Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon, members of the committee. Thank you for receiving me and allowing me to present my comments.
I have been a lawyer with Option consommateurs for 12 years. Our organization was created in 1983, and its mission is to help consumers defend their rights. As such, we receive thousands of requests for information each year from people who have problems with merchants, including the travel industry.
Since the start of the pandemic, the problems experienced by air passengers have highlighted the flaws in the regulations designed to protect them. Indeed, it is for this reason that the Air Passenger Protection Regulations have recently been amended to clarify passengers' rights to reimbursement, even if the cancellation or disruption of a flight is beyond the control of the carrier.
However, the chaos at Canadian airports, particularly in Montreal—which has made Canada the laughing stock of other countries—has proven two things to us. First, customer satisfaction is not a priority for airlines. Second, current regulations do not provide adequate protection for consumers.
In our view, the high number of complaints received by the Canadian Transportation Agency is only the tip of the iceberg and demonstrates that the current regulations present enforcement difficulties. We would therefore like to share with you some proposals to improve the regulations.
In the event of a flight delay or cancellation, the level of liability a carrier must assume depends on its level of control over the situation. While this makes sense in theory, it is problematic in practice. This is because the onus is still on the passengers to seek justice by seeking compensation from the carrier.
Yet, in order to do so, passengers are entirely dependent on the information provided to them by the carrier. The problem is that the carrier has a conflict of interest. When the reason for the disruption is within its control, it has an obligation to compensate passengers. Since it is expensive, it has an interest in not recognizing this. This was also the case during the air traffic disruptions that occurred this summer. Indeed, several carriers claimed that the pandemic was the cause of the problems in order to avoid paying compensation. In short, the pandemic had a very broad back, again.
Before the Canadian Transportation Agency, the passenger has the burden of proving that the regulations were not properly applied by the air carrier. This is nonsense and, in our view, the burden should be on the carrier. We also believe that compensation should be automatic, as is currently the case for overbooking cases.
In cases where a flight is cancelled for a reason outside the carrier's control, its primary obligation is to reroute the passenger and it has 48 hours to do so. Only if the carrier fails to do so can the passenger request a refund. However, this time limit is too long. In some situations, this delay negates the purpose of the trip, as in the case of a person who has to go on a cruise and whose flight cancellation means that he or she literally misses the boat. In such situations, passengers should be allowed to be refunded.
The final issue we would like to bring to the attention of the committee is overbooking. In our view, overbooking is certainly a breach of contract law. Normally, when one buys a good or a service, the supplier has the obligation to provide that good or service according to the agreed terms. In this case, the carrier has an obligation to take the person from one place to another.
The problem with overbooking is that it allows a carrier to withhold the agreed service from some passengers on the pretext of offering better terms to other passengers who have paid more for their tickets, thereby allowing it to increase its profits. In our view, the right to make a profit should not have the effect of relegating consumer rights to second place. For all these reasons, we believe that overbooking should simply be banned.