Parents of infant who died in wrong-way crash on Ontario's Hwy. 401 were in same vehicle
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
The federal government has air travel on its radar after laying out plans in its budget to speed up airport security screening and reduce flight delays, but industry and advocates remain skeptical.
Tabled Tuesday by the Liberals following a year of travel turmoil, the budget promises $1.8 billion over five years for the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) to improve passenger screening and shore up security at airports.
It also proposes a new rule requiring airlines and airports to share and report data as a way to cut delays and bolster co-ordination within the industry.
The budget further allows the transport minister to impose a charge on carriers to help cover the costs of resolving passenger complaints. In theory, the measure would incentivize carriers to brush up their service and thus reduce grievances against them.
Both steps would require additional legislation.
The aviation industry had a mixed response to the budget. Jeff Morrison, who heads the National Airlines Council of Canada, said it marks a "missed opportunity" to give the sector a boost and includes "no significant measures to improve the journey" for travellers.
"As one of the hardest hit industries during the COVID pandemic, NACC hoped for more concrete measures to strengthen the overall air travel system through investment to support infrastructure modernization," he said in a statement from the organization that represents four of the country's biggest carriers, including Air Canada and WestJet.
The $400-million-plus in rent that Ottawa collects each year from airports should be reinvested in them, he added.
Monette Pasher, head of the Canadian Airports Council, struck a lighter tone, saying the group is encouraged by what she called "incremental" steps to help the sector and improve the passenger experience.
"Airports across the country welcome these new measures," she said in a statement. "However, there is still more work ahead to get airports fully down the runway to recovery."
Sylvie De Bellefeuille, a lawyer with the advocacy group Option consommateurs, said "the devil is in the details" on data sharing, including the degree of public access and timely reporting.
"It really depends on what they will have to provide," she said.
Currently, airlines share information on daily flight schedules and airplane types with airports.
"The airlines are basically saying that there's a need to keep the passenger count confidential for commercial reasons," said John Gradek, who teaches aviation management at McGill University. "But the airports really need that information in order for them to basically staff their various functions properly.
"Flight information is interesting, but it's really more about passengers going through the building and making sure you've got enough counter staff or enough baggage staff or enough CATSA or CBSA (Canada Border Services Agency) staff," he said.
The budget measures come after Transport Minister Omar Alghabra pledged in January to overhaul the country's passenger rights charter following chaotic travel seasons during the summer and winter holidays brought on by soaring demand and poor weather.
The budget fleshed that plan out a little further Tuesday, stating that reforms this spring will align the air passenger rights regime with "leading international approaches" and streamline the complaints process.
European Union regulations -- often considered the gold standard for passenger protections -- require compensation for flight cancellations or significant delays, except under "extraordinary circumstances which could not have been avoided" such as extreme weather and war. In contrast, Canadian rules include a loophole that exempts airlines from passenger compensation when delays were caused by "reasons related to safety."
The budget proposal to expedite air traveller complaints -- the backlog now tops 42,000, according to the Canadian Transportation Agency -- revolves largely around converting the regulator's quasi-judicial adjudication process to "a mediation-arbitration process."
The agency has told Parliament that about 97 per cent of the complaints it handles are resolved through informal processes rather than adjudication.
"The agency already seems to act not necessarily as a mediator but really as a facilitator in the process," said De Bellefeuille, stating that the two roles are comparable. The regulator does not track the outcome of those resolutions, except for the three per cent that reach the tribunal stage, she noted.
"So we don't know whether or not it's in favour of the consumer, because we don't have the details. Now, will that change?" she asked. "Again, it always depends on how it is how it is written."
Air Passenger Rights advocacy group president Gabor Lukacs fretted that the mediation-arbitration reform will be "yet another way of creating the appearance that things are being resolved ... while tossing out lots of good complaints -- that's my fear."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 29, 2023.
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
Jurors in the hush money trial of Donald Trump heard a recording Thursday of him discussing with his then-lawyer and personal fixer a plan to purchase the silence of a Playboy model who has said she had an affair with the former president.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a scuba dive boat captain to four years in custody and three years supervised release for criminal negligence after 34 people died in a fire aboard the vessel.
Fake text message and email campaigns trying to get money and information out of unsuspecting Canadian taxpayers have started circulating, just months after the federal government rebranded the carbon tax rebate the Canada Carbon Rebate.
Staff at a small southern Alberta office supply store were shocked to find someone had broken into the business last week, but they were even more confused when they discovered the culprit was a bear.
President Joe Biden has called Japan and India “xenophobic” countries that do not welcome immigrants, lumping the two with adversaries China and Russia as he tried to explain their economic circumstances and contrasted the four with the U.S. on immigration.
Montreal police are facing pressure to move in and dismantle a pro-Palestinian encampment on McGill University campus on Thursday, as a growing number of universities across this country grapple with the tough decision of how to handle the protests.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.
The lawyer for a residential school survivor leading a proposed class-action defamation lawsuit against the Catholic Church over residential schools says the court action is a last resort.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.