Transport Committee on Dec. 8th, 2020

[Dr. Gábor Lukács]

We have not done that calculation. One would have to be very careful to do the proper calculation because you have some statistics on per segment flown, per embarkment. The best way to get information would be to ask the airlines themselves to open their books and provide that information, at least to this committee. If the airlines are asking for money from the public purse, they have to open their books.

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Thank you for that information. The numbers are a little more mind-boggling than I thought. That's good information to have.

You also mentioned earlier—and this perplexes me—that airlines are still selling tickets, only to cancel flights. There was an incident here. I drive because I'm near enough, but two weeks ago on a Thursday, a lot of my colleagues had their airline tickets booked and then got a text/email almost at the same time indicating that their four o'clock flight out of Ottawa on Friday was cancelled due to bad weather. There was no bad weather. It really sent a lot of people scrambling, trying to get home all over Canada. No one could figure out exactly what was going on. Again, that was a Thursday night. The email/text went to everybody almost at the same time indicating that weather had caused their flight to be cancelled.

Is this the type of thing you're talking about, Mr. Lukács?

[Dr. Gábor Lukács]

Mr. Chair, we are seeing a number of instances where airlines make dubious claims about the reasons for flight cancellations. The reason is that if the cancellation is within the airline's control, on top of refunds, airlines also have to compensate passengers for the inconvenience. Given how poorly the APPR is worded and how it has been billed, airlines have a significant financial incentive to not be entirely forthright about the reasons for flight cancellations.

We have also seen airlines blame the pandemic for flight cancellations even though they happened a long time in advance. It was clearly a business decision. There are concerns about transparency. With the numbers, the current financial data and interest in travel, it would be predictable that only a fraction of those flights would operate.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Lukács.

Thank you, Mr. Shipley.

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

We're now going to move on the Liberal Party with Mr. Sidhu for five minutes.

Mr. Sidhu, you have the floor.

[Maninder Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for being with us today and providing some valuable insights.

My first question is for Mr. Jack.

The minister has already stated that assistance to the airlines is conditional on their reimbursing their customers. I have many constituents who have reached out to me to express their concerns in regard to their refund.

What more would you add to that? Would you seek additional conditions to that?

[Ian Jack]

Mr. Chair, thank you.

Do you mean additional conditions on the refunds or on the carriers?

[Maninder Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

I mean additional conditions on the carriers for them to reimburse [Inaudible--Editor] because we want to be responsible as well.

[Ian Jack]

Thank you for the clarification. I appreciate it.

Just today we had one of the carriers announce that they're pulling out of a couple of small markets. Perhaps that's part of their negotiating strategy right now—I'm not sure. If I were a member of the committee, if I were the government, I would want to make sure that the service is restored, that there are guarantees for minimal service across this country. The aviation sector binds us. We have somebody from Air North who has said repeatedly and quite truthfully that people need to travel in the north. People need to travel from communities across this country. Some travel is a nice to have, but some of it is a must-have. We do need to make sure that those services are there.

I would note that the carriers have taken slightly different positions on this. We have heard that WestJet is refunding passengers for flights that it cancelled, not flights that passengers cancelled out of from an abundance of caution in the spring. I cancelled two of my tickets for flights in early to mid-March because I thought there was no way I was going anywhere in April or May. Those were business flights. I'm not out of pocket myself, so I'm not complaining about my own finances, but I'm observing that an awful lot of people would have done that. That's why I think that, overall, it's important that we don't differentiate between the people who cancelled flights themselves during the height of the pandemic and those whose flights were cancelled by the carriers.

[Maninder Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Thank you for that.

Mr. Lawford, I would like to hear your thoughts on this as well.

[John Lawford]

I have some thoughts about bailouts in particular rather than conditions around the tickets. We've advocated for bailout money to make sure that none of that goes to shareholders, with no dividends or extras paid out of that money, and no share buybacks, executive compensation or bonuses, to try to keep all the labour that they presently have so that there are no layoffs when they are receiving bailout monies, and, of course, for consumer refunds in this particular situation. Those are the extra conditions I'm speaking about in terms of bailouts rather than ticket conditions.

[Maninder Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Thank you for that.

Mr. Sparling, I want to thank you for being here.

Regional connectivity is very, very important. It's not just about the connectivity; it's about learning about each other's cultures. Canada is a vast country, and we need to ensure that we're able to travel. I've never been to Yukon. I hope to come one day.

How much assistance have you received so far between the wage subsidy and financial assistance from the federal government through Yukon?

[Joseph Sparling]

Through the end of September, we're at just over $7 million between the Canada emergency wage subsidy and the northern essential air services relief program. The majority of it is the Canada emergency wage subsidy funding. The Yukon government, in conjunction with the federal government, has a program for essential air services in the north, which we certainly have taken advantage of and are very thankful for.

[Maninder Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Thank you for that.

Is there anything else you'd like to add? I've noticed that you're not getting that much speaking time, but I definitely am very intrigued. Are there any other issues you want to bring up or anything you would like to by way of comments?

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

You have one minute.

