Transport Committee on Nov. 18th, 2009

[John McKenna]

Yes.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

The problem is I do not want to have the airline paying for a mistake it did not make. I did it to try to...

Essentially, passengers say that they deal directly with the airline selling the tickets and that it is easier to deal with that airline. If I subscribe to that view but if the airline is not at fault, it would be reimbursed and those who are responsible would pay. Do you understand?

[John McKenna]

Who is funding CATSA, NAV CANADA and airports? Airline companies and passengers.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

It is out of order. If you are trying to impose liability on someone else under this bill, it would be out of order because you would have to see whether or not NAV CANADA has a budget to cover it. That is not the case. You are absolutely right, airport authorities do not have a budget for that and you and passengers would be paying in large part. That is the reality. It is far more complex than you would think. There is an attempt here to solve the problem, but we are not solving the problem; we are creating new ones. That is the reality.

[John McKenna]

On that point, I fully agree with my colleague who says that lawyers will really appreciate this bill, that is for sure.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Oh, oh!

Mr. Fruitman.

[The Vice-Chair (Hon. Joseph Volpe), Liberal, Joe Volpe]

You have about a minute and 30 seconds.

[Mel Fruitman]

You've covered an awful lot of ground here, sir. With respect to the parliamentary procedures, I'm sorry, I'm not familiar enough with them to know what can and cannot be done. When I referred to possible alterations, I was thinking of a couple of very simple ones with respect to delays that would not necessarily make cancellation the default position but would perhaps clarify a situation with respect to delays. I am looking at perhaps minor modifications if they could indeed be made, if they needed to be made, but not to have the bill thrown out because of that.

We are not looking to penalize, which had been the thrust of your comments with respect to Cubana. This is an attempt to change behaviour. It's not an attempt to get at a particular airline or a particular situation such as Cubana. And I think the bill has been very well drafted and in a manner to attempt to change airlines' behaviour on behalf of Canadian consumers. The sort of circumstances that have been described, if we at least put the focus on the airlines, causing them to change their behaviour, if they have problems further back in the system, there is sufficient time for them to work with the other players in the system to help to resolve some of those problems before the fact.

[The Vice-Chair (Hon. Joseph Volpe), Liberal, Joe Volpe]

Thank you, Mr. Fruitman.

Thank you, Mr. Laframboise.

I'm going to go now to Mr. Maloway.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to begin by drawing people's attention to what happened in Vancouver last year. I'm told that there was a snowstorm and people were stuck for a couple of days. One of the passengers did tell me that in fact the airline, in this case Air Canada, was planning to subrogate against what it saw as the guilty party--which was the airport, right?

So to answer Mr. Laframboise's question about what should happen, the Cubana people would be paying the passengers for the tarmac delays, and they in turn would subrogate against who they saw as the guilty party, which might be the airport authority.

But that's for them to sort out. We cannot solve everybody's problems here.

I want to deal with a couple of other issues.

Mr. McKenna is the first industry lobbyist I've run into who seems to have adopted a reasonable approach. I say that because he has talked about amendments to the bill.

We have heard the industry lobby. We have actually drafted some amendments. One of them, by one of the members, is to make certain that the compensation doesn't exceed the amount of the ticket.

It was mentioned by you that if you bought a $99 ticket, you shouldn't get a huge amount of compensation. That in fact is one of the amendments that's going to be brought in.

I would certainly like to get a copy of all of your proposed amendments, because we may have forgotten one or two along the way.

You talked about excluding certain airlines under 40 seats or 60 seats or whatever. That is a certain possibility as well. I think there is one amendment being drafted to possibly exclude airlines way up north, up in the Northwest Territories. These are things that can be resolved by amendments.

We have an amendment to reduce the tarmac delay penalty from $500 to $100. I'm sure that would be a big help to you.

We have another amendment to reduce the compensation for cancelled flights and denied boarding to half of what the compensation is currently in the European law. We're taking them back to what it was in Europe five years ago. As you know, the European legislation didn't start just five years ago. It's been around since 1991. Air Canada is very familiar with that legislation. Since 1991 they've been paying out under it. We've now taken those penalties, those compensation levels, back to what they were in Europe five years ago.

These are amendments that have already been drafted. When we get to that stage, members of this committee will be introducing those amendments. We'd certainly like to see what other amendments you would suggest so that we can actually get them drafted.

There's one other point I want to bring up, and that's the issue of flight rights. I was under the impression, up until now, that the flight rights agreement was being adopted by only four carriers--Air Canada, WestJet, Air Transat, and another member of the group--and that they were the only carriers that were putting flight rights in their tariffs. We're having a lot of trouble finding out where they are, because Air Canada alone has, like, 115 pages on their website dealing with these.

At any rate, the downside of flight rights is that it can change. The tariffs are different with each airline, as you know. You can fly from Toronto to Calgary with Air Canada and be under one set of tariffs, and then fly from Calgary to Vancouver with another airline and be under another set.

Now, what kind of a mess are you going to have on your hands when you have a customer trying to sort out who's responsible for what? Plus, we understood there were only the four carriers who were subject to flight rights.

In addition, flight rights has been shown to be totally ineffective. As a previous Liberal speaker pointed out, the flight rights agreement has no penalties. The only positive thing I saw in flight rights was that it recognized that 90 minutes was the maximum amount of time that people should be kept cooped up in airplanes.

