Transport committee  That's a great question. I think what you're looking at is a way to have a balanced view of the APPRs. In the session this afternoon and going on for months, we've all said that the airlines had much too great a say in what these regulations ought to look like. The question you

Transport committee  I think it is something we've all talked about repeatedly over the last four or five months as we have looked at the messes at Pearson and Montréal-Trudeau to do with staffing levels, so it's nothing new. The question really is, what started this whole process and who is to be he

Transport committee  Yes. I think what you saw happen in Canada was a situation where the airlines did not take the initiative to maintain staffing levels the way the European or American carriers had. Air Canada dropped somewhere close to 20,000 employees and WestJet dropped 15,000 employees, and t

Transport committee  I think the European carriers and European airports had some level of disruption. If you look at the Schiphol airport, London Heathrow and the Frankfurt Airport, they all had situations, albeit not as bad as we had it in Canada. There were some disruptions due to staff shortages

Transport committee  I think a number of people this afternoon.... Gábor made the point about looking at trying to absorb as many of the EU regulation changes as we can into Canada. The Europeans have said that situations associated with delays are payable by compensation, and that the only time you

Transport committee  One of the things we see happening in the Canadian aviation marketplace is what I would say is a gradual reduction in the integrity of airline managers when looking towards making passengers enjoy their trip. What we see happening is that more and more decisions are being made by

Transport committee  I agree with Mr. Lawford. The Wild West we had prior to the APPRs was not acceptable in terms of the way we handle our passengers. The APPRs were an attempt to draw the line in the sand and say, “Here's a process that we think would work.” Unfortunately, in my opinion, there are

Transport committee  Thank you very much. I'd just like to thank the members of the House committee for having invited me to speak to you today on the air passenger protection regulations. Today I would like to address the issue of compensation, primarily to air travellers as a result of an airline

Transport committee  As I mentioned earlier, air transportation is a fundamental right in this country. If we value our fundamental rights, we have to value air transportation as being part of those fundamental rights. I think it's important that we have a policy of making sure that the infrastructur

Transport committee  It's not going to be decades. I think we're going to start seeing that smaller airports tend to shutter down. The user-pay model for these small airports.... As much as the federal government has put in the capital allocation program for small airports, it is nowhere near enough.

Transport committee  It's a good question. I don't have the answer to that. I think it's important that we really have a good understanding of what the needs are first. I'd like to be able to take a few days, weeks, months or whatever it takes to basically just take an inventory of what the needs a

Transport committee  I'm not going to make the simplified assumption that it's a PR strategy. My comment will be to try to understand the finger-pointing that was going on and try to understand the root cause of the problem. I got a little bit concerned in listening to the debate going on in terms of

Transport committee  I'm not sure if wage growth.... The world of service industry today is highly competitive. When you have Amazon, as an example, paying people $23 an hour as a starting salary to work in an Amazon warehouse just off the end of the runway at Pearson, and Air Canada is hiring people

Transport committee  I am concerned. What we see happening at small airports across Canada.... There are different grades of airports. There are regional airports. There are community airports. I think we're going to start seeing more of the smaller airports fall by the wayside and shut down. They ar

Transport committee  You're looking at trying to understand how the airlines try to recoup the cash they lost during the shutdown. They're anxious to get the cash flows back. They're anxious to get profitability back. The answer to that question is to get flights out there. I think that's what they