Probe into Air Canada's baby on ‘standby' is still ongoing — and could take 3 years. Why the delay?

Hamilton Spectator

a day ago

Remember little
Margaret 'Molly' McLachlan, the Toronto tot that Air Canada put on 'standby'?
Six months later, the investigation by the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) into the airline's cock up is still ongoing — and could take as long as three years.
As of June 26, Air Canada had yet to provide all requested information to the CTA's investigator, an agency spokesperson confirmed to the Star by email.
The evidence, and airline regulations, seem rather straightforward.
On their way home from Tampa in January, airline gate agents told the McLachlans that 20-month-old Molly would have to catch the next flight.
Moments before takeoff, an agent got Molly on the plane, but several rows away from her parents. And flight attendants refused to help fix the problem.
Under the CTA's Air Passengers Protection Regulations, 'airlines must, at the earliest opportunity and at no extra cost, take steps to seat children under the age of 14 near their parent, guardian or tutor,' the CTA told the Star. The distance depends on a child's age. Children under five, 'must be in a seat next to their parent, guardian or tutor.'
Kids ages five to 11 must be in the same row, separated by no more than one seat from a parent while those aged 12 and 13 must be no further than a row away.
The CTA told the Star recently that its investigation to determine whether the airline did anything wrong is 'still ongoing.'
Well, how long could this possibly take?
After
the Star published the McLachlans' story, one of the most-read on the Star's website this year
, families across Canada and beyond reached out to me with similar horror stories.
'The only legal timeline is set out in section 181 of the Canada Transportation Act, and specifies that any enforcement action needs to be taken within 36 months of the date the violation occurred,' senior investigator Amanda Capstick wrote in an email to Molly's dad, Greg McLachlan.
'Amanda,' McLachlan replied, 'my daughter, will be 5 years old in three years.
'How does this get escalated?'
Capstick has yet to reply, McLachlan told me last week.
But the law Capstick referred to does in fact give her and other CTA investigators very broad powers to compel airlines to promptly produce evidence — even on the spot.
Rodney Conlon eventually got a refund through PaySimply and Amex, but still wonders exactly what
Why the CTA isn't acting swiftly to protect Canadian consumers is something all taxpayers should be angry about.
And it's not for lack of resources.
In 2023, the federal government gave the agency $76 million in
additional
funding over three years, to help process 'unprecedented' numbers of complaints from air passengers and hire 112 complaint resolution officers.
In 2023-2024, the CTA's annual reports states the agency
received a record 43,549 complaints from air passengers. An agency briefing report published in March 2024 notes the backlog of unresolved complaints on its to-list is '67,400 and rising.'
Despite the CTA's regulations, because they travel regularly and know things don't always go as they should, the McLachlins actually paid to ensure Molly and her slightly older brother were seated next to a parent on the flight.
Air Canada later told the Star that 'human error' resulted in Molly not getting her preassigned seat and 'this was unfortunately not corrected.'
McLachlan said airline staff advised he would have to ask another passenger to move if he wanted Molly to sit beside him or his wife Lindsay.
'There was no legal basis for the flight attendants to say it's not their responsibility,' air passenger rights advocate Gábor Lukács told me. 'This is really, really troubling. There should be significant and swift consequences. This is happening because the regulator isn't doing its job properly.'
Lukács,
president of Air Passenger Rights
, said the CTA could issue a notice of violation and a $25,000 administrative monetary penalty against Air Canada. But past experience shows if a fine is issued at all it will likely be paltry and won't foster compliance, which will just boost the agency's bloated backlog of complaints.
'The message,' he said, 'should be that airlines that behave this way will not be tolerated in Canada.'
The number of formal CTA investigations that result in administrative monetary penalties against an airline is relatively small. In 2023-2024, the agency conducted 112 'targeted investigations' and issued about $1.3 million in penalties. It's unclear from the agency's annual report what portion of these fines has been collected.
What is clear is that the CTA, despite a substantial funