Transport Committee on Feb. 27th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 103 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Monday, November 20, 2023, the committee is meeting to study accessible transportation for persons with disabilities.

Today's meeting is being held in hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders of the House of Commons. Members are attending in person, in the room, or remotely using the Zoom application.

Although this room is equipped with a sophisticated audio system, feedback events can occur. These can be extremely harmful to interpreters and can cause serious injuries. The most common cause of sound feedback is an earpiece worn too close to a microphone. We therefore ask all participants to exercise a high degree of caution when handling the earpieces, especially when your microphone or your neighbour's is turned on. To prevent incidents and safeguard the hearing health of our interpreters, I invite participants to ensure that they speak into the microphone to which their headset is plugged into and to avoid manipulating the earbuds by placing them on the table away from the microphone when they are not in use.

I'd now like to welcome our witnesses for the first hour.

Appearing before us today, we have, from the Canadian Transportation Agency, France Pégeot, chair and chief executive officer; and Tom Oommen, director general, analysis and outreach branch. From the Department of Employment and Social Development, we have Stephanie Cadieux, chief accessibility officer; and from the Office of the Auditor General, we have Karen Hogan, the Auditor General of Canada; Milan Duvnjak, principal; and Susie Fortier, director.

Welcome to all of you joining us here and virtually.

We'll begin with opening remarks, and for that, I will turn it over to Madame Pégeot.

The floor is yours. You have five minutes.

[France Pégeot, Chair and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Transportation Agency]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, Chair and committee members.

Thank you for your invitation to discuss accessible transportation for persons with disabilities.

The Canadian Transportation Agency has three main responsibilities. Firstly, we help ensure that the national transportation system runs efficiently and smoothly, in the interest of all Canadians.

Secondly, we provide consumer protection for air passengers.

Finally, we protect the fundamental right of persons with disabilities to an accessible transportation network.

The agency is an independent regulator and a tribunal. Specifically, we are the economic regulator of the Canadian transportation system. As a regulator, we make and implement regulations after consultations with the minister. We also monitor compliance and enforce legislation and regulations.

We are, as well, an administrative tribunal. In that capacity, we resolve disputes between regulated industry stakeholders, users of the transportation system, and communities.

Accessibility has always been and continues to be a priority for the CTA. Our approach to accessibility has always been holistic and includes a variety of tools—from discussion to guidance to decisions to regulations to enforcement. This is in recognition of the fact that improving accessibility has to be tackled on multiple fronts.

Our most important regulations on accessibility, the Accessible Transportation for Persons with Disabilities Regulations, or ATPDR, developed out of previous CTA decisions, regulations and codes of practice, and came into force in phases between 2020 and 2022. The ATPDR apply to large transportation service providers. These large transportation providers include large airlines, airport operators, and entities like Canada Border Services Agency and the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority. They provide services to the vast majority of passengers transported in the federally regulated transportation system.

The accessible transportation regulations require, among other things, that federal transportation service providers provide assistance to persons with disabilities in boarding, locating their seats and transferring between a mobility aid and a seat; accept and safely transport mobility aids; and provide temporary replacements and repairs, if required, due to delays or damage. It also ensures that employees who may be required to provide physical assistance receive training to carry out those functions, such as transferring a passenger between a wheelchair and a seat, handling mobility aids and using special equipment such as a lift.

The regulations also include a number of provisions that are considered world leading, for example, allergy buffer zones and the one-person, one-fare requirement for domestic travel. Indeed, while there is certainly room for improvement, as we have witnessed recently, the Canadian regulatory framework for accessible transportation represents a very strong foundation for accessibility.

The agency, like other regulators, uses different tools to achieve compliance, including the issuance of fines or administrative monetary penalties. The agency, as an administrative tribunal, also hears complaints from passengers who believe that a transportation service provider hasn't respected its accessibility-related obligations. In many cases, the agency is able to help resolve those complaints through an informal mediation process, while other complaints are adjudicated by the government in council appointed members of the agency who are like administrative judges.