[Joseph Sparling]

Thank you. Hopefully, I covered everything in the notes. I think one of the things that I tried to point out is that I learned a lot when I was researching just how many—or how few—communities in the whole country actually have scheduled air service. The fact is that the majority of them are communities of under 10,000 people.

There is also the notion of interline agreements. A lot of our regional communities are not accessible to the rest of Canada in the absence of simple interline agreements between air carriers that will show a passenger wanting to go from Toronto to Dawson City, for example, that it's possible to fly there. In the absence of a interline agreement between ourselves and Air Canada, Dawson as a destination doesn't show up.

Another example would be that of a passenger who flies from Old Crow to Toronto and misses a connection in Vancouver with an Air Canada or WestJet flight. They could conceivably be asked to buy a new ticket, because there is no interline agreement between the two carriers.

I think that if our goal as a nation is to truly link every community in the country together, then we should be making the airlines mandated to link themselves together so passengers can check their bags and be protected when transiting from one carrier to another. This should not be a competitive tool that a big airline can use against small airlines. I think that's a key point to think about.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Sparling and Mr. Sidhu.

I'm now going to move on for two and a half minutes to Mr. Barsalou-Duval and the Bloc Québécois.

Mr. Barsalou-Duval, the floor is now yours.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My next question is for Mr. Charbonneau from Late Flight Claim Canada.

Mr. Charbonneau, you mentioned earlier that, since the start of the pandemic, several countries around the world, including EU countries and the United States, have been stating loud and clear that passengers are entitled to a refund. Here, in Canada, it's quite the opposite. The policies of the Canadian Transportation Agency and the statements of the Minister of Transport, Marc Garneau, have resulted in a decrease in the protections offered to passengers. For example, since the beginning of the pandemic, the minister has not supported passengers' right to a refund. In fact, what he is now saying is that passengers may be entitled to a refund if there was government assistance, but he isn't defending their right to reimbursement.

I'd like to know what you think of Canada's position, compared to the rest of the world, with respect to passenger protection.

[Jacob Charbonneau]

Indeed, in Canada, the political system and the Canadian Transportation Agency appear to favour carriers at the expense of consumers. And, it's taken a long time to address the issue, whereas in other countries it was done at the beginning of the crisis.

There is also a difference in the way the Air Passenger Protection Regulations are interpreted. As the name implies, these are regulations that should protect consumers. The numbers prove how necessary the regulations were. Since they was put in place on December 19, 2019, there have been 22,000 complaints. Half of them were filed before the crisis, so within the first three months after the regulation was put in place.

If regulations that are designed to protect passengers generates so many complaints, questions may be raised about their merits and enforcement. If you have the power to ignore it when passengers need it, it's just as problematic.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Thank you for your answer.

I'm going to ask you another question.

The purchase of Air Transat by Air Canada has been under discussion for several months. Even in a situation where there's a certain amount of competition, we can see that passengers' rights are being abused. If we have to find ourselves in a situation where there will be even less competition for air transport in Quebec, won't that have an effect on the conditions under which passengers will travel?

[Jacob Charbonneau]

Obviously, this can become problematic, because you are giving the keys to the kingdom to a single company, in this case a company that often sets itself apart, but not for the right reasons: it is the subject of several complaints, both in terms of language and services offered.

It also puts the entire industry at risk. Less competition means fewer players in the value chain for services, because you want to get volume discounts, and if there are fewer players, then fewer suppliers are engaged. But the value chain and the critical chain are important because if there are fewer suppliers, as soon as one of them has a problem, it can affect the whole industry. If there is a global computer failure, as we've already seen with some carriers, it affects the entire industry. If there is widespread piracy, it will affect the entire industry. Obviously, the less competition there is, the more the industry is at risk, and the less we try to stand out.

This is also the case for other stakeholders. I'm thinking of travel agents and travel agencies. If there isn't as much competition, these people won't have the choice to use a given supplier, then there will be no room for negotiation.

The same applies to passengers. If there isn't enough airline choice in Canada, and they are forced to choose between Air Canada and Air Canada, they risk going to an airline outside of Canada, which can result in a reduction in market share for Canadian companies.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Charbonneau, and thank you, Mr. Barsalou-Duval.

We'll now move on to the NDP.

Mr. Bachrach, you have two and half minutes. The floor is yours.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Lukács, in the recent questions we heard about the 11,000 complaints that the CTA received from passengers even before the pandemic, with a further 11,000 complaints or claims afterwards. What do you think the issues are preventing these complaints from being resolved in a timely way. What impacts are these delays having on the ability of air passengers to assert their consumer rights in Canada?

[Dr. Gábor Lukács]

What is missing first and foremost in dealing with those complaints is the will by the Canadian Transportation Agency to address them. We have documents indicating that the Canadian Transportation Agency has been sending away passengers who have valid complaints, telling them that they have no case. We don't know the full extent of that, because we haven't yet received all of the documents under access to information.

The issue of refunds seems to be the primary source of the recent batch of complaints. They could have been dealt with very swiftly and simply in a single proceeding for each airline. Precedence for that exists from SkyGreece—I have that from 2015—when they issued a single decision to deal with all of the issues relating to passengers who were stranded.

It does not take months or years to deal with some of those issues. It just takes the will to address it.