A New Democrat MP has tabled a private member’s bill in the House of Commons proposing to increase compensation for travellers impacted by delayed or cancelled flights, raising the maximum fine from $25,000 to $250,000.
“This bill comes after two seasons of travel chaos in Canada, chaos that left air passengers sleeping on airport floors, out thousands of dollars, and with their lives up-ended unnecessarily,” said Bachrach.
Bachrach’s proposed bill, as reported by Blacklock’s Reporter, would set “minimum standards of treatment of passengers that the carrier is required to meet regardless of the cause,” and mandates that “the burden is on the carrier to establish on a balance of probabilities the cause of a flight delay, flight cancellation or denial of boarding.”
He said in 2019, when the Liberal government brought in Canada’s first legislation for air passenger protection, “they claimed it was going to be the best in the world.”According to Bachrach, the existing legislation has four main weaknesses. He said there is a loophole that allows airlines to deny passengers compensation by blaming safety, even if the situation is within the airlines’ control.
He said the burden of proof is on air passengers, forcing them to “navigate an overly administrative, burdensome, complex bureaucratic system” to lodge complaints.
“That needs to change,” said Bachrach. He said the system needs to force airlines to “proactively compensate passengers when their flights are disrupted,” instead of the current system, which he alleges denies passengers in most cases and forces them into a complaint process.
He also said the current enforcement approach has “treated the big airlines with kid gloves.”
“I think many Canadians were shocked to hear that the Canadian Transportation Agency has never levied a fine against an airline for failure to compensate passengers,” said the MP.
Consumer Groups Agree
Lukács said his group endorses the bill. “Our long standing position has been that Canada should adopt the European Union’s gold standard of air passenger protection, following the air travel meltdowns of 2022 it has become clear to everyone why that is not only advisable but necessary,” he said.Lawford said at the news conference that Canadians are afraid to fly.
“They’re worried about being stranded without help from their airline. They’re worried about their lost baggage. They’re worried about missed connections, cancellations, and delays. And they’re justly worried that if they complain if they try to get their money back, that they will be stonewalled,” he said.
He said Canada’s existing air passenger protection regulations have failed, when they were supposed to “ensure certain quick and easy compensation for delay, cancellations denial of boarding, lost delayed or damaged baggage.”
Lawford said the current process lets “airlines game the system.”
The minister also pledged funding of $75.9 million over the next three years to address a significant backlog of 42,000 passenger complaints about airlines filed with the CTA, a quasi-judicial tribunal and regulator responsible for handling traveller complaints.
Alghabra suggested airlines will no longer be able to reject claims for compensation by blaming safety issues for cancelled flights as part of planned revisions to the regulations.
“We are working on major changes to passenger rights to ensure that the burden of proof no longer rests with travellers but with the airline,” he said.
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