As the Auditor General noted in her audit of the accessibility of transportation system, we have made enough progress, but there is still work to be done. We are, of course, implementing the recommendations of the Auditor General for accessibility of the transportation system.

Transportation, particularly air transportation, is international by nature. Even as we try to make Canada more accessible, we've looked beyond our borders to try to shape the accessibility of the international air transportation system. For example, since 2019, in collaboration with the National Research Council and Transport Canada, we've led a number of international initiatives to conduct research and develop consensus on how the transportation of mobility aids could be improved. It was very gratifying to see that much of this work led by Canada was incorporated into the policy guidance of the International Air Transportation Association to its member airlines on the transportation of mobility aids that was published in 2023.

In all of our work, we strive to engage representatives of persons with disabilities and the industry to advance accessibility of the system. The Canadian Transportation Agency's accessibility advisory committee includes representatives of both persons with disabilities and industry, and provides a very useful vehicle to receive advice and to share information.

Let me end by sharing with you that we have just obtained the Rick Hansen Foundation gold certification for accessibility for a brand new building. We are very proud of that, and this is another testament of our commitment to accessibility.

Thank you very much.

I am pleased to answer your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Ms. Pageot.

I now give the floor to Ms. Cadieux for five minutes.

[Stephanie Cadieux, Chief Accessibility Officer, Office of the Chief Accessibility Officer, Department of Employment and Social Development]

Thank you.

Good morning.

It's a pleasure to be with you.

I'm working on my French, so the rest will be in English today.

Thank you for inviting me.

I'd like to start by saying that accessible air travel is an issue that can't wait. Action is needed now. It's already overdue, and I know that this committee knows that, as you're taking a closer look at what is needed.

When airlines treat people with disabilities as problems instead of as people, this has a profound effect and causes harm, not just financially, but also in loss of time, and physically and emotionally. All too often when something goes wrong—a mobility aid is lost or damaged—there is very little empathy from staff and no understanding that it isn't a piece of lost luggage.

Many mobility aids are custom fitted and replacements are not optional. It is tantamount to arriving at your destination without your legs. That person has lost a part of their body, their independence and their safety and well-being, so it is not an inconvenience: It's a catastrophic failure. I shouldn't have to explain this, yet I do time and time again, as do others with disabilities.

When these failures happen, the person who has been harmed is left to cope with the situation without adequate assistance from the airline. They are left to fight for a resolution that comes as too little, too late. It is ableism. It's pervasive. It runs through our culture. It's reflected in the way that people with disabilities are “other” all of the time, not just in air travel.

People with disabilities, though, are people first, and by that I mean that we are customers, we are passengers and we deserve equitable service. A friend of mine has a good line that he uses. He says: “I'm disabled. My money isn't.” That is to say, why is it expected and provided for that you have access to a washroom on a plane, but I do not?

Changing the culture so that this is deeply understood at all levels of air travel organizations is critical, because until that understanding is fostered, cultivated and embedded in operations, change isn't going to happen, regardless of the regulations.

In my role as chief accessibility officer, I'm an independent adviser to the minister responsible for the Accessible Canada Act. I also monitor, champion and challenge the progress being made under the act. I am not responsible for standards or regulations, compliance or enforcement.

I issued my first report as CAO two weeks ago. In it, I make a number of recommendations for mandatory training on accessibility and more regulation to ensure that organizations understand what they absolutely must provide. I talk about the need for more and better data. Also, as I follow the work of organizations under the act, I'll be looking for concrete progress on barrier removal year over year.

I'm not suggesting that it's easy. Accessibility is complex. No two people are the same, and what's perfect for me as a wheelchair user is not going to work for someone who is blind or someone who is deaf. Accessibility requires a lot of thought.

Planning for the longer term means looking to include things in infrastructure—the construction of planes for an accessible future fleet—and, for that, the signal from governments, ours and others, needs to be that this will be a requirement. This needs to be happening today.

