Ottawa Pledges $76M to Process Air Travel Complaint Backlog

Federal Transport Minister Omar Alghabra speaks with reporters before appearing as a witness at a House of Commons Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure, and Communities in Ottawa on Jan. 12, 2023. The Canadian Press/Spencer Colby

Ottawa says it will give the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) nearly $76 million in additional funding over the next three years in a bid to help clear a large passenger complaint backlog.

Transport Minister Omar Alghabra announced the new funding worth a total of $75.9 million on March 14 during a press conference at the Toronto Pearson International Airport.

Alghabra’s department said in a news release that the new funding is also intended to strengthen the federal transportation network’s operability and enable the CTA to “efficiently deliver on its mandate for Canadians.”

The CTA is an independent, quasi-judicial regulator and tribunal whose mandate is to help ensure that Canada’s federal transportation system “runs efficiently, smoothly and is accessible in the interests of all Canadians.”

The agency is also responsible for enforcing Ottawa’s air passenger protection regulations, introduced in 2019.

Alghabra was asked by reporters at the press conference why he believes additional funding will help clear the backlog after his department gave the CTA about $11 million in 2022 for the same purpose, yet the backlog still continued to grow.

Alghabra said the new funding will make a difference because it means “in real terms” that the CTA can hire around 200 additional employees who will focus exclusively on addressing complaints.

Growing Backlog

The CTA’s dispute resolution general director Michelle Greenshields told a parliamentary committee in November 2022 that the agency had around 30,000 backlogged complaints.

Greenshields told the House of Commons Standing Committee on Transport that the CTA received an average of between 3,000 and 6,000 complaints per month throughout the summer of 2022.

She also said the CTA managed to process around 15,000 complaints in the 2021-2022 fiscal year, which she added was three times more than what it was able to process in a year prior to the pandemic.

Alghabra told reporters on March 14 that the number of backlogged complaints had reached around 42,000.

He also said the new funding for the CTA “will take a massive dent out of the backlog.”

“The backlog is huge,” he said, adding that the impact of the new funding on the large number of unaddressed complaints will take some time to see.

“It won’t be done overnight, but it will significantly improve the processing time of complaints,” he said.

Alghabra also told reporters that the federal government is looking at closing a loophole in its air passenger rights regime that currently allows airlines to avoid paying compensation to travellers whose flights were cancelled simply by citing safety-related issues.

Alghabra said the Liberal government will be introducing legislation this spring aimed at addressing the issue.