even a number of years ago.

I won't prejudge what the Government of Ontario is doing with their service provision. It's possible that these kiosks will be well utilized and provide an extra bonus of service delivery and another point of contact. Even within Service Canada, we have over 300 site locations, but we have over 600 points of contact, and in a country that's as vast and diverse as ours, it's important for us to customize how we provide those services, depending on where you are in the country and who your customers are.

It will be interesting to see how these new kiosks play out, and we'll watch it closely.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Tracy Gray]

Thank you, Mr. Coteau.

We'll go over to Ms. Chabot for two and a half minutes.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Minister O'Regan, as you said, you are also the Minister of Seniors. In your presentation, you talked about the importance you attach to the principle of aging with dignity, and we fully agree with that. However, your government made a decision concerning seniors in 2022 by giving a 10% increase in old age security only to seniors aged 75 and over.

This week, we are going to start studying Bill C-319, sponsored by the member for Shefford, meant to address this inequity and to grant a 10% increase in old age security to seniors starting at age 65, which is the age of eligibility for this program.

Will your government support that bill?

[Seamus O'Regan, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

I stand by the decision that we made on seniors 75 and older, because I think older seniors are more financially challenged. They are more worried about outliving their savings, and as they age, seniors face more health issues. Their health care expenses rise due to illness or disability. In fact, on average, the out-of-pocket health expenses of those aged 80 and over are over $700 a year higher than for those aged 65 to 74.

At the same time, most older seniors can no longer supplement their income with paid work, with few seniors working beyond 75. Passing spouses adds to that pressure. Among seniors, almost twice as many over the age of 75 are likely to be widows or widowers. With women living longer on average than men, it's no wonder that many senior women slip into poverty after losing their life partners.

I think our OAS increase, as we have done it, has strengthened the financial security, I'm told, of 3.3 million seniors, the majority of whom are women. sncmfnrht

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

However, many seniors are being left behind, Minister. As you know, a large percentage of seniors rely solely on their old age security pension starting at age 65. However, that income is completely insufficient to cope with the current cost of living.

So this is an important bill for us because it seeks to address this inequity. It is important to be able to buy a dental prosthesis, but it is even more important to have a decent income so that you can live out your retirement and your old age with dignity and security.

Thank you, Minister.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Tracy Gray]

Thank you.

Ms. Zarrillo, you have two and a half minutes.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you so much.

Minister O'Regan, thank you for your comments around women and gender. This is an area of work that hasn't been covered equitably since the beginning of recognizing work and EI.

I was actually going to ask you a question about dental care, but it probably should go to Minister Beech.

I understand that Service Canada is visiting seniors homes across Canada in connection with the implementation of the dental program that the NDP spearheaded.

Can you share the rollout plan? Will Service Canada be visiting long-term care homes and seniors homes in the riding I represent, Port Moody—Coquitlam?

[Terry Beech, Liberal, Burnaby North—Seymour, BC]

We reach out in all kinds of different ways. Service Canada is very active and on the ground. We also partner with service organizations. Individuals have been meeting at various venues. If you're making a formal request, I'll look into that for you.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

I am making a formal request, because it would be wonderful to have the CRA or Service Canada at some of those events and to be there to support us in the riding.

[Terry Beech, Liberal, Burnaby North—Seymour, BC]

I'll be happy to get back to you on that.

In terms of the rollout, we made an announcement earlier with regard to the letters for people 70 and over that have already gone out. We will move to an online platform in May. We will also commence our first services for people who have already received their sign-up package.

In June, we will then transfer to children and to individuals with the disability tax credit certificate. The remainder, 18-year-olds to 64-year-olds, will be able to sign up starting in 2025.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you so very much.

I will revisit that whole concept of the disability tax credit and the claimant of that tax credit. I'm referring to the certificate and the claimant versus who would be eligible for the dental work.

Could you potentially follow up with me? If that rollout is happening with persons with disabilities, how is their income being tested?

[Terry Beech, Liberal, Burnaby North—Seymour, BC]

I will endeavour to do so.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you so much.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Tracy Gray]

Thank you very much.

We're just about at time here. We did start a little bit late because of votes.

I want to thank everyone for being here. Minister Beech, it's the first time that you've been to this committee. I'm taking the chair's prerogative right now to make a statement. We do have a lot of work at this committee that's within your portfolio, so hopefully we can see you again soon. I hope you'll make that commitment.

You had also requested to me to see the documents I was referring to. I will forward to you the documents that came directly from your department. I am disappointed that some of these issues weren't being addressed as seriously as they could have been. Hopefully we'll see you again soon and we can question you further on this.

We have another part of this meeting, so we'll suspend for a few minutes while we prepare for the second panel of witnesses today.

Thank you so much, everyone.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Tracy Gray]

I call the meeting to order.

Pursuant to the motion adopted on November 8, 2023, the committee is hearing from Air Canada on services offered to travellers with disabilities.

Present for the meeting, all by video conference, are witnesses from Air Canada. We have Michael Rousseau, president and chief executive officer; David Rheault, vice-president, government and community relations; Tom Stevens, vice-president, customer experience and operations strategy; and Kerianne Wilson, director, customer accessibility.

Mr. Rousseau, you have five minutes to make an opening statement.

[Michael Rousseau, President and Chief Executive Officer, Air Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you and good afternoon.