Lots of good efforts are under way, and I do want to acknowledge the work, but more is needed and faster.

As CAO, I'm looking at what's happening in the industry in other jurisdictions and in the short term and the long term. What are the complexities of the issues and in finding consistent permanent solutions? Ultimately, the issues of accessibility go far beyond mobility aids. There needs to be a focus on the whole travel journey—inclusive of services and service providers—for travellers with the full range of disabilities and service requirements.

Time is limited today, of course, and I am just scratching the surface for you, but if I can summarize very quickly the key things that I think are priorities for action, they are data at a much more granular level and publicly available; air passenger protections specific to accessibility issues; training to focus on customer service; and an inclusive culture and mobility aid handling—finding ways to get it right every single time.

Thank you very much. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Ms. Cadieux.

Next we have Ms. Hogan.

Ms. Hogan, the floor is yours. You have five minutes, please.

[Karen Hogan, Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General]

Mr. Chair, thank you for this opportunity to discuss the findings of our audit of accessible transportation for persons with disabilities, which was tabled in the House of Commons in March 2023.

I would like to acknowledge that this hearing is taking place on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people.

Joining me today are Milan Duvnjak, the principal who was responsible for the audit, and Susie Fortier, the director who led the audit team.

Every person has a right to participate fully and equally in society. Some people in Canada have to constantly fight for rights that others take for granted as basic rights. More than one million persons with disabilities who travelled on a federally regulated mode of transportation in 2019 and 2020 faced a barrier. When access to basic human rights is delayed or denied, the impact is that some members of society are left behind.

This audit did not directly examine airlines or airport authorities. It examined the Canadian Transportation Agency, which is the federal regulator, and VIA Rail and the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, two Crown corporations that provide transportation services. We looked at whether these three organizations worked to identify, remove, and prevent barriers for travellers with disabilities.

Overall, we found that all three organizations had taken steps to identify, reduce and prevent barriers faced by persons with disabilities, but there is still much more work to do. While our report included findings and recommendations related to rail transportation, I will focus my remarks on air transportation, which is the subject of the committee’s study.

The inspections of transportation service providers that the Canadian Transportation Agency carried out as part of its oversight of all transportation modes served to identify and remove some barriers. However, the agency was limited in the type and number of inspections it could conduct. It did not have the authority to access service providers' complaint data to improve its oversight. This means that some barriers could be missed and remain, and that new ones could be introduced.

The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority conducted an open consultation on its accessibility plan and developed training programs. However, at the time of our audit, improvements were still needed in important areas. For example, the authority's website was not fully accessible. It also was not using complaint data to improve the identification of current barriers or to prevent new ones.

To further improve the accessibility of trains, planes and other federally regulated modes of transportation, we recommended that organizations broaden their consultations with persons with disabilities, make their online content fully accessible and use complaint data to identify, learn about and prevent barriers. This is necessary to achieve the federal government’s goal of a barrier-free Canada by 2040.

Mr. Chair, this concludes my opening remarks. We would be pleased to answer any questions the committee may have.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Ms. Hogan.

To begin our line of questioning today, we have Dr. Lewis.

Dr. Lewis, I will turn to the floor over to you for six minutes, please.

[Leslyn Lewis, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

Thank you.

My first question will be for Ms. Stephanie Cadieux.

I want to thank all of the witnesses for coming here today. I especially want to thank you for the time you're taking to appear before this committee and to share your very personal experience. I believe it will help edify our committee and let Canadians know about an aspect of travelling that's very disheartening to hear about. I believe these kinds of stories will help shine a light on an issue that persists. I wish it were a new issue we are talking about. Unfortunately, this is an old issue, and it's one of dignity and compassion.

You highlighted just how difficult it is for people to realize that a mobility aid like a wheelchair is an extension of your body. It facilitates your independence. It's really like losing a part of person's body in transport. Do you think there's enough training so that employees can understand the compassionate side of what really is transpiring to ensure that accessibility is more prevalent in the federally regulated transport sector?

