From the Toronto Star – link to source story

By Jacob Lorinc, Business Reporter | Thu., June 17, 2021

A member of Ottawa’s transportation committee has filed a complaint with the lobbying commissioner over a meeting held between federal transportation agencies and an unnamed individual in March 2020, just days before Ottawa told airlines they would not have to refund passengers for cancelled flights.

Xavier Barsalou-Duval, a Bloc-Quebecois MP, says he recently obtained emails showing that high-ranking members of the Canadian Transportation Agency and Transport Canada met days before issuing a public statement on March 30, 2020, saying that airlines should provide affected passengers with vouchers or credits rather than refunds.

That meeting included an individual whose name was redacted in the emails Barsalou-Duval obtained, though the government’s lobbyist registry has no public record of that meeting taking place.

The redaction suggests the individual who attended the meeting does not work for the government, given that government officials cannot have their names redacted from government documents, Barsalou-Duval said.

The revelations raise concerns that outside lobbyists helped dictate Ottawa’s approach to protecting airline passengers in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic without disclosing those meetings to the public, said Barsalou-Duval.

“The Canadian Transportation Agency is supposed to be independent in its decisions, but this suggests there’s a good chance that someone from the private sector was involved,” he said.

“If it was someone from the private sector, like an airline lobbyist or a group representing airlines, this meeting would be completely inappropriate.”

Canada’s airlines withheld thousands of refunds in the early months of the pandemic, offering vouchers and credits in lieu of cancelled flights. The controversy inundated the Canadian Transport Agency with an unprecedented number of complaints regarding airlines in 2020, more than half of them relating to refunds and vouchers.

Initially, Ottawa permitted airlines to withhold refunds from passengers, stating that companies facing huge drops in passenger volumes and revenue should not be expected to take steps that would threaten their economic viability.

But as pressure mounted, the government changed positions, demanding that airlines including Air Canada repay customers in exchange for a long-sought-after federal aid package for the sector. In April 2021, the government agreed to a $5.9 billion aid package for Air Canada, including a $1.4 billion line of credit the company could use to reimburse passengers.

The company has been handing out refunds over the past two months.

Canada’s lobbyist registry shows no record of a meeting between the transportation agencies and a lobbyist in the days prior to its March 2020 statement. But the emails obtained by Barsalou-Duval confirm a meeting took place.

Barsalou-Duval now wants the commissioner to investigate whether or not the transportation agencies breached ethical standards, according to the letter he filed with the lobbying commissioner.

Gabor Lukacs, president and founder of Air Passenger Rights, says the emails strongly suggest an airline lobbyist may have influenced the government’s decision on refunding passengers.

“I’m concerned that people from the Canadian Transportation Agency have been acting in the interest of the airline industry instead of the public interest,” he said.

“We don’t know who, exactly, attended that meeting. But I doubt that someone interested in railways or wheat would have attended a meeting about airline vouchers.”

Neither the Canadian Transportation Agency nor Transport Canada responded to the Star’s requests for comment by press time.

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Source: https://canadianaviationnews.wordpress.com/2021/06/17/an-airline-lobbyist-may-have-influenced-the-governments-decision-on-refunding-passengers-quebec-mp-charges/