Transport Committee on Jan. 12th, 2023

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Thank you.

Mr. Rheault, I would like you to tell us exactly when the discussions took place between Air Canada and the Minister of Transport himself, not his office. The members of the committee would be very grateful.

On social media, there were several tweets from the minister. On December 23, he said he understood how frustrating the situation was for Canadians. That was the same day he allowed Santa Claus into the air, by the way. On December 28, he said that the situation was unacceptable and that Canadians needed to get the information they needed to get home safely. On the same day, he said that the government would continue to ensure that their rights were protected. Subsequently, on January 3, the committee chair said he was calling a special meeting of the committee, and the minister said Canadians deserve answers.

For my part, I wish to determine the extent to which the minister himself sought answers from the airlines about the situation. Rather than communicating with Canadians via tweets, did the minister actually set up and participate in a crisis cell to address the situation at the airports? Ultimately, the situation is his responsibility. So that would have been important.

We understand that the minister probably focused less on Sunwing because it is a smaller company. Yet we saw that there were many more problems.

I now have a question for Air Canada. You say that the federal government pockets much more money than it invests in air transport infrastructure. You seem to be saying that infrastructure was one of the causes of the problems all air passengers endured during the winter period. Is that correct?

In your opinion, how much more money does the government take in than it invests in infrastructure?

[David Rheault]

This issue has been raised for a long time by the industry.

I will quote from the 2016 Canada Transportation Act Review report, the Emerson Report:

Canada is unique among its competitors in charging onerous rents and taxes that undermine competitiveness. Airport rents, for example, can represent up to 30 percent of airport operating budgets....

This report follows analysis by a committee commissioned by the federal government. Airport rents are about $400 million. You can discuss this with our colleagues from the airport authorities who will be appearing before you later today.

These are fees that are being charged to the airport authorities to use the land when several billion dollars have already been paid. Canada is the only country in the world with such a structure, as far as we know.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Berthold.

Ms. Damoff, the floor is now yours. You have five minutes.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I want to thank colleagues for letting me join you here today. I'm not a regular member of this committee, but given the mess that was holiday travel and the impact it had on my constituents in Oakville North-Burlington, I felt it was really important to be here and get some answers for them. Many of them hadn't travelled since before the pandemic and they were excited. Then, as we all know, it was an absolute mess.

I acknowledge that, and my Bloc colleague said the same thing, you can't control the weather but you can control the plans you have to deal with it, as well as how you communicate with your customers. Both of those were sorely lacking over the holiday travel season.

I want to start with Sunwing. You've acknowledged that you were trying to get 63 foreign pilots and you were unsuccessful. Then you said that you had resiliency built into the system. With all due respect, sir, I would challenge that. You didn't have resiliency in the system and you were selling Canadians travel when you did not have the capacity to deal with it if there were any problems. Bad weather is not unique to our Canadian winters.

Did you have a warning from the Government of Canada that this application may not be successful?

[Len Corrado]

No, we did not. We didn't have any information until, I believe December 8 or 9—I can confirm the date—that the application was not going to be successful.

As far as your point on resiliency, in fact, we did have resiliency. Every single day all the carriers here build reserve coverage into our schedules, have additional airplanes available and that's part of our standard plan, but when the airplanes don't move as planned, when there are no flights to position crews, that resiliency gets consumed quite quickly—

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Sir, when you didn't have the 63 pilots that you had built your schedule on, did you cancel the travel corresponding to those 63 pilots and the flights they would be flying?

[Len Corrado]

We cut back on some of our flying. We hired three different subservice carriers to Canadians in Ontario to free up some of our own crews and we brought a carrier into that marketplace where the specific problem was. I would say that we covered all of that resiliency by making a significant investment in subservices to cover that.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

I would suggest that you didn't build resiliency in there or people wouldn't have been stranded and you wouldn't have been selling flights that you weren't able to handle.

My next question is for WestJet. You've mentioned a couple of times today that you offered passengers three nights of hotel accommodation. Yet during this mess it was widely reported there were no hotels, so passengers were stuck in the airport. It was late at night, so there were no WestJet representatives available.

What are you doing to fix those issues going forward?

There is nothing worse than not even having the representative available and not being able to get through to somebody to find out what's going on.

[Andrew Gibbons]

That's a great question. We obviously empathize with those guests greatly and with your constituents who were impacted, and we have expressed that here today sincerely.

