Weather and industry mostly to blame for travel chaos, transport minister tells committee

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Transport Minister Omar Alghabra told the opening of a Commons committee on January 12 that his government was not hiding and would take responsibility for the travel chaos that occurred over the holidays , but he mostly put the blame on time and the industry.

What do you want me to be responsible for? The weather or Sunwing’s bad decisions? Alghabra hit back at Tory MP Luc Berthold.

Berthold had asked Alghabra where he was between December 23 and January 5 when Canadians slept on the floors of the airport.

Didn’t you think it was serious enough for you, Minister, to intervene personally? You could have shown leadership, you could have picked up the phone and called the airlines, called the airports, Berthold said.

The committee heard that Alghabra had not been in direct contact with airlines during the chaos that saw thousands of flights canceled and passengers stranded overseas or inside planes sitting on the tarmac for a long period.

It wasn’t until January 5 that Alghabra reportedly spoke directly to Sunwing.

The minister defended his case and said he had been involved throughout the case and that his office had been in daily contact with airlines and airports.

I also issued public statements expressing my frustration with what was happening, and none of the airlines, including Sunwing, were ignorant of my feelings and expectations, he said.

Alghabra also pushed back against claims that the travel chaos experienced last summer, which saw Canadian airports the worst in the world, was in any way related to what happened recently.

We haven’t seen the long lines we saw last summer at CATSA [Canadian Air Transport Security Authority] and CBSA [Canada Border Services Agency] screening lines, he said.

Children Gloves

NDP MP Taylor Bachrach has accused the government of treating airlines with kid gloves and letting them tread on any semblance of passenger rights in this country.

Alghabra praised his government’s efforts to pass legislation that upholds passenger rights and said upholding these rights is the responsibility of airlines.

I would say it’s also the government’s responsibility to uphold passenger rights, and unfortunately the air passenger protection regime you’ve created has huge flaws, you could fly a 747 through these things, Bachrach replied.

Bachrach had asked Sunwing President Len Corrado during the morning meeting about emails received from the company’s customers telling them they would not be compensated for their problems.

Corrado said some travelers would not be compensated if the flight was deemed beyond the carrier’s control.

How complaints will be handled by airlines in the coming weeks will test the current system, which is already way behind schedule.

The Canadian Transportation Agency (OTC), which deals with disputes between passengers and airlines, has 33,000 cases to process.

Sunwing executive Andrew Dawson told the committee earlier in the day that the company had so far received 7,000 holiday travel complaints.

Alghabra said it received a promise from Sunwing that it would proactively compensate its customers to avoid having to file a complaint with the CTA, in possible contradiction to what Corrado told the committee earlier.

While the minister praised his government’s work in defending passenger rights, he identified three areas for improvement to speed up the CTA’s complaints process.

Alghabra said bureaucracy could be reduced, rules could be clarified for airlines to reduce the number of complaints ending up at the CTA, and the CTA should be given more resources.

He also said legislative changes could be made if necessary to strengthen the rules.

Airlines told the committee earlier they would support a review of the legislation, but to include shared responsibility for delays and cancellations.

According to Andrew Gibbons, vice-president of WestJet, we do not believe that the current priority should be to impose additional sanctions on the only group responsible.

No Chartier is an Epoch Times reporter based in Montreal. Twitter: @NChartierET Gettr: @nchartieret

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