AODA Alliance
ACCESSIBILITY FOR ONTARIANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT ALLIANCE
NEWS RELEASE – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Federal Government Must Dramatically Ramp Up Weak Regulation of Airlines to Stop Mistreatment of Passengers with Disabilities, Disability Advocate to Tell House of Commons Transportation Committee Today
February 15, 2024 Toronto: Today from 11 am to 12 noon EST, AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky will testify as part of a panel of experts summoned to appear at hearings of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities. That Committee is holding hearings on what the Federal Government needs to do to ensure that Canadian airlines stop their recurring mistreatment of air passengers with disabilities. The hearings, at which Lepofsky will appear via Zoom, will be streamed live at https://parlvu.parl.gc.ca/Harmony/en/PowerBrowser/PowerBrowserV2/20240213/-1/41057 and also at https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/TRAN/meeting-101/notice
“Month after month, the media has reported on inexcusable and recurring incidents where an airline loses or destroys a passenger’s wheelchair, leaves a passenger with disabilities to crawl off an airplane, or strands a passenger with disabilities for hours in a Canadian airport without needed assistance,” Lepofsky will tell the House of Commons. “For airline execs to keep saying they’re sorry and promising to do better over and over is no solution. We need stronger federal regulations and much stronger, pro-active enforcement that doesn’t rely on victims of this mistreatment to have to go through bureaucratic hoops at the Canada Transportation Agency.”
The Standing Committee will be told that the Canada Transportation Agency (CTA), to whom the Federal Government has entrusted oversight of the airlines, has failed for years to bring the airlines into line. CTA is too close to the airlines and too ineffective at protecting vulnerable passengers with disabilities.
The AODA Alliance will also explain how the Accessible Canada Act, enacted in 2019 to lead Canada to become accessible to Canadians by 2040, has made no positive difference for air passengers with disabilities, as is documented on the AODA Alliance website’s Canada page, after five years on the statute books. In 2018 and 2019, several disability advocates, including the AODA Alliance, pressed the Federal Government to assign responsibility for airlines’ treatment of passengers with disabilities to another federal agency that is arm’s ength from the airlines. Canada is suffering from the Federal Government’s rejecting that wise advice.
“We will call on the House of Commons to require much stronger accessibility requirements for airlines and strengthened pro-active federal enforcement that doesn’t require passengers with disabilities to complain one barrier at a time,” said Lepofsky. “As a blind passenger, I dread entering Canadian airspace, because I never know how good or bad will be my treatment. Passengers with disabilities deserve better!”
The AODA Alliance will urge that senior airline executives and officers should be held directly accountable for the performance of their airlines on removing and preventing disability barriers that hurt passengers with disabilities. It will recommend that a new arm’s-length regulator should send secret shoppers with disabilities onto the airlines to monitor how they are treated.
Contact: AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky, aodafeedback@gmail.com
Twitter: @aodaalliance
For more background check out:
The AODA Alliance website’s Canada page and transportation page.
The AODA Alliance’s November 9, 2023 response to limited measures that Air Canada announced last fall to address recurring mistreatment of passengers with disabilities.