Dan Albas is the Conservative Party MP for the riding of Okanagan Lake West—South Kelowna.
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As an elected official, it is quite common to hear from frustrated citizens when government-delivered or regulated services and programs do not meet expectations. I was reminded of this once again this past weekend when many Air Canada passengers experienced severe travel delays as a result of flight cancellations caused by a labour dispute.
As I have noted in the past, the immense frustration of those caught in this situation is understandable. Travellers follow all the rules, which often includes checking online to confirm their flights are on time, and arrive at the airport only to find out their flights have been cancelled.
As is often the case, communication from the airline is lacking, and customer service to accommodate passengers in this situation seldom finds alternative ways to get these travellers to their destinations.
For those looking to other airlines, they often find significantly increased prices, which many cannot afford.
Some Canadians have also discovered that the Liberal government’s “Air Passenger Bill of Rights” is inadequate in addressing the concerns of stranded passengers and fails to hold airlines accountable.
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In fact, if you file a complaint to the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA), under the so-called "Air Passenger Bill of Rights," you'll join a backlog of 87,000 cases—and this is before the recent Air Canada labour dispute.
The CTA charges the airline $790 for each filed complaint, and then also bills taxpayers millions more. Due to extraordinary volume, the government allocated an additional $75.9 million over three years starting in 2023 to improve the complaints process, specifically allocating $22.5 million in the 2023–24 fiscal year.
If and when your claim is successful, the average person might get $400–$700 returned to them. However, the CTA spends an average of $1,316 per case, although some have estimated it to be higher. This means the system costs more to operate than the compensation it delivers. Worse still, passengers may wait years for resolution—while the bureaucracy continues to grow and taxpayers foot the bill. This is not just inefficient; it’s fundamentally broken.
As the Opposition critic for Transportation, I am hopeful that by drawing attention to these ongoing failures to the Minister of Transportation, Chrystia Freeland, the government may actually fix this broken system. People are waiting too long, and the existing CTA program costs too much, with little to show for frustrated travellers and taxpayers, who always have to pick up the bill.
This week I would like to ask: Have you recently had your air travel disrupted and/or delayed, and if so, were you satisfied with the outcome?
Feel free to join in on the discussion online at my Facebook Page. Alternatively, you can reach me at [email protected] or toll-free at 1-800-665-8711.
