Evidence of meeting #47 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was airlines.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Acting Deputy Minister, Department of Transport
—so it's not as though this was a calm period that we were going through. Of course, we were also dealing with all these issues at a time when many of our officials were going through Christmas holidays as well, so....
Conservative
Leslyn Lewis Conservative Haldimand—Norfolk, ON
Right, but they have devices on them. They have cellphones, and they could—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
Unfortunately, Dr. Lewis, there's no more time left in your slot. Thank you very much.
Next we have Mr. Chahal.
Mr. Chahal, the floor is yours. You have six minutes.
January 12th, 2023 / 3:50 p.m.
Liberal
George Chahal Liberal Calgary Skyview, AB
Thank you, Chair, and thank you, officials, for joining us and providing some testimony today.
I'm going to start with the Canadian Transportation Agency and Madame Pégeot.
We have 33,000 claims. Do we have a breakdown of those claims and which industry members they're attributed to?
Chair and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Transportation Agency
We have just put on our website the number of complaints per 100 flights that we have received per airline. I would be happy to send you this information after the meeting.
I should point out, though, that these are the complaints we received, which doesn't necessarily mean those complaints have merit and would lead to compensation. However, it gives an idea about the number of complaints we received per company.
Liberal
George Chahal Liberal Calgary Skyview, AB
Okay. You have a breakdown of the airlines, for each individual airline. Do you have information on how many of those complaints are resolved by the airlines prior to coming to you? What is the percentage?
Chair and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Transportation Agency
We do not have access to that data.
Liberal
George Chahal Liberal Calgary Skyview, AB
Is that a challenge of the airlines not providing it, in that they cannot provide it to you, or that you are not able to get it from them?
Chair and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Transportation Agency
There are no regulatory requirements for them to provide us that information.
Liberal
George Chahal Liberal Calgary Skyview, AB
How many cases were resolved prior to this last year?
I know that the APPR came forward in 2019. You had a number of cases come forward. How many were brought forward to the CTA that you reviewed and that resulted in compensation or in further penalties? In how many cases did the passengers get compensation because they were right to go through this process—they won—but you assessed further fines or penalties on the airlines or industry members?
Chair and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Transportation Agency
I could give you a breakdown of the number of complaints we have received over the years. Ninety-seven per cent of those complaints are resolved informally through our facilitation services. In those cases, at the outset, we do not necessarily know how those complaints are resolved. Sometimes they are resolved between the industry and the consumers. Sometimes, of course, we play a facilitator role, but we do not keep track of that.
What we do have is the 3% that would be for adjudication. These go through the tribunal, the administrative tribunal, and are decided on by the members of the tribunal. For these, we could get this information for you.
Liberal
George Chahal Liberal Calgary Skyview, AB
Okay, so you don't have that information on hand, but you could provide it to the committee.
Chair and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Transportation Agency
Yes, we could provide it to the committee.
Liberal
George Chahal Liberal Calgary Skyview, AB
Why is the CTA not issuing further penalties or fines to industry members if they are non-compliant, or has it? If so, can you provide examples of that?
Chair and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Transportation Agency
For sure, we can. We have given fines.
I would start by saying that we have many tools to achieve compliance with the regulations. At the core of our system is that it provides remedies for passengers when they encounter problems during their travel journey, which is why we favour the resolution of complaints. In those cases, consumers get some form of compensation. When we provide an administrative monetary penalty, it doesn't go to the consumers or to the passengers.
That being said, we have six—and will soon have seven—enforcement officers who are very active in monitoring what's going on in the industry. We have given administrative monetary penalties for more than $185,000 and almost $100,000 since the beginning of this fiscal year.
As I mentioned earlier, with respect to what happened over the holiday, they are monitoring things and gathering data, and some investigations are going on.
Liberal
George Chahal Liberal Calgary Skyview, AB
I don't have much time.
I have two questions. Do you have enough authority? Which areas of the APPR do you believe we should strengthen to protect passengers?
Chair and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Transportation Agency
I will go straight to the answer, then, because you don't have a lot of time. I think that based on our experience, one area that could be beneficial is to really clarify what we call the categorization of flights. The fact is that we have three categories of flight cancellations: those for which the airline is responsible for the issue, those for which the airline is responsible but it has happened because of safety, and those for which it is not responsible. We have, I would say, grey areas that are big. If we could reduce those a bit more and have more clarity, that would certainly help.
Liberal
George Chahal Liberal Calgary Skyview, AB
Thank you.
If you have any other information you could provide to the committee, as discussed, that would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
Thank you very much, Mr. Chahal.
Thank you very much, Ms. Pégeot.
Ms. Vignola, you have the floor for six minutes.
Bloc
Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Ms. Pégeot, good morning and thank you for being here.
As of December 20, 2022, there were more than 30,000 citizen complaints pending with the Canadian Transportation Agency; we've talked about that before. You also said that 97% of the complaints were handled informally.
Is it correct that the agency's annual budget is around $44 million?
Chair and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Transportation Agency
Our base budget is about $34 million and we have received an additional $11.5 million for the current fiscal year, until the end of March.
Bloc
Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC
Are the current delays due to a lack of financial resources, a lack of human resources or a greater need for planning on an organizational level?
Did the regulations cause the number of complaints to explode and the delays to increase, as you said? What is causing this backlog and how can this be resolved?
You mentioned automation, but there must be other ideas that are on the table.
Chair and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Transportation Agency
In response to the previous question, I indicated that there was a need to clarify the criteria associated with the different categories of disruption, as these categories determine the compensation to which the passenger will be entitled. As this information is currently in the hands of the airlines, if the passenger is not satisfied with the carrier's response, he or she has to turn to the agency to possibly receive compensation. This leads to a number of complaints.
We have also implemented a program to improve our efficiency. I am quite proud of the work done by the employees. For example, it now takes 79 days for a case to get to court once our formal process has started. Last year it was 103 days, and the year before that it was 117 days. So we are constantly improving what we do.
In fact, this year we're going to be able to handle 2,500 more complaints than last year with essentially the same resources. You heard the minister earlier. We are working with him to look at the resources we need and I am very grateful for that.
Bloc
Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC
The agency, by virtue of its work, can have a say or provide some input into the regulations, correct?