Let me assure the committee, people with disabilities, and the Canadian public that Air Canada takes very seriously its obligations to ensure our services are accessible. Equally important to us is that our objective is to be the preferred airline for people with disabilities.

We are already investing significant resources in accessibility, but we will do better.

Each year Air Canada successfully carries hundreds of thousands of customers who require mobility assistance or other accommodation. We invest significant resources in accessibility. We have been, and will continue to be, a leader. We were a key participant in drafting the CTA's “Mobility Aids and Air Travel Final Report”. Air Canada was one of the first airlines to waive liability limits in international treaties to pay the full cost for damaged mobility equipment.

I sit on the board of the International Air Transport Association, which represents 250 airlines worldwide. Air Canada was a key member of this Mobility Aids Action Group.

In 2023, across our network we had nearly 1.3 million special assistance requests related to accessibility for more than 500,000 customers. The vast majority had a positive experience; however, we know we must get better to reach our goal of offering a positive and respectful experience to all passengers. To this end, we endorse the Accessible Canada Act and its goal of a barrier-free Canada by 2040.

As part of this, we publicly filed a three-year accessibility plan, with far-ranging initiatives. It includes 144 initiatives based on a year of research, extra consultations and feedback from travellers with disabilities, who took over 220 flights. Recent announcements, such as becoming the first North American carrier to join the global Sunflower program for non-visible disabilities and the creation of a customer advisory committee composed of representatives from four Canadian accessibility groups, are examples of the initiatives we are executing to improve.

People with disabilities make up a significant segment of our customer base. We are very proud of this. We have high awareness, a strong work ethic and deep empathy among our employees and contractors. Our processes generally work well. Hundreds of thousands of customers requiring assistance successfully travel each year. Still, despite this, accessibility issues, while remaining the exception, do arise, and we understand the impact in terms of how difficult the disruption is for our customers with disabilities.

While the causes behind these negative experiences differ, we have concluded the chief issue is inconsistency. The best remedy for this is to provide our people, who all want to do a good job serving customers, with more and better tailored training and tools so they can succeed every time.

Our November announcement about improving accessibility contained programs to achieve this greater consistency. For example, our 10,000 airport employees will receive extra disability-related instruction as part of a new, recurrent annual training program. Apart from reinforcing processes, it will promote better understanding.

It is a challenge; however, a good parallel is airline safety. Instances still occur, but aviation today is the safest mode of travel. This was achieved through our industry's willingness to examine and learn from mistakes, constantly refine processes, adopt new technology or add redundancy, and provide continual and better training.

We are well aware of the disruptions customers with disabilities can experience. When we fail, we are incredibly disappointed, because it affects a person's quality of life. In these cases we apologize and take responsibility. However, what we hear is that our customers' overriding concern is always that we act to make sure whatever happened to them does not happen to others. This is why our leadership team, and all employees at Air Canada, are committed to improve. We are striving every day to deliver a positive experience for every customer.

We are now available to answer your questions.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Tracy Gray]

Thank you very much, Mr. Rousseau.

The first rounds of questions are six minutes. I will be leading us off on behalf of the Conservatives.

First of all, I want to start by saying that the treatment that many persons with disabilities have had from Air Canada has been shocking to hear and completely unacceptable. We've heard of horrible situations of mistreatment reported by persons with disabilities. These are experiences they've had with Air Canada, including recently, from October to November of 2023 alone.

There have been headlines about an Air Canada passenger who had a lift fall on her head and her ventilator was disconnected. Air Canada left Canada's own chief accessibility officer's wheelchair behind on a cross-Canada flight. A passenger was forced to drag himself off of an Air Canada flight, and a man was dropped and injured when Air Canada staff didn't use a lift as requested.

Can you confirm that these are the types of situations that persons with disabilities are experiencing at Air Canada, Mr. Rousseau?

[Michael Rousseau]

Thank you for the question.

What I can confirm is that the vast majority of customers requesting accessibility help from Air Canada are having good experiences. There are exceptions. We take responsibility for those exceptions.

The primary intention or objective of the plan that the we published in June is to ensure that all customers are in fact treated with respect and have a positive experience flying Air Canada.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Tracy Gray]

Mr. Rousseau, I don't think that gives comfort to the people who had those experiences.

I also would like to confirm that Air Canada was fined $97,500 recently by the Canadian Transportation Agency for several violations of the accessible transportation for persons with disabilities regulations.

Isn't that correct?

[Michael Rousseau]

Thank you for the question.

I believe that is correct. I'm not aware of all the details, but if I can, I'd like to turn the question over to Kerianne, who could provide more details.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Tracy Gray]

Mr. Rousseau, I'd like to keep my questions with you, if that's okay. Perhaps that information could be tabled for this committee.

As the next question for, would you say that it's a priority for Air Canada to serve passengers with disabilities well and to follow regulations?

[Michael Rousseau]

Thank you for the question.

As I said in my opening comments, it is a priority for us. Our objective, aside from meeting the regulations, is to be the preferred airline for customers with disabilities.

We know we have to improve. That's why we put in place a plan with 145 different initiatives, many of which are being executed at this point in time, with good feedback as well.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Tracy Gray]

Thank you, Mr. Rousseau.

[Michael Rousseau]

We'll continue to add initiatives over the next two and a half years.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Tracy Gray]

Thank you, Mr. Rousseau.

Would you say, at a high level, that a corporate annual report reports on the activities, priorities, operations and financial performance of an organization? Would that be a fair assessment of what an annual report does?