Evidence of meeting #70 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was passengers.
A video is available from Parliament.
7:05 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Flight Claim Canada Inc.
Personally, I think so.
7:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
All right. We've completed our first round. Does anyone have a question that they have not been able to get sufficient answers to, on either side of the table?
Mr. Sikand has indicated he had a question. Is it one question?
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Liberal
Gagan Sikand Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
It was various questions, but I think they've all been answered.
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Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
I have just one question to wrap up, and perhaps it's a good time to say thank you to our witnesses and to my colleagues on both sides of the table. This has been a valuable and interesting few days, and I really do appreciate everyone's work and look forward to our further deliberations.
Dr. Lukács, chief amongst your complaints seems to be the fact, in essence, that a lot of people are experiencing irritants and not having a remedy, if I can say there's one overarching theme. Do you think Bill C-49, particularly the requirement that would have airlines adopt clear and concise descriptions of how someone can enforce remedies, is going to improve the situation over the status quo?
7:05 p.m.
Founder and Coordinator, Air Passenger Rights
Unfortunately not.
The way I would articulate it is that Bill C-49 is going to double the amount of compensation that passengers are not going to receive.
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Voices
Oh, oh!
7:05 p.m.
Conservative
Michael Chong Conservative Wellington—Halton Hills, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Just to clarify, so I can plan out my week, we're going to meet next week on Tuesday for future committee business. How much time should we budget for that? Are we meeting for an hour or two hours? Are we going to book two hours?
7:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
Well, you can book two hours. Hopefully, we'll be finished in 15 minutes. That would be the preferable, but it might take a little longer than that.
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Conservative
Michael Chong Conservative Wellington—Halton Hills, ON
That's great.
I have another question. This is the first time I've been on committee in this Parliament, so I don't know what the practice is for committee business. I know that when I first started as a parliamentarian 13 years ago nothing was in camera except for the discussion of potential witnesses, in order to ensure that nobody besmirched the reputation of a witness. In the last Parliament, I think all committee business was in camera for most of the committees. What are we going to do next Tuesday?
7:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
Why don't you answer that as the clerk, officially?
Technically, you're automatically in camera, but it's up to the committee. It depends on the issues we're dealing with. Quite often, we try to do things in public. Otherwise it's in camera, but it's totally up to the committee as to how they decide to do it.
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Conservative
7:05 p.m.
Liberal
Vance Badawey Liberal Niagara Centre, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
By the way, Michael, welcome. It's great to have you on board.
The rule of thumb is that we try to stay in public session and stay out of in camera, but there is obviously a lot of sensitivity. When it's a negotiation or an issue of sensitivity that can affect an individual, or things of that nature, we'll go into closed session, but it's very rare. From our side, and even your side, I know that in the past we've always preferred to stay in open session.
7:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
To our witnesses, thank you so much. You should feel good. We managed to get pretty much all of the witnesses who wanted to appear before us to appear, and that included the four of you. Thank you very much for the information today.
We will now adjourn the meeting. That's the end of four days. I have to say thank you to all our support staff, our clerk and everyone, and to our members.