I thought that was very important, that the Canadian airline industry decided—I don't know how they figured this out—that somehow 90 minutes was what they felt was long enough and at that point they were prepared to let people off the plane. We simply said, well, if they say 90, we can say 60, and we will have some compensations.

I do want to say in addition that the bill is very clear, if you read it. These bills are drafted by legal teams. We have two exclusions.

On the tarmac delay itself, the exclusion reads as follows:

an opportunity to disembark from the aircraft if it is possible to do so without causing any undue risk to the health or safety of the passengers or any other person or to the safe operation of the aircraft or any other aircraft

That's the exclusion. Our lawyers have looked at it. They feel that gives the pilot lots of flexibility. If they feel it doesn't, you can change that.

[The Vice-Chair (Hon. Joseph Volpe), Liberal, Joe Volpe]

Mr. Maloway, I just want to be able to have them respond to your observations, and they've got 58 seconds to do that.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

I'm sorry. I thought I had eight minutes.

[The Vice-Chair (Hon. Joseph Volpe), Liberal, Joe Volpe]

You can use up the rest of the time, if you like, but they're not going to be able to say anything.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

By all means, sir.

The other exemption is for extraordinary circumstances dealing with cancellations.

[The Vice-Chair (Hon. Joseph Volpe), Liberal, Joe Volpe]

You can try; you have 20 seconds apiece.

[Tracy Medve]

I think it's important to be very clear on the matter of our being able to subrogate against others who may have caused problems. Nav Canada gets all its funding from the airlines. If Nav Canada causes a delay and we get fined for it, and we have to go back to Nav Canada and they have to pay, we're going to pay twice, because they get all their money from us. It's a non-profit organization and they're funded by the airlines. So that is of no comfort at all.

I think it's also important to remember that airlines are not government institutions. We're privately owned businesses. We are regulated for safety. We have customers who know where I live. I'll tell you, if they want to complain about things that happen at our airline, I get a phone call at home sometimes. They know how to complain.

I think you have to understand here that we're privately owned businesses. We're not publicly funded.

[The Vice-Chair (Hon. Joseph Volpe), Liberal, Joe Volpe]

Okay, Madam.

[Tracy Medve]

We have private participation. It's not in our best interest to treat our passengers badly.

[The Vice-Chair (Hon. Joseph Volpe), Liberal, Joe Volpe]

We're well over time, Madam.

I don't know if Mr. Fruitman wants to offer a five-second comment. He's welcome to.

No?

Okay, I'm going to go to Mr. Watson.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I got bumped from my last round of questioning. I've demanded compensation and I get three minutes more than I would have had last time.

[The Vice-Chair (Hon. Joseph Volpe), Liberal, Joe Volpe]

You've just consumed 30 seconds.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

I will let you know, Mr. Chair; if I have any time left over, I'll return it to Mr. Jean as a favour.

First of all, Mr. Laframboise brings up something that's very important to the discussion here. I think often we get groups who come and want to contribute. We have a lot of aspirational talk around the table, but the actual mechanics of what we're doing is important here. I think we share a lot of the same aspirations. I don't think anybody at this table would argue that passengers deserve no rights. So how do we get from shared aspirations to reasonable outcomes? Is Bill C-310, in other words, the right tool? We already know, because it's a private member's bill, that there is only so much change that can be done.

Mr. Maloway listed off a whole bunch of cosmetic changes—we can play around with the amounts of compensation, for example. That's a cosmetic change. But those of us on this side of the table, I think, will argue that the bill is structurally wrong, which presents us with some real challenges. I don't like Mr. Maloway's suggestion that we plunge the airline carriers into the business of going after other people who may be responsible for problems that happen that are beyond the control of an airline.

At the end of the day, from our perspective, Bill C-310 is about punishing air carriers while letting other responsible parties off the hook. That's a problem. We can't really necessarily change the bill to reflect that. So this is the real debate we're actually having here at the table.

I want to go through a series of potential situations. Some may be extraordinary circumstances and some will be less extraordinary circumstances, and I want to take you through them.

An accident on a runway, a hostage-taking on a tarmac, and a medical emergency on an aircraft may be extraordinary circumstances, but if they happen to cause a delay for somebody such that they have to stay overnight, the airline is still on the hook. They may not be on the hook for maximum expenses, but they're still on the hook for expenses that were not their problem. Is that just?

I'm going to ask Mr. Fruitman whether he thinks a situation like that is just.

Mr. McKenna, you can chime in as well.

[Mel Fruitman]

Well, the way you've phrased the question, it would sound like it's, but again, I don't think that is necessarily the outcome of that. There are exclusions in there. I think that “extraordinary circumstances” phrase allows for a lot of leeway, a lot of—

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

But it only allows them a leeway from certain forms of compensation. The situation that I proposed is if it delays a passenger where they have to stay overnight. The airline is still on the hook for putting them up in a hotel and feeding them. Those are the technical specifics of the bill, Mr. Fruitman.

[Mel Fruitman]

You're referring specifically to delays, and I already referenced that. That, in my mind, is about the only area that I saw in there that perhaps needed a slight wording change to make sure that the extraordinary measures applied in that situation, as well.