Thank you very much.
My name is Jeff Walker and I am the chief strategy officer at the Canadian Automobile Association, or CAA as most people know us.
Thank you very much for having us here today. We're looking forward to speaking today on Bill C-49, specifically as it relates to air passenger rights.
I'm going to begin my remarks by providing a little bit of background on our role in air passenger rights issues. As many of you probably know, CAA has been around for over 100 years. We were founded in 1913 and our major mandate at the beginning was road and driver safety, as an advocate for the consumer and the consumer interests around roads and driving. Today we have 6.2 million members from coast to coast and we offer a wide range of services that go far beyond that.
In fact, CAA is Canada's largest leisure travel provider and we have a large network of 137 stores across the country and online that provide services to members. We remain a not-for-profit, member-driven organization that is at its heart an advocate for the Canadian traveller.
Our agents at CAA work with air passengers every day and we understand this business very well. This allows us to take a strong and informed position in favour of air passenger rights while at the same time recognizing that the consumer interest is best served by healthy, competing airlines.
The passenger protection regime we have in Canada has been untouched for many years, leading to a widening discrepancy between how U.S. and European air travellers are treated on one side, and how Canadians are treated on the other. It's time we do better when it comes to protecting Canadian air travellers.
We do a lot of polling, a lot of member research. The work we've done in talking to members and non-members alike has found that over 90%—in fact, 91%—of Canadians agree that it's time Canada had its own national airline consumer code. We welcome and support Bill C-49 as it contains many of the improvements that we have been calling for over the last several years, and we believe it's going to be better for the travelling public. At the same time, the bill will only take us partway to where we need to be. The bill leaves the all-important details on treatment and compensation—for example, when and how much—to a future regulatory process, and we urge this committee to pay close attention to that process. A good-sounding bill will end up not meeting expectations if the end result is a coffee coupon and compensation for being bumped somewhere someday. We all have to work to make sure that doesn't happen.
Bill C-49 addresses some important areas such as covering all airlines, both domestic and foreign, as well as all passengers, non-Canadian or Canadian, to avoid situations where there is an unlevel playing field. It sets out minimum standards of treatment and compensation for key categories such as delays, cancellations, overbooking, and lost bags. It addresses the seating of families with children at no extra fee. It provides the CTA's ability to collect and monitor airline performance data as it relates to passenger handling, and it gives the agency the ability to extend decisions to other passengers on the same flight who are affected by the same incident.
However, the bill relies on a complaint from a passenger in order to trigger any action. We agree with Scott Streiner, who is the CEO of the CTA, and David Emerson, both of whom said in testimony earlier this week that the regime would be more effective if the agency could initiate its own investigations when it deems necessary and make industry-wide rulings on minimum treatment rather than restricting its findings to passengers on one specific flight.
It's worth noting that the CTA was able to initiate hearings in the Air Transat situation a few weeks ago only because it concerned an international flight. It just happened to fall into that space; otherwise, unfortunately it could not even have been dealt with in that context. The CTA wouldn't have had the authority, even under Bill C-49, to decide to hold a hearing into a similar situation if the flight occurred within Canada, nor will the CTA be able to examine any broader systemic issues that the CTA might note unless they come from a specific complainant. It might have to ask the minister for permission to investigate them.
Another matter worth noting is that in some circumstances, regulations are likely to set out clear rules, for instance, that for a delay of x hours within an airline's control, passengers might receive y in compensation. The current system would require a complaint from a passenger in order to initiate that payment. Airlines have this information though, and they know when they're offside, so why does this system have to wait for a complaint? Why not compensate proactively in these cases?
This is an important consideration in light of recent findings from the EU consumer association, which reports that only one in four EU flyers is getting the compensation they're due for lengthy delays because airlines are not required to proactively offer it. This would allow CTA to focus on more complex complaints.
The International Air Transport Association says 60 countries have some form of passenger rights legislation already in place. For too long Canada has relied on the airline's own policy, and a needlessly complex complaint process through the CTA. While the vast majority of air travel goes off without a hitch, a clear set of standards would benefit everyone from passengers to the industry, which will be able to compete on a level playing field.
However, as noted earlier, whether this new regime is effective will be dependent on the regulatory process. As a consumer watchdog, here are some of what CAA is looking for in this process.
First is clear, simple, and understandable terms and conditions that the average traveller can understand. Second is levels of compensation and minimum treatment that ensure travellers are well treated and that for the airlines, in the words of Parliamentary Secretary McCrimmon, “it's not worth your while…to treat people this way”. Third is proactive disclosure by airlines of a consumer's right to compensation and minimum treatment. Fourth is regular reviews to ensure that regulations and compensation levels remain appropriate, and finally, airline performance reporting with respect to the handling of passengers and luggage should be made public regularly. Sunshine is after all the best disinfectant.
We will be participating in the regulation-making process to be sure that consumer interests continue to be heard loud and clear. In order for Canadians to judge the new system a success, we need to make this right.
We urge this committee to stay engaged even beyond these hearings to make sure the eventual system is one that works well for all Canadian air passengers.
Thank you. I'd be pleased to take any questions.