As I mentioned earlier in our opening remarks, we have conducted and are conducting a pretty significant lessons learned exercise. Part of that is how we communicate with our guests and how we co-operate with our partners when incidents of this scale occur.

I don't want to underestimate or understate the scale of what we encountered. I'll just note this because we were researching this for the committee. In Alberta, for example, the Alberta Motor Association wait times were three and a half days for roadside assistance. Sometimes it is weather, but the question you've asked is what do we do when things go wrong.

We have identified two main areas. One is our communications with our guests. Despite regularly updating media and getting our messages out twice a day, having more than 17,000 media requests and getting that information out, we have heard from you and others, from our guests specifically, that our guest communication was lacking, so we're going to do a better job of that.

The second, as you mentioned, is working with our airport authority partners—you're going to be hearing from them shortly—on how we work together in those moments to make sure there are beds and pillows in these unique, extraordinary circumstances because they should never happen—

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

I only have about five seconds left. Will you share with Canadians once you have done that review and let them know what you plan on doing differently?

[Andrew Gibbons]

We're happy to come back to the committee and share with you. That is our custom and we're prepared to do that.

Apologies again to your constituents.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Next we have Mr. Doherty.

You have five minutes.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank our guests for being here.

I have a unique opportunity. I've sat on both sides of the table, on all sides of this discussion. I've been on the front line of the airlines and I've worked in airports. I guess my frustration with this is that these circumstances aren't new; we have winter operations every year. My frustrations lie in the fact that we have winter operations debriefing in the spring on what we can do and what lessons we have learned that we can be better at for the next winter, yet we fell down this winter.

Given that perhaps it was extraordinary, I fail to see that. I guess one of the biggest questions I have is when is it ever acceptable that we have passengers sitting on aircraft for up to 12 hours, and in some circumstances, over 12 hours?

I'll open that up to our airline witnesses.

[Capt Scott Wilson]

I'm happy to take that question—

[Len Corrado]

The answer to that is never. I can't speak on the specifics.

[Capt Scott Wilson]

I'll take that question, if I could, Mr. Doherty.

I'll reiterate that the answer is never. The good news is that the tarmac delays you're speaking to are relatively rare events. We had a very significant situation. I think you're pointing to the night of the 19th in Vancouver where we had numerous airlines, numerous aircraft in gridlock and significant tarmac delays.

We hope to be a part of working through that with the Vancouver Airport Authority and all constituents to ensure that we can find a way to build resilience into that. It was unacceptable on many levels.

[Andrew Gibbons]

Currently under federal regulations as they relate to tarmac delays—and I think this is important for the committee in its work—the current tarmac delay policy and regulations only govern what airlines should or should not do in these instances. It is quite elaborate, and we actually submit a tarmac delay plan to the government on an annual basis that lays out when we should update, when we should use spare food and other items. We are the only body in a tarmac delay situation that has any rules or expectations. Fundamentally, that should change.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

You are pre-empting my next question. I appreciate that, thank you.

Really quickly, from Air Canada, is it acceptable?

[Kevin O'Connor]

No, it's not acceptable.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

That's good right there. That's perfect.

I'm going to be very short. I only have five minutes. Pardon my brevity.

What specific policy direction did the minister give the airlines at the air sector recovery summit on November 24?

Anyone.

[Andrew Gibbons]

Sorry, Mr. Doherty, that is policy direction with respect to what areas?

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

For the air sector recovery summit that the minister had with the airlines on November 24, were there specific policy directions given by the minister to the airlines, expectations that the minister gave to the airlines in that summit?

[Andrew Gibbons]

We obviously do not speak for Mr. Alghabra, but my understanding is that summit was the first step and then he and his team and the Government of Canada are preparing policies to address those issues. That's my understanding, based on their public statements.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

That's perfect.

Again, as I said, I'm in the unique position of actually feeling for our airlines witnesses who are here because—I agree—there are more entities that are responsible. However, our airlines are in the line of fire right now.

I understand the unique situation you're in such that you have to dance that delicate dance.

Mr. Gibbons, perhaps I'll start with you. Who also bears the brunt of the responsibility here? Would it be airports and government? What has the government done in the last seven years to ensure that our transportation sector—specifically our ports and airports—is running smoothly?