Feds Miss Air Code Deadline

Staff, Blacklock's Reporter

Transport Canada yesterday acknowledged it won’t meet its own deadline to enforce an air passenger rights code by year’s end. Enforcement is delayed at least six months though Parliament last May 23 passed a bill mandating automatic compensation for poor service.

“We’re almost there,” Scott Streiner, CEO of the Canadian Transportation Agency, said in a statement to reporters. Bill C-49 An Act To Amend The Canada Transportation Act requires that the Agency complete a compensation schedule for passengers that suffer lost or damaged luggage, flight delays or denial of boarding.

A legal text of proposed regulations will be released December 21. “Canadians will have until February 20, 2019 to give us feedback,” wrote Streiner. “We’ll then move as quickly as possible to consider this feedback and finalize the regulations, which are expected to come into force next summer.”

Transport Minister Marc Garneau in 2017 said: “We’re going to make it happen, and our hope is it will be in place in 2018”; “They’ll be coming out in 2018,” he said. Garneau declined comment when asked why the regulations were delayed.

Canada is the only G7 country without automatic compensation for airline customers in cases of poor service. The Transportation Agency in an October 16 report Air Passenger Protection Regulations Consultations: What We Heard noted U.S. and European Union rules offer travelers up to $900 for flight cancellations, a maximum $1,350 for denial of boarding, and $3,500 for lost or damaged luggage.

Canadian proposals yesterday outlined by regulators suggested $2,400 for passengers denied boarding due to overbooking “or other actions within an airline’s control”, and a maximum $1,000 for flight delays “within an airline’s control that are not safety-related”.

Agency CEO Streiner noted the Canadian regulations will not apply to small regional carriers flying rural routes, or discount airlines. “These amounts recognize how financially fragile many of those airlines are, and how critical their survival is for the communities they serve,” said Streiner.

Members of the Senate transport committee earlier noted no actual compensation figures are detailed in Bill C-49, and that details were left to staff to write into regulations. “You could refer to it more accurately as a promissory note rather than a bill of rights,” Senator Michael MacDonald (Conservative-N.S.) told 2017 hearings.

“I really hope people will wait to see the whole bill before they judge it,” Minister Garneau said under questioning. “People are cherry-picking individual things and they’re not getting a realistic picture of the full bill. I think Canadians will be pleased with the bill of rights when they see it.”

“Perhaps it should be in the bill, Minister,” said Senator Terry Mercer (Liberal-N.S.). “Then we wouldn’t have the controversy.”