The Trudeau government is promising to beef up air passenger protection rules in the wake of a chaotic holiday travel season that saw hundreds of Canadian stranded far from home.
Speaking to a special session of a House of Commons committee on Thursday (Jan. 12), Transport Minister Omar Alghabra suggested that Ottawa is looking to changing regulations so that more of the onus is on airlines to show why they don’t have to compensate a mistreated customer, The Globe and Mail reports.
According to the Globe, Alghabra said passengers are too often told by airlines that they’re not entitled to compensation for a cancelled flight, when they really are.
Alghabra told MPs that protocols “clearly” need to be reviewed.
CTV News reports that Alghabra said his department is already drafting changes that the federal government plans to bring before Parliament in the coming months, but welcomes further input from the committee.
“I commit to you that we are learning from the lessons of the last year, and that we are committed to clarifying, and strengthening, and simplifying rules,” he said. “Our government is not hiding. We are going to assume our responsibilities and the industry must assume theirs… We will continue to work together so that this never happens again.”
According to Global News, Alghabra said “he hopes to table legislation during the spring session of Parliament that will address gaps in the Air Passenger Protection Regulations (APPR), including finding ways to remove the burden from passengers to prove they deserve compensation from airlines. He also said he is looking at increased fines for airlines in order to hold them accountable.”
The Canadian Transportation Agency has a backlog of 33,000 complaint cases. Passengers whose compensation claims were denied by airlines have an 18-month wait. Sunwing on Thursday said it received 7,000 complaints over the holidays.
NDP MP and transport critic Taylor Bachrach, who had his flight from Ottawa to B.C. cancelled during the airline testimony, said he’d like to see the government close loopholes that allow airlines to avoid compensation by claiming “unforeseen” impacts to their operations.
“We’re all here because Canadians are frustrated, they’re angry, they’re dismayed, and they feel betrayed. Both in the travel period of last summer and in the most recent holiday travel period, we saw the big airlines walk all over any semblance of passenger rights in this country,” Bachrach told Alghabra at Thursday’s hearing. ‘The big airlines are acting this way because they can get away with it, because you let them.”
