And then, this air travellers’ charter promised by Ottawa? Talk about it to the 170,000 or so passengers caught up in a nearly 29-hour strike by WestJet mechanics, the effects of which are still being felt. Triggered on the eve of the Canada Day long weekend, the commotion has shone a spotlight on the hopes given to travellers with a redesign whose true colours are still awaited.
More than a year after the federal government changed the rules of the game to promote air passenger rights, the clarity promised by then-Minister of Transport Omar Alghabra has not really materialized in Canadian skies. That’s because the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) has still not opened its game. We are well aware of the paradigm shift: ensuring that travellers are “mandatory and automatic” compensated for all flight disruptions, except those resulting from “exceptional circumstances.”
How? By whom? Details are still to come, at the end of a deadline that is also still unknown. The OTC had promised to settle the matter in depth — and in minute detail — by winter, after summer consultations that allowed it to gather nearly 300 opinions from the public, airlines, industry, consumer protection organizations and experts. Spring finally arrived without anything filtering through about its intentions. Then summer set in, and the suspense drags on.
Worse, the Canadian skies are still buffeted by turbulence that has propelled the number of passenger complaints to another record level. Last July, the machine was already showing serious difficulties. No fewer than 52,000 complaints were awaiting processing, an unprecedented number at the time. The time taken to obtain a settlement, which is notoriously long, had also lengthened, going from 18 months to two years in just a few months.
Already in the crosshairs for the Olympic slowness recorded by Service Canada in important files, such as passports and employment insurance benefits, the Trudeau government had announced the allocation of $75.9 million over three years to help the CTA get back on its feet and make the processing of complaints “simpler, clearer, faster and more economical.” A year later, the effects of this helping hand are mixed. Yes, the processing rate has accelerated. But the complaints have also continued to flow.
The federal agency is now dealing with a backlog of more than 72,000 complaints. The timeframe for a settlement can now be up to four years. All this while the new rules simplifying the complaints process give carriers the possibility of contesting a wider range of decisions by the federal agency. Experts recently told Radio-Canada that they fear that airlines will start multiplying their challenges to the point of flooding the courts.
The OTC cannot keep the suspense going any longer. Especially since the mystery remains thick regarding the roles that airports and other operators, including baggage handlers, will play in the equation. They are an integral part of this great ballet with its complicated choreography; they can no longer remain in the background. Their rights, duties and responsibilities must also be marked out, because the pressure cannot be absorbed entirely by the air carriers.
The problem is that the past year has highlighted a host of resistance, the persistence of which is undoubtedly not unrelated to the CTA’s silence. The National Airlines Council of Canada, unions, airports and tourism industry players have expressed reservations about an operation that, according to them, risks increasing fares in addition to compromising regional services.
This is not at all what is demonstrated by the places where this path has been chosen, whether among our neighbours to the South or on the European side. What is driving up prices these days has less to do with the imperatives of a future substantial charter than with an internal dynamic that has been widely known and often criticized in recent years. We are thinking here of the duopoly formed by Air Canada and WestJet and its stranglehold on three-quarters of the Canadian market, but also of all these surprise fees that have started to spring up like mushrooms for services that were once included.
Flight reservations by phone, seat selection at boarding or cabin baggage: these random billings are just one more argument in favor of tighter monitoring of a sector that has been left to its own devices for too long. The need for an air travelers charter worthy of this century is no longer in doubt; it is high time to put an end to the gray areas that prevent it from taking off.