A WestJet Airlines Boeing 737 Max aircraft arrives at Vancouver International Airport in Richmond, B.C., in January, 2021.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
Staff members at Canada’s transportation watchdog handle a single complaint each day on average, a Transport Canada director revealed, as the regulator faces a record backlog of tens of thousands of consumer complaints.
Vincent Millette, director of National Air Services Policy with the federal department, made the comment as part of sworn evidence filed with the Ontario Superior Court in January. Mr. Millette testified in October as part of a broader constitutional challenge to rules that in many cases prevent passengers from publicly discussing complaints filed with the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA).
During cross-examination by a lawyer for Air Passenger Rights, a consumer advocacy group that brought the challenge, Mr. Millette said that, “on average,” each complaints resolution officer (CRO) employed by the agency “deals with one complaint every day.”
The regulator, meanwhile, is grappling with a backlog of more than 93,000 complaints. Mr. Millette’s testimony highlights the mounting challenge of processing the complaints, as well as inefficiencies in Canada’s passenger protection regime, where complex eligibility criteria mean disputes – sometimes involving just a few hundred dollars – consume many hours of labour.
Jadrino Huot, a CTA spokesperson, told The Globe and Mail this week that the number of CROs fluctuates and a significant portion of the CTA’s budget – about 40 per cent – is temporary. At the time of Mr. Millette’s testimony, he said approximately 98 officers were working on complaints. Today, that number sits at 117, Mr. Huot said, and 33,600 complaints were closed last fiscal year.
Mr. Huot added that the process for officers to resolve complaints is a “labour intensive” legally binding process, the outcome of which is subject to challenges by the Federal Court through judicial review.
“Flight disruptions, which account for the highest volume of cases received, typically involve multiple overlapping causes, and the [Air Passenger Protection Regulations] requires determining the most significant contributing factor,” he said. Airline responses can include 80-100 pages of technical information.
Air travel after pandemic restrictions were lifted in Canada skyrocketed in 2022, but despite selling more tickets, the aviation industry was understaffed and ill-prepared for the surge.
Faced with mounting complaints, the CTA in 2023 changed how it handled them. Since then, disputes have been handled by CTA staff, not government-appointed adjudicators.
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Once a complaint is submitted online to the agency, the wait period can be more than a year before the complaints resolution process starts. Airlines are then given time to respond and a CRO conducts an eligibility review before an optional mediation stage. If an agreement doesn’t materialize, a binding decision is issued within 90 days of the start of the process.
There’s “lots and lots of arguments, pages and pages of papers, sometimes hundreds, thousands of pages of paper,” for a single case, often with about $400 at stake, said Air Passenger Rights president Gabor Lukacs.
In Europe, passenger protection rules are more straightforward and compensation decisions can be rendered “in a matter of minutes” using publicly available data, Mr. Lukacs said.
In Canada, the process is often delayed because of complicated eligibility criteria, with exemptions that lead to airlines avoiding compensation payouts.
Last month, the Quebec Superior Court certified a class action against Air Canada that claims cancellations the carrier attributed to safety were actually caused by staffing shortages under the airline’s control.
Short of going to court, consumers only have an overburdened transportation agency to turn to when they are unable to resolve their complaint with an airline.
In 2023, Parliament ordered the CTA to make airlines pay a cost recovery fee to fund the complaint resolution system. The CTA later opened consultations on a proposal to bill airlines $790 for every customer complaint the industry regulator resolved, reducing the burden on taxpayers. But the federal government’s efforts to force airlines to fund the complaints resolution system have since stalled.
“Airlines have no incentive whatsoever to settle,” said Mr. Lukacs, adding that it leaves more work to the regulator.