A disabled WestJet Airlines passenger barred from boarding due to the COVID-19 mask mandate has been denied compensation after the Canadian Transportation Agency ruled the airline had no choice but to enforce the mandate, despite the passenger’s doctor’s note.
Cancer survivor Christopher Basaraba filed an application with the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA), seeking damages after he had to rent a car and drive 740 kilometres to keep an “important medical appointment” following the airline’s decision, according to the agency’s ruling.
The Fort McMurray, Alta., resident booked an April 3, 2022, flight to Calgary for a medical appointment the following day, CTA documents show. Basaraba had a doctor’s note stating he could not wear a mask due to “reduced lung function” from cancer surgery.
The agency said it was evident the passenger was “a person with a disability,” but ruled the medical note provided by Basaraba did not contain the “necessary certification,” as first reported by Blacklock’s Reporter.
“Passengers are responsible for ensuring they meet all documentary requirements to travel,” the agency wrote in its Aug. 8 decision. “WestJet communicated the requirements about mask exemptions to passengers before travel via its website.”
Accepting the medical note from Basaraba would have put WestJet “in breach of regulatory requirements, thereby creating undue hardship,” the agency said.
The CTA dismissed Basaraba’s claim for $40,000 in damages and reimbursement for the rental car expenses.
“The Agency recognizes that the COVID-19 pandemic was an extraordinary event that resulted in rapidly changing circumstances, including the development of new requirements and guidance by the safety regulator as well as the ongoing need for transportation service providers to develop and change policies from time to time to meet those requirements,” the CTA wrote. “The Agency finds that WestJet could not remove the barrier without experiencing undue hardship.”
Cabinet announced a mask mandate for air passengers in April 2020 in response to the pandemic. Then-Transport Minister Marc Garneau cited the importance of staying home when feasible and recommended that travellers wear a “face covering” to ensure the safety of those around them.
WestJet implemented a zero-tolerance mask policy on Sept. 1, 2020, requiring all guests over the age of two to wear face masks.
“Canadian travellers and all of our WestJet Group employees are counting on us to keep them safe and it is our utmost priority to do so,” WestJet president and CEO Ed Sims said in an August 2020 press release. “Travellers must understand if they choose to not wear a mask, they are choosing not to fly our airlines.”
Non-compliant guests would be denied boarding or, if removal of the mask occurred after boarding, the return of the aircraft to the gate to offload the passenger.
The federal government lifted its mask mandate for travellers on Oct. 1, 2022.
