With respect to northern communities, part and parcel of the problem is lack of sufficient competition. However, even as Bill C-49 reads currently with respect to the challenges for the industry, the delays they experience in the north are often caused by not simply “circumstances beyond the airlines' control”, but purely weather.
In Canada, no person would want to hold an airline responsible for a genuine weather issue. That is a no-brainer. I'm not advocating for holding airlines responsible for what is genuinely weather. The trouble is that airlines often abuse the claims for weather. A claim that a flight from Toronto to Halifax was cancelled due to weather when the weather was happening in Vancouver is unacceptable.
Insofar as enforcement is concerned, the greatest problem is that many of those enforcement actions are discretionary. They are up to someone to decide whether they will or will not take enforcement action, and that has changed....
To be clear, I'm not proposing to punish airlines for delays. What I am proposing is that if a flight is delayed and an amount of compensation is owed, even if it's a small amount, if that amount of compensation is not paid out, then there should be a hefty penalty. The penalty should be attached to not complying with the rules, not the delay itself.