Transport Committee on March 19th, 2024

[Heather Walkus]

I think it is. The attitude is different. I've noticed that in the last few months that I've travelled.

What I'm noticing, too, is that they're not empowered to make decisions on the ground when something comes up with a person with a disability. You say, “I need this”, and they say that they don't know if they're allowed to take you to get something to eat. They have to check. They're not empowering their frontline people and making them feel like it's okay that they made a decision that was best for that customer.

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

Thank you very much.

Mr. Lepofsky, could you elaborate on some of the things I referred to there?

[David Lepofsky]

Sure.

With respect to training and all the other things Air Canada said, they're doing all this, but we are still having the same problems; ergo, we need substantially more legislated, enforced systemic solutions. That's the 19 that are in our brief.

Number two, let me say that with respect to the issue of training, here's another systemic problem. I've had somebody guiding me recently in an airport and I asked if this was their full-time job. They said no; they rotate them. Sometimes they're on the front desk or the check-in desk, or sometimes they're elsewhere. If they're trained, they may not actually put that training into effect until much later. If we train them, which we seem to have to do too often, they may get rotated somewhere else after. Why not have a team of people where this is what they do?

Again, do they need a retired lawyer and part-time law prof to tell them how to do this stuff? What are they paid for, seriously?

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

Ms. Walkus, I'll come back to you again.

You believe that companies like WestJet and Air Canada—which made $2 billion last year, according to the CEO—should be investing in new aircraft and new technology to better serve Canadians and passengers with accessibility needs.

What kind of equipment or things have you thought about to promote to the companies?

[Heather Walkus]

One of the things is the flat screen in front of you, when you are seated in the airplane. I can't use it. It has 90% of the information about what's going on on that airplane. It isn't a talking screen, and it's flat. There are no buttons to push. I pay the same fare as any other customer on that plane, yet I can't use that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Rogers, and thank you, Ms. Walkus.

Mr. Barsalou‑Duval, you have the floor for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank both witnesses for joining us today.

In their opening remarks, the Air Canada officials said that customers were dissatisfied in only 0.15% of cases, or had at least filed complaints about flights—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Mr. Barsalou‑Duval, I'm sorry to interrupt you. I just want to make sure that Ms. Walkus understands what you're saying.

Ms. Walkus, are you getting the translation?

[Heather Walkus]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Okay, I just wanted to confirm that.

Mr. Barsalou‑Duval, you have the floor.

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

I was saying that, according to the Air Canada officials, complaints were filed in only 0.15% of situations that involved people with reduced mobility or disabilities.

Ms. Walkus and Mr. Lepofsky, you seem to be fairly regular users of this type of transportation.

Do difficult situations occur only 0.15% of the time when you fly, for example? How often do these situations actually occur, in your experience?

[Heather Walkus]

For me, it's 95% of the time. In fact, I can't remember one trip where there wasn't a major issue for me, either almost missing my flight or being parked somewhere. It's almost every time. Again, as David said, we are spending an inordinate amount of time training the staff.

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

Mr. Lepofsky, what are your thoughts?

[David Lepofsky]

I will tell you that every person with a disability I talk to about this—and I get lots of feedback in my leadership role with my coalition—has had problems. I don't mean all the time. I don't even know if it's most of the time. Whenever we get on a plane, we never know what we're in for, and we have to be ready for the worst.

Let's take that statistic, and let's tear it apart. Most of us, I think.... I can certainly say for myself that I have not filed complaints about 99.9% of the incidents. I wouldn't have time to eat, sleep, or do anything else if that's all I did.

Number two, I dare say most people don't know how or where to file complaints, even if they want to. That should be announced at the airports. That should be announced on every flight. That should be included on every ticket.

Number three, many people travel on our airlines but end up outside Canada. When they get back to their home country, if they've had a bad experience, do you think they're calling to find out which regulatory agency deals with the problems they've faced and how to file a complaint, and getting involved in some long legal process? I don't think so.

When Air Canada or any other airline comes up with those numbers, forgive me, but they're, in effect, trivializing what we're facing. In fairness, the CEO of Air Canada said he knows it's under-reported, and he knows there are more, so I want to be fair about that. However, to be able to say you're doing a good job, and these are the numbers, is to be shockingly out of touch with our experience. Either it's just a huge coincidence that the only people with disabilities who happen to talk to me about this are people who have had these problems, or it's a bigger problem. I leave it to you to decide which it is.

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

Thank you. That certainly answers my question.

Mr. Lepofsky, in your opening remarks, you spoke about the Canadian Transportation Agency, with which you seemed dissatisfied. Could you explain why? Have you ever dealt with the transportation agency?

You said that you don't necessarily file a complaint every time an unfortunate situation arises. What's the problem with the transportation agency's approach to handling complaints from people with disabilities?

[David Lepofsky]

The first problem is that there's no rapid solution. If you file a complaint, you'd better be ready for a very long process. To be honest, life's too short. We can't live that way and have a life.

The second problem is that they are too close to the airline industry. It's a classic example of the recurring problem of regulatory capture. It's not unique to the CTA. It's not unique to regulators in Canada, but it's obvious.

For example, if you read their regulations, which they passed in 2019—in our brief, we have a link to our critique of those regulations when they were under consideration—they really read like they were written by the airlines: “You have to do this, except....” or “You're required to do x, except....” There are all these loopholes that are bigger than the rights.

This is the final point. Even if you were to disagree—and I'm not saying you do, but if we assume for the moment that you disagree with everything I just said—the bottom line is that they are mandated to regulate airline accessibility. They've had that mandate for decades. It didn't come with the Accessible Canada Act; they've had it for decades. These problems have existed for decades. In significant ways, they have not gotten better, and in some ways, they've gotten worse. The regulator has failed to achieve the results that we are entitled to.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much.

[David Lepofsky]

If you keep going back to them, I suspect you're going to get the same results.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Lepofsky.

Thank you, Mr. Barsalou‑Duval.

Next we have Mr. Bachrach.

The floor is yours. You have six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank you again, Professor Lepofsky, for being here and for stating so clearly and adamantly what the problem is and the urgency of making progress on this.

I'm trying to decide where to start and how to add to this conversation with some questions. It seems, from listening to you, that the two themes that have come up are consistency and accountability.

I share your frustration, because this committee hears from many corporations that come here and tell us about their good works—by very well-meaning people—and it feels, after many meetings like that, like it's too great an expectation to expect these companies to proactively and voluntarily address these systemic issues.

Where does the buck stop when it comes to accountability?

[David Lepofsky]

Number one, it's with a regulator that's holding them accountable. Number two, it's with the CEOs. Number three—and I'm not partisan when I say this—it's with the right ministers and a government that have the authority to do it.

Excuse me, but a summit is a photo op. They may discuss things and they may come up with good stuff, but they don't need to wait two months for a summit to deal with the 19 issues that are in our brief. The 19 recommendations are not something that we somehow magically innovated and that they couldn't have thought of—like having people know what rights they have in order to get service from the airline. My theme, again, is that it's not rocket science. What we need is concrete action.

The other thing is with respect to the airlines and the CTA having consultative committees. That's great—they bring in some people with disabilities and they ask questions—but these are recurring problems. I'm not saying anything that people with disabilities—and, I believe, the airlines—haven't known about for years and decades. It's not that they need to hear more from us. They need to actually do something about it.

It would be wrong for this committee to recommend—and I'm not saying you're going to—and to think that the solution is to tell each airline to set up a disability advisory committee, so that we have to volunteer our services to these for-profit companies to keep telling them, one after the other, the exact same thing.

The solution is to legislate the requirements effectively and enforce them, and that's what we've listed in our brief.

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

It's effective legislation that's effectively enforced, and the buck stops with the minister who is responsible for the regulator and for setting the parameters within which the airlines operate.

[David Lepofsky]

And the CEOs.

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

And the CEOs.

[David Lepofsky]

Absolutely.

I'm not trying to be personal toward the CEOs of any airlines. There was one here today. I am sure they're all well intentioned—in the disability world, everybody is well intentioned toward us—but we keep facing the barriers.

The solution is having the CEO of each airline say to their airline, “No more passing people like a baton and no more seating people where they have to call out to strangers if they need to go to the bathroom. Let's give everybody a single number that they can call for help and it will actually get answered in five minutes and not an hour.” If they all do that, and if they say there are consequences down the line if these things don't happen, they can happen.