[Stephanie Cadieux]

Thank you for the question.

The short answer is no. I think there are good intentions, and I don't think, necessarily, that the content of the training is bad. I think the content, in most cases, is probably good. I think this is a situation where it needs to be repeated and repeated again. Also, there needs to be some enforcement and follow-up if it's not working, and some change if it's not working.

However, it ultimately comes down to customer service and human interaction, and some of that can't be regulated and or trained. Some of it is about the people, and I can tell you that there are lots of really good people doing this work and lots of really good experiences that people have. The unfortunate challenge is that unless it happens every time, we still have problems.

I'll give you an example very quickly. A couple of flights ago, I was sitting, waiting for the crew to put my chair on the plane—which they are doing now and which I appreciate. However, there were other crew members—baggage handlers—standing on the bridge behind me. They said something like “What's taking so long? Why don't they just strap the wheelchair on top of the plane like they do with bikes on cars?”

It's that kind of insensitivity that allows for mobility aids to be tossed, dropped and left behind. It's an insensitivity that training might address—or it might not. However, if it doesn't, I would argue that there needs to be more training and that it needs to be repeated.

I think that's the piece we have to get at, and it's difficult. It takes time.

[Leslyn Lewis, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

When you discovered that your wheelchair wasn't on the flight to Vancouver, what steps did Air Canada take to rectify the situation?

[Stephanie Cadieux]

Well, after a difficult evening, and once I was back home the next morning, Air Canada notified me that my chair was in Vancouver and it was having it delivered to me. I had my chair back by about one o'clock the following day.

[Leslyn Lewis, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

How did you get home without it?

[Stephanie Cadieux]

Luckily, I was at home and not travelling away from home when I arrived in Vancouver, and my husband picked me up at the airport. Once I was transported in an airport wheelchair to my car and was able to get home, my husband was able to assist me. I had a spare wheelchair at home, luckily. Many people do not.

As traumatic as it was—and I really didn't realize how traumatic being without my chair would be—my experience was rectified quite quickly by the airline, in my case.

[Leslyn Lewis, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

Did Air Canada and the CTA give you any assurances that this wouldn't happen to anybody else, and what mechanisms have they put in place to ensure that?

[Stephanie Cadieux]

They can't, I would say, ensure that it won't happen to anyone else—at least not yet. However, they are working on it.

Since that time, Air Canada has made a number of changes that it's trialing and testing whether or not mobility aids like mine, that can be taken apart or folded, can be carried in the cabin with me so I can be assured it's there. It also has an add-on on its app that will track a mobility aid when it's being put on the plane so that the passenger can see that his or her chair has been loaded.

It is making good attempts to ensure that this doesn't happen. It will remain to be seen how well that works over time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Dr. Lewis.

Thank you, Ms. Cadieux.

Next we have Mr. Rogers. The floor is yours. You have six minutes, sir.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome to our guests today. It's great to have you talking about this particular issue.

I do a lot of travelling on aircraft as an MP. Many of these aircraft are different sizes, of course. With some of the smaller ones, like those prop planes and so on, I often wonder how people with disabilities manage to access these aircraft. There are narrow ramps, for example, that aren't wide enough for a wheelchair. The narrow aisles are difficult to manoeuvre in, even for somebody without a wheelchair.

When I think about the challenges that people with disabilities face, I often wonder and shake my head about what it is that airlines are not doing that they could be doing, such as modifying aircraft and doing different things that would make these aircraft accessible for people in wheelchairs and for people with disabilities.

Would you agree that accessibility is not just a feature or an afterthought and that it is a necessity that must be at the forefront of any travel experience?

I'll put that question to Ms. Cadieux first, and then to Ms. Pégeot.

[Stephanie Cadieux]

Yes, ultimately, accessibility does need to be considered from the start. Unfortunately, I would say that the incident—my incident—thrust this issue into the spotlight, and if that had to happen, I'm glad it happened.

The Accessible Canada Act is forcing organizations that are regulated by the federal government to take a look at this and to actually start to put that plan in place to get accessibility to the forefront, to ensure that organizations are building it in and are understanding that 27% of the population has a disability and needs some form of accommodation and that we can't be leaving those people out anymore. This will take some time.

Infrastructure, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, is one of the things we need to be looking at going forward. In air travel, there will always be challenges. We have to be realistic about that. However, we could do better if we were planning ahead and if we were making it a priority. I have spoken with some of the folks at Boeing and other aircraft manufacturers, and I know they're working on these things. They do believe that there are ways to do it, but they have to be asked to do it by the folks who buy their planes. Ultimately, that rests with the airlines. I think it also rests with governments to signal that this is important and will be a requirement down the line, like the U.S. has done now in making it clear to the airlines that accessible washrooms will be required on single-aisle aircraft in the future.

These things take time to implement. We're talking about 10 or 15 years down the road, now that they've made that commitment, so it is something we need to be thinking about, for sure, and it will take time. Thankfully, I do believe that, with the Accessible Canada Act in place, those conversations are going to continue to be part of the urgent discussion.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Thank you.

Ms. Pégeot, I'd also ask you to comment on that, but before I do.... In your comments, you mentioned accessibility being a priority, of course, and that there needs to be social change and change in corporate culture, and that there is more work to be done, obviously, to make more progress.

Keep in mind the first question and those comments, and I'll give you an opportunity to comment as well.

[France Pégeot]

Of course, I would agree with you that accessibility has to be at the forefront, and we have many tools to advance accessibility. These include guidelines that we provide. We provide training materials on our website, especially for small transporters. We have dispute resolution whereby we resolve a lot of our complaints through mediation, and we have, of course, enforcement tools. All of this, I would say, helps and contributes to our advancing our mandate with regard to accessibility. Hopefully it also changes, I would say, the environment in which transportation companies operate and how they view accessibility.

I certainly support Ms. Cadieux when she says that it's also part of the culture of an organization. Every time I meet with the CEO of an air company, I raise the issue of accessibility. We are also working together with people with disabilities and with the industry to make sure that there is good communication and that people are sensitized the right way to improve accessibility.

Just this summer, for example, we were working with small transporters, and we took people with us who have disabilities. We used some small transporters to Whitehorse, to Dawson City and to Sept-Îles to make sure that we understood their reality. This is certainly something that is very important, and we want to do it.

I want to acknowledge that the work the committee here is doing is actually very helpful in advancing the culture of companies and of the overall transportation system with respect to accessibility—and, I would say, in putting accessibility at the forefront. You have heard from Air Canada and from WestJet about some of the measures they are taking, and I think that the work you're doing is certainly helping.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Thank you for that.

I'll follow up with another question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Unfortunately, Mr. Rogers, you're out of time for this round.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Rogers.

Thank you, Ms. Pégeot.

I now yield the floor to Mr. Barsalou-Duval for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank the witnesses for being with us today.

I'd like to thank Ms. Cadieux in particular for her testimony, which made us a little more aware of what people living with disabilities go through. At the very least, it makes us, who have two arms, two legs and all our means, realize just how little we grasp the trials people with reduced mobility and disabilities encounter in trying to travel.

We were given concrete examples, including the toilet, an example I find striking. I can't imagine someone spending six or ten hours on an airplane without being able to go to the toilet, or having to be accompanied there by someone, a situation that risks infringing on their privacy. I can't imagine how these people feel. It can't be easy. Thank you again, Ms. Cadieux, for your testimony.

This brings me to a question I'd like to ask you. I don't know if you've been following the committee's work so far, but at one of its previous sessions, someone representing an organization said they couldn't understand why some airlines were forcing people who were taking up a lot of space to pay the price of two tickets rather than one. This pricing policy is in force on international flights, but not on domestic flights.

I'd like to know how you would feel, as a person with a disability, if you were asked to pay twice the fare because you have reduced mobility.