Northern Canada has different needs than southern Canada, the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) was told in Yellowknife during consultations last week on new air passenger rights.
The consultations – which took place in the basement of Quality Inn and Suites on Friday afternoon – were part of an eight-city tour across Canada. These sessions are aimed at getting the public’s comments on the federal Transportation Modernization Act, which was passed in late May, authorizing the CTA to develop new regulations.
Dylan Short/NNSL photo
Donald Weston of North-Wright Airways and Noeline Villebrun, a Dene elder, were the only two registered presenters at the two-hour, in-person consultations held in front of an audience of 12. Weston and Villebrun raised concerns about the unique challenges that Northern air travel presents.
“What we find is that the North normally has one way of doing things and often it’s the only way of doing things,” said Weston. “What we find is that the regulator imposes upon us a length of regulations that that don’t fit [our way] for various technical and operational needs.”
While Weston brought forward the unique challenges that airline operators in the North face, Villebrun emphasized the need to introduce instructions in official Dene languages on Northern flights.
The act states that “the new air passenger protection regulations will ensure clearer, more consistent passenger rights by establishing minimum standards of treatment,” said Scott Streiner, chair and CEO of the CTA. Streiner acknowledged that Villebrun’s concerns fell within this scope and that the CTA would take these concerns into consideration.
The regulations ask the CTA to bring forth policy recommendations that will allow Canadians to have greater compensation for cancelled and delayed flights, delays on the tarmac and lost and damaged luggage, among other issues. Regarding missed flights, the guidelines outline three categories: missed flights that are the fault of the airline, missed flights that are caused by safety concerns and missed flights that are due to external factors.
Weston raised concerns around the fact that the regulations currently hold airlines responsible for getting customers to their final destination when there are missed connections.
“It is an unreasonable expectation to get passengers south after missed connections,” said Weston. “We don’t have the luxury of having 30 flights a day.”
Weston argued that his company already does as much as it can to get customers to Edmonton as quickly as possible, including putting them up in hotel rooms, when necessary.
Throughout the consultations, Streiner reiterated that the CTA would have to continue to think about the North’s unique challenges and how his agency would tackle it. Once the consultations were over, he told Yellowknifer that it would be difficult to balance the needs of the North and the south.
“I think our responsibility is to do the best we can to write regulatory language that benefits people across the country,” said Streiner. “So we’re going to really have to do our best to think about how we can write these regulatory requirements in a way that creates strong, fair protections for people flying anywhere in Canada.”
For anyone that missed the consultations, the CTA is inviting residents to join their call-in consultation on July 5.