Opinion: The real reason for the holiday travel chaos: Canada is too soft on punishing airlines

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The real reason for the holiday travel chaos: Canada is too soft on punishing airlines

to the House of Commons Transport Committee.

In the summer, airlines blamed the airports, the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority and the Canada Border Services Agency – and got away with it. This time around, they found an even better scapegoat: Mother Nature. After all, Mother Nature is unlikely to dispute the airlines’ narrative in any forum.

Inclement weather undoubtedly necessitated cancelling some flights during crises. However, hundreds of passengers were inexcusably confined for hours in aircraft on the tarmac without adequate food or water, contrary to the APPR. Thousands were denied alternate transportation on competing airlines, a right also spelled out in the APPR. And passengers scrambled without their checked baggage.

If the financial gain from violating regulatory legislation outweighs the resulting fines payable multiplied by the odds of being caught, then non-compliance is the best way to maximize profits. In other words, airlines systematically violate regulatory legislation not because they are greedy or immoral, but because it is the most profitable course of action for them, bearing in mind all likely consequences.

Since April 1, 2022, the federal regulator has issued just 12 notices of violation for a total amount of $66,850 in penalties. The latest one involved, with the potential cost of compliance of between $400 and $1,000 in each case. While the regulator could have fined WestJet $25,000 for each violation for a total of $1,375,000, a penalty of only $200 per violation, for a total of $11,000, was issued.

 

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mstarawilson Airport trauma is the only way to describe it.

CanadianPM OmarAlghabra please hold the airlines accountable and punish them for breaking the laws and ignoring our rights!

SunwingVacay should be sending out cash to affected customers, not vouchers or future travel credits. As many people won't be traveling with them again after the disaster that happened. At least AirPassRightsCA is pushing for airlines for better regulations for passengers

Canada is too soft on a lot of things… what happened to our great Country?

AirPassRightsCA Failure by liberal_party CTA_gc is a joke and Transport minister OmarAlghabra

Compare our fearless leaders response to this response in PHILLIPINES! '(government) coordinated with the affected airlines to provide food, refreshments, transportation and accommodation free of charge to all affected passengers.”

AirPassRightsCA OmarAlghabra wake up and do your job. Your inaction is what’s unacceptable. See US Transport Secretary Pete if you want to know what that looks like.

100% corporations have to much leeway to do as they want

AirPassRightsCA Airlines definitely need to be held accountable, just remember where the money to pay those fines is coming ftom.

Agreed we have no say they get bailed out when they need too but we get nothing

AirPassRightsCA JustinTrudeau and his joke of a minister OmarAlghabra

💯💯💯💯💯👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

Don’t have ArriveCan to blame now. Who to lay the blame on ?

Is this... is this an article... talking about how Canada is actually in shambles? Weird who.. who wrote this?

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Opinion: Ottawa is passing the buck on this holiday season’s air travel chaosWhile U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg appeared on virtually every major network news program, Canadian Transport Minister Omar Alghabra took to Twitter to voice his concern Wow. Gotta admire the chutzpah (or stupidity?) of air Canada urging the feds to be tougher here when the most obvious solution (see recent G&M opinion piece on this today) is for feds to do just that, by imposing harsher $$$ penalties on the airlines themselves. 🤣🤣🤣 You lost me at “sprawling bureaucracy”. Read the article. It’s actually spot on and it doesn’t speak to Air Canada. This Minister managed to take our largest airport (YYZ) to worst this summer and topped it off with the worst winter in memory. And he still managed to tweet himself on the back for a successful year.
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