Landry said that fallen trees on the railway tracks, power outages, frozen rail switches, and the fact that VIA only owns three percent of the rail lines it operates on caused the extended travel delays between Dec. 23 and Dec. 26, 2022.
VIA’s Chief Customer Officer Rita Toporowski added that the company has issued full refunds to passengers stranded on trains overnight from Dec. 23 to Dec. 24.
“For any of the passengers that were inconvenienced due to cancellations that happened on the 24th through the 26th, we’ve also actioned full refunds,” she said.
“In the air sector, when an airline has a delay or fails to get someone to their destination, they have to pay $1,000 per passenger,” said Conservative MP Mark Strahl.
“Do you believe that Via Rail should have to pay $1,000 to passengers who were impacted?” Strahl said.
Delays
MPs on the transport committee said that some passengers claimed they had to pay for food and drink on the trains despite not being permitted to leave.“For passengers who had to buy food well into that delay, have they been refunded for those purchases?” asked Strahl.
Toporowski said VIA has not yet been able to identify any passengers who had to pay for food on the stranded trains.
“That is something we could take a look at,” she said.
Conservative MP Dan Muys also asked VIA executives why they didn’t evacuate trains on which customers were stranded for long periods of time.
“We had passengers in a safe place with light and heat and access to washrooms. We couldn’t access the train to evacuate them. It was only in the early morning when passengers unfortunately took it upon themselves to [get off] the train that the situation became unsafe,” said Michael Brankley, VIA’s vice president of railway operations.
“We did not see it as a safe environment to attempt to de-train passengers.”
