Feds to overhaul Trudeau-era air passenger rights rules, quadrupling fines for airlines

OTTAWA — The Liberal government is overhauling Trudeau-era air passenger rights rules it now admits are largely toothless.

Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon said Friday at a media announcement at Ottawa Macdonald–Cartier International Airport that he was taking action to clear an “unacceptable” backlog of nearly 100,000 passenger complaints.

“We hear repeatedly, the regulations themselves are too complex,” said MacKinnon. “We need a practical regime that safeguard’s passengers’ rights when travel does not go as planned.”

MacKinnon announced that the government would quadruple the maximum fine for airlines found to have repeatedly violated passenger rights, from $250,000 to $1 million.

He added that the government will outsource passenger complaints to a private sector adjudicator, noting that it can take more than a year for the Canadian Transportation Agency to resolve disputes under the current system.

MacKinnon also announced the elimination of a federal gag order prohibiting travellers from publicly discussing their complaints.

Canada’s existing Air Passenger Protection Regulations (APPR) were developed under the Trudeau government, coming into force in 2019.

MacKinnon told reporters that COVID was partly to blame for the failure of Trudeau-era air passenger protections.

“We put in place a system that, in hindsight, was onerous, expensive, took too long. It must be said, and to be fair, the system was implemented during a pandemic, which certainly did not help,” said MacKinnon.

MacKinnon didn’t address why a subsequent 2023 initiative to impose a fee on airlines when passengers lodged complaints fell by the wayside.

Gábor Lukács, head of Air Passenger Rights (Canada) says that COVID had nothing to do with the regulations’ shortcomings.

“Mr. MacKinnon may wish to refresh his memory. APPR 1.0 was designed in 2017-2019, well before COVID. The APPR was a failure by design,” said Lukács.

Lukács says his group warned about loopholes in the regulations as far back as 2017.

He added that, while he commended MacKinnon for owning up to past failures, he was hoping to hear more details about how the government intended to close these loopholes.

Lukács said a loophole allowing airlines to claim delays were “required for safety reasons” is in critical need of tightening. He noted that a Transport Canada official recently admitted in sworn testimony that it takes roughly a day to for adjudicators to vet the “safety reasons” excuse.

Lukács called the privatization of adjudication a “PR stunt.”

“If the rules are simple, then they can be applied effectively by public employees,” said Lukács.

National Postrmohamed@postmedia.com

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