Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_25
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Mr. Taylor Bachrach: I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-47 , the budget implementation act. Before I begin my speech, I hope my colleagues will humour me while I take a brief moment to wish my daughter, Maddie, a very happy 16th birthday. There is a lot in this bill, of course, and I want to start by providing a few words about dental care, which is the most significant, optimistic and powerful policies contained within this legislation. I hear all the time from seniors, young families and people who do not have dental insurance and cannot afford to get their teeth fixed. They are so excited to see dental care finally coming in this bill, and it cannot come soon enough. It is the most significant expansion of public health care in a generation. It is going to make a difference for some nine million Canadians, including folks in Skeena--Bulkley Valley in the beautiful northwest of British Columbia, which is the area I am so proud to represent. Today I want to focus on the portions of Bill C-47 that deal with air passenger rights. As the NDP's transport critic, this has been my preoccupation over the past year or so. It is something we studied at the transport committee and it is something the Minister of Transport has chosen to slip into this budget implementation act in order to, what he claims, finally fix air passenger rights in this country. The Liberals brought in their air passenger protection legislation back in 2019. The former minister of transport brought it in to great fanfare. He claimed that it was going to be a world-leading approach and that air passengers were finally going to have a government that would have their backs, yet what we have seen over the past four years has been anything but world-leading. We have seen thousands of Canadians put in extraordinarily difficult situations by the big airlines. We have seen passengers sleeping on airport floors. We have seen families having to miss much-awaited vacations and trips. We have seen people out thousands of dollars. This system the Liberals claimed was going to be world-leading and was going to have air passengers' backs has really left people in a lurch. What we see before us in Bill C-47 is the government's third attempt at fixing this problem. Of course, this problem exists because the big airlines make commercial decisions that delay and cancel flights and leave passengers picking up the slack. What we have seen in other parts of the world, particularly in the European Union, are effective approaches that get passengers compensation when that happens, and yet the approach we have seen here in Canada has not succeeded in protecting air passenger rights. In fact, right now there are over 44,000 complaints before the Canadian Transportation Agency. Who are these folks? These are the most determined air travellers. I say "determined" because they have the fortitude to navigate not one but two complaint processes. Under the Liberals' current system, not only does a passenger need to complain to the airline and wait 30 days for a response, but when the airline almost inevitably declines their claim for compensation, they need to file a complaint with the Canadian Transportation Agency and then wait in line while this very complex bureaucratic and expensive process runs its course. Right now the wait time to proceed through that complaint process is over a year and a half. As I said, the transport committee has been studying this issue. We heard from the leading consumer advocates working on air passenger rights in this country. We heard from all sorts of witnesses and put together a report with a whole host of recommendations aimed at finally bringing Canada's air passenger protection regime up to the standards set by the European Union. I also had a chance, about a month ago, to table in this place a private member's bill, Bill C-327 , the strengthening air passenger protection act, which aims to lay out in legislation precisely which changes are required to create a robust regime of air passenger protections in this country. Then the Minister of Transport brought forward his proposed changes, this third attempt at fixing air passenger protections. I want to start by giving credit where credit is due. There are a couple of things in this new approach that have been called for fairly consistently by advocates and by me through my private member's bill. One is increases to the fines within the legislation that can be levied against airlines that continue to break the rules and not award compensation as they should. There are other pieces in the legislation, particularly around delayed baggage, that have also been called for, so there are a couple of things the minister got right. One of the key concerns with Canada's current system is a loophole that exists in the Canadian Transportation Act. Unlike the European system which sets out a very simple two-category classification system for flight disruptions, our system has three categories. In Europe, disruptions, which are cancellations or delays, are considered either ordinary disruptions, such as things that fall within the reasonable influence of the carrier, or extraordinary disruptions, things like major weather events, acts of terrorism or recalls by the airplane manufacturer. Nobody is suggesting that airlines should be held accountable for factors entirely outside of their influence, but we have been seeing airlines deny compensation for factors within their influence that cause delays and cancellations, such as making sure they have enough crew to fly the flights, ensuring the aircraft are properly maintained, and ensuring their computer system is working properly. This bill was intended to fix that. Everyone knows this loophole exists. It has been a matter of much conversation and debate. The minister claims to have fixed this loophole in the legislation that is before us. I do not see it. When I look at the section of the Canadian Transportation Act where this loophole exists, I see those same three categories. The category that is particularly problematic here in Canada is the category of disruptions that are within an airline's control but are required for safety reasons. When we are talking about companies that fly passengers around in aluminum tubes at 30,000 feet, I think pretty much everything related to that industry is related to safety. The issue here is that airlines are making decisions within their sphere of influence that are causing real hardships for air passengers. In those cases, passengers should be compensated and treated well. There are other things in Bill C-47 around air passenger rights that are very concerning. I had a chance to speak to this earlier today. One aspect is essentially a gag order on passengers who pursue complaints through the Canadian Transportation Agency. It states: All matters related to the process of dealing with a complaint shall be kept confidential, unless the complainant and the carrier otherwise agree". If Canadian air passengers file a complaint with the CTA, go through its resolution process and are not happy with how they are treated or the outcome, this legislation is going to prevent them from talking about it. If the minister is truly proud of this system he has put forward, why is he silencing the people who will be using it? It is incredible. We are at a point now where the minister has claimed to have closed the loophole. He and I have had this conversation. He said that a lot of it will be forthcoming in regulations, which we have not yet seen, sort of like the answer to my questions will be self-evident over the next rise. He is empowering the CTA with a tremendous amount of discretion over this process instead of making the changes in the legislation itself. That is the process we wanted to see, yet what we see falls well short of that mark. Another issue we see is with respect to transparency and the amount of information the CTA provides. We think the amount of compensation paid through this complaint process should be part of the disclosure. That is something we will be working on when it comes to amending this bill. I will end with this. Canadians deserve real protections that are easy to navigate and get them their compensation. That is what we will keep fighting for.