air carriers Archives | Massimo Bergamini

NEW TRANSPORT MINISTER BRINGS CLEAN SLATE TO AIRLINE PANDEMIC RELIEF NEGOTIATIONS

January 22, 2021 Massimo Bergamini

It is likely that there was more to last week’s surprise cabinet shuffle than just some pre-electoral housekeeping triggered by the decision of the former minister for innovation Navdeep Bains not to seek re-election.

Considering the growing clamour over air service cuts that are leaving communities — in Atlantic Canada and elsewhere — isolated from the rest of the country, a more likely explanation is that the prime minister also saw in his minister’s decision an opportunity to break a political logjam that threatens the Liberals’ election prospects.

The shuffle’s marquee move was the shift of former foreign affairs minister Francois-Philippe Champagne into the vacated innovation portfolio with former transport minister Marc Garneau replacing him as Canada’s top diplomat.

Rounding out the cabinet shakeup, Winnipeg MP Jim Carr returned to cabinet as special representative for the Prairies and Mississauga Centre MP Omar Alghabra replaced Mr. Garneau as transport minister.

While the appointment of a new minister of foreign affairs who would be expected to reset the Canada-US relationship got top billing, it also served to overshadow the fact that the changes would help the government reset its relationship with Canada’s air transportation sector.

Given the storm brewing in a number of communities that find themselves without air service, the latter relationship may be of more immediate political importance to a prime minister who has been openly speculating about an early visit to the polls.

For months, Canada’s airlines and airports had been pleading for help navigating the turbulence from a pandemic that has cut their revenues by over 80 percent.

But early optimism that like other national governments, Ottawa would step up to keep the industry from collapse, finally ran out of runway last November.

Industry sources say that a relief package had been promised by the former minister, and when it failed to materialize in the government’s fall economic update, many felt abandoned by the government.

Since November 30 when finance minister Chrystia Freeland delivered the government’s economic update the situation has only become more worrisome for the air transportation sector.

In the last two weeks alone, Air Canada and WestJet each slashed more domestic capacity, laying off almost 3000 more workers and leaving communities such as Gander, NL; Sydney, NS; and Fredericton, NB without any air service.

In that context, the appointment to the transportation portfolio of an affable but low-profile MP with no cabinet experience surprised observers.

But lost in the shuffle was recognition of the political value of a minister coming into a tough new job without having to check any baggage at the gate.

Unlike his predecessor, who many in the industry had come to view as an unreliable interlocutor, the new minister arrives with a clean slate on which to map a way out of a crisis that threatens to ground Canada’s airline industry and isolate dozens of communities.

The former transport minister’s bumpy relation with Canada’s aviation sector predated the pandemic and he was known more for his acerbic and sometime provocative public statements about air carriers than for being a champion for the industry.

His tendency to frame publicly — if not necessarily view — the resolution of commercial aviation issues and policy disagreement as a kind of zero-sum game left little room for meaningful negotiations and compromise.

The new minister on the other hand will enter into negotiations with air carriers unencumbered by any such personal baggage.

Carrying a clean slate will not only help the minister in talks with the industry, but it will help him and the government in selling to Canadians an assistance package that, given the scope of the crisis, will come with a hefty price tag.

For five years, Mr. Garneau played stern paterfamilias to Canada’s air carriers with the gusto worthy of a method actor.

Delivering a comprehensive and long-term assistance plan for Canada’s air transportation sector would have been against type for Mr. Garneau.

Mr. Trudeau recognised that. Steeped in the art of the theatre, he gave that role to someone else.

PASSENGER RIGHTS: STOP THE COUNTDOWN

April 25, 2019 Massimo Bergamini

Responding to recent calls from Canadian air carriers, airports and even a leading Canadian labour union to postpone the July 1 launch of his passenger rights regulations, Transport Minister Marc Garneau told the CBC, “We’ve been working on this for over two years. I am anxious to get them out.”

If the minister’s impatience is understandable in the context of a looming general election, it is much less so if the goal is a passenger rights system that actually works.

And it’s not just Canadian air carriers warning that rushing implementation of his plan – which is yet to be finalized no less – will fail to achieve its intended goal of protecting consumers. IATA, which represents air carriers worldwide, and Airlines for America (A4A) also called on the government to slow down and get it right.

Not only do the draft regulations lack the clarity needed by airlines to translate them into day-to-day commercial practices but they are often at odds with global airline operating realities.

This is not an idle consideration.

In practice it means that implementation is made more difficult and time consuming because of new systems and procedures that would be required. More important, it also means that unless the government addresses some of the more glaring problems with the regulations, in some cases they could actually make things worse for travelers.

Whatever time it took the government to get the legislation through Parliament and the regulations drafted does nothing to justify a rush to implement them before their more glaring problems are fixed or with little consideration for their impact on the commercial airline industry and the passengers it serves.

Confronted with such haste, it is good to reflect on the teachable moment that the federal government’s 2016 decision to move all federal payroll functions to the ill-fated Phoenix pay system provides.

The parallel between the rushed implementation of the Phoenix pay system and the rush by the federal government to implement its passenger rights regime is instructive — both involve undue haste in the face of a complex undertaking.

In the case of the Phoenix pay system federal employees are still paying the price. Air travellers shouldn’t have to pay the price for the minister’s impatience.

And why the rush anyway?

Is there an overriding rationale for July 1^st beyond the obvious symbolism? Is air travel in Canada and globally in the throes of a market failure of such scope that exceptional measures are required immediately, even if not fully baked?

The answer is no.

Canadian air carriers move over 350,000 passengers domestically every day. That is almost the equivalent of the population of the City of Toronto – every woman, man and child – every week.

For the vast majority of these air travelers, the flight is as it should be: pleasant and uneventful, thanks to the efforts of tens of thousands of people working in airlines, airports, air traffic control, security, national governments and international agencies. And the vast majority of these air travelers will never once refer to the minister’s new rules in a dispute with an air carrier.

With less than 10 weeks left until the minister’s July 1 target date, time is running out. Airlines cannot begin changing information and communication systems, procedures and policies or developing training for tens of thousands of front-line and other employees before they even know for certain exactly what they will be required to do.

After spending over a billion dollars trying to fix its pay system and with over 200,000 federal employees still hurting, the federal government announced in its February Budget that it plans to phase-out Phoenix and start anew.

Unlike the government, air carriers and their passengers cannot afford a do-over. This is why we’re saying take the time to do it right.

As a former astronaut who flew three Shuttle missions, Minister Garneau knows better than most that impatience has no place in the planning or execution of a successful launch.

Even with the world watching, shuttle launches were delayed dozens of times in the course of their status check – proving that sometimes the greatest virtue is knowing when to say “no go”.

When the federal government ran into difficulties rolling out its legal cannabis program as planned on July 1, 2018, it did the right thing and delayed implementation for a few months.

Getting legal cannabis rules right was important — getting air travel regulations right is no less important.