Thank you.
I want to thank the excellent team of law students from the law school at Western, who've provided tremendous support for what I'm going to say. Anything that's wrong is my fault. Anything that's right is their fault.
Enough is enough. As a blind person, I dread entering Canadian airspace. I never know whether the service I'm going to get—for basic accommodation needs that are well known and easy to provide—will be reliable or pathetic.
We heard from Air Canada today that they're doing a good job, that they've put in place measures that are needed to fix this, that the problems are few or infrequent, and that all they really need is more education or training for their staff. Every single one of those statements is wrong, and the fact that Air Canada's leadership said this is proof that we need far more systemic solutions. Let me offer you some.
Number one, the U.S. has the Airline Passengers with Disabilities Bill of Rights, so why don't we? It is absurd that, on a flight to Atlanta three weeks ago, my email from Air Canada told me about the American bill of rights, but nothing about the services available to me as a blind passenger in Canada, even though I'm on record and file as a blind passenger.
We need a new regulatory agency to oversee accessibility of air travel. The Canadian Transportation Agency has had this mandate not for years, but for decades. They have failed, and they are failing, and it's because they're too close to the airlines. Keep leaving it with them and you're going to keep getting the same results. How surprising is it that so few of us file so few complaints with their process? If you read the accessible air travel regulations they passed in 2019, they are more loopholes than rules. The fact of the matter is that they read like they were written by the airlines.
How about another basic solution that's easier than changing the regulatory agency? How about requiring airlines to automatically tell us passengers with disabilities what services they offer so that we're not having to go running around their websites, one airline at a time, hoping we can find it, hoping it's up to date? That's assuming we have a computer and can afford it, and have adaptive tech and can use it.
How about mandatorily requiring something like the U.S. bill of rights for passengers with disabilities? How about telling us, in every notification, whom to call for support, whom to call for curbside assistance? This is not rocket science, but they don't do it.
How about having one-stop support? How about having a fast-action, fast-service disability hotline at each airline? You phone it and you don't wait on hold for an hour, and you don't have to listen to miserably nerve-racking music; you just get someone who can route you through to the solution. It could be the way to request services and to file complaints. How about requiring the airlines on our flights and the airports in their announcements to regularly announce the availability of that hotline? If more people knew how to complain, the CEO of Air Canada wouldn't be coming here telling you how few complaints they get.
How about requiring the regulator to deploy secret shoppers so we have independent monitoring of how their services are? You heard from the CEO of Air Canada that they now announce pre-boarding for passengers with disabilities—not on the Air Canada flight I was on last night to come here.
How about having an assured front desk check-in at a large airport, like at terminal 1 in Toronto, where you don't have to try to brave a phalanx of stanchions and check-in machines, and other confusing signage and so on, so you can check in right inside the door? Air Canada didn't have it. Let's just say somebody got an interesting idea, and eventually they did have it, but then they killed it. I asked them to restore it. They didn't. I then heard that they did, but only for some flights and not others. If you can't figure it out, imagine how I feel.
How about requiring that one person will guide you through the whole airport, rather than being passed from one person to the next—sometimes as many as three or four—like you're a baton in a relay race?
We heard about the need for training. Can I tell you—I'm just giving you my experience; lots of people with disabilities can tell you the same—how many of their ground assistance persons assigned to guide me I have had to teach how to guide a blind person?
Did I mention this is not rocket science? These aren't bad people. They're in a bad system that needs to be fixed.
Let me wrap up by telling you there are a lot more things we can require. How about standards for new aircraft design?
I was on a plane just two weeks ago. Do you know that call button to let the flight attendant know you need help? It's always been a physical button, but more and more, it's a touch screen that blind people can't operate. Did they just invent blind people? This is ridiculous.
Now, I don't want to make it sound like it's all Air Canada. These things need to be done and measures need to be across the board. Air Canada is not the leader that we want airlines to follow. We need them all to become leaders and to change their practices.
Thank you very much.