Transport Committee on Sept. 14th, 2017

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for presenting today.

My biggest concern right now is the northern communities, the isolated communities, where air travel is very expensive. They have a different reality from people in the south. My concern is that this piece of legislation we're studying right now is going to significantly impact the north, because a lot of times, regulations in the south make sense and make absolutely no sense in the north, because they are two different realities. Do you think there should be exceptions for northern communities and isolated communities, or do you think we should just suck it up, and maybe we won't have any industry in the north? My question is to anyone who wants to answer it, because it's multi-faceted.

[Jacob Charbonneau]

I would certainly like to answer.

When you set up a compensation system, you have to take into account the realities. If something is not attributable to the airline, there are reasons for that. There are also reasons for the contrary. That has to be taken into consideration when making regulations.

When an airline faces complications that are not caused by its own decisions, but by geography, those can clearly become exceptional circumstances and the airline may be exempted from providing compensation.

[Meriem Amir]

I can also add to the answer.

In the European Union, we see that many countries have very different geographical realities and climates. All sorts of airports are subject to very different circumstances. Yet they are all subject to the same regulations, which seems to work well.

As my colleague Mr. Charbonneau said, they are exempted only in extraordinary circumstances that arise through no fault of their own. So I do not see why, for the few flights to Canada's north, although I'm not an air transportation expert....

In my opinion, they are designed for the purpose, equipped differently, and have experienced pilots to deal with particular climate conditions. With the equipment and the experience, I think a two-hour delay would be the same as a delay in the south with equipment adapted to the specific temperature of the south. The regulations should simply include a fairly broad and clear framework, as is the case in the European Union.

I think the exemption for exceptional circumstances might be a good thing.

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

I'm just looking at the north. The only other country that experiences the same sort of climate that we have is Russia. We have Nunavut, and they're in a unique situation. People are in small, isolated communities and there are so many things outside of their control.

We have to remember that Canada is a very large country, and fuel delivery is a big issue that can be affected for various reasons. By saying that we'll make provisions, it means absolutely nothing if it is not in the legislation. Rules after the fact never happen. I think we have to be very cautious on how we move forward.

Also, I was looking at your chart up there, and it seems like complaints and enforcement go hand in hand—less enforcement, more complaints.

I don't know if the airline industry is getting worse or the enforcement is the problem. I do a lot of travelling and I haven't really experienced a lot of delays. There are delays, but I expect that, because airlines have situations out of their control.

I think we have to do a better job in enforcement. Also, with Bill C-49, we have to ensure that we make provisions for northern communities.

Enforcement has to go hand in hand. Do you think that changing the rules is going to make a difference if enforcement stays the way it is, or do you think that setting up rules and just moving on will make a difference?

[Gábor Lukács]

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.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Yurdiga, your time is up. Thank you for participating today.

Mr. Hardie.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Mr. Charbonneau, how do you get paid? Do you work on a contingent basis for the files you take on?

[Jacob Charbonneau]

Actually, we provide a service that is risk-free for customers, and we work entirely on commission. If we don't win the case, we do not claim anything from the customer, but if we do, we keep a percentage of the compensation.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

In Canada, that percentage or contingency fee could be as high as 33% of the award.

[Jacob Charbonneau]

In our case, it's 25%.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Twenty-five per cent.

Mr. Lukács, you've also undertaken action on behalf of some clients. Do you charge a fee?

[Gábor Lukács]

Absolutely not. Our activities are completely pro bono.

Actually, our website has even been set up purely from donations received from the community.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Mr. Charbonneau, I apologize for asking Mr. Lukács that question.

[Jacob Charbonneau]

He has to make a living.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Yes.

We have an interesting situation. Our previous panels indicated that the profit margin per passenger is very low. In fact, you made the comment that passengers are treated as a commodity, and in a sense I guess they are, because the airlines deal on a volume basis. Gone are the days when only the elite would fly, and therefore everything was crystal and silverware. On the one hand, we have a migration to opening up air travel to more people, but on the other, there seems to have been a trade-off.

One of the principles they've been trying to weave through this bill, Bill C-49, is the principle of balance. What does reflect a balance?

Mr. Lukács, with respect, you sound a little bloodthirsty. But at the same time, obviously we have had some outrageous incidents, so what does the balance really look like?

Mr. Charbonneau, I'll ask you.

[Jacob Charbonneau]

It means striking a balance by providing a service that allows passengers not to feel that they are taken hostage. With respect to the events in the past few months, we are very concerned that the passengers felt like they were being held hostage. They had little recourse, little information, and were left to their own devices. We want rules to be established to allow for compensation, but also to ensure that companies have to adjust and take better care of their customers. They will have to make sure there are fewer and fewer delays and cancellations, and, when they do happen—which they will, because of all sorts of circumstances—the customers will be adequately taken care of.

Right now, there is some general grumbling and that is why bills are introduced. More and more people are dissatisfied with the system. The idea is to find ways to support passengers when they are faced with problems.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

You would want to be cautious. If you're advocating, for instance, for higher penalties, you have a material interest in those higher penalties. If it were discovered that you were chasing people, looking for clients, that's called champerty, and there are some problems with that.

Mr. Gooch, is it recognized that the airports themselves also should have some accountability for the passenger experience, particularly when delays aren't a result of a force of nature or whatever but the ramp people don't show up on time and the airline is stuck out on the tarmac? That's not the airplane's fault. I don't see anything anywhere that suggests the airport authority itself would owe some compensation to the passenger.

[Daniel-Robert Gooch]

As I said earlier, the interaction at an airport is quite complex. There are many different parties involved, and it's not always visible where the issue is. The ramp employee you spoke about actually is usually an airline employee. There's a lot of misunderstanding about who does what at an airport.

I know that travellers want people to take responsibility. Certainly, airports strive to take responsibility for the experience passengers receive at their airport.

If someone comes up to me and yells at me for my lawn being too long and tells me that the lawn is really long and I need to mow that lawn, I look at the lawn and I see it's really long and it really needs to be mowed. But if my house is the one down the street, there's only so much I can do to help that guy get his lawn mowed.

It's not a great analogy.

There are many different players in an incident. Even in some of the biggest ones, it's hard to know who's at fault. Take a tarmac employee, for example—

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

If I could, I think what we're dealing with here, then, is that.... The lines of accountability aren't terribly clear, because it is such a complex situation.

With respect to incidents that happen, those weird ones, the ones that hit the news, is there a process by which the airport authorities and the airlines collaborate on contingency plans, or at the very least, somebody knows who has the lead on this thing?

[Daniel-Robert Gooch]

Yes. That's an ongoing thing. That happens all the time. When there are major incidents, everybody gets together and asks what they did wrong here, how they dropped the ball, and how they could do this better. And it happens not just—

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

I'm not talking about after the fact; I'm talking about when the you-know-what hits the fan.

[Daniel-Robert Gooch]

That's what I'm talking about as well.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Is there a situation room where all of the players come in and say, “Here's what's happening right now. What are we going to do?”

[Daniel-Robert Gooch]

There are. Each airport is set up differently, but there are situation rooms. Some of these things happen very quickly, and when situations like this occur, it's a mess and everybody is just trying to do their best job. They're trying to get the travellers to where they're going safely, securely, and to get together afterwards to help ensure that it doesn't happen again. When they are really big incidents that are high profile, of course they get together after the fact and say, “Okay what did we do wrong; how can we do this better?” They don't just share it amongst themselves; they share it with each other. We talk about it at conferences.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

I do understand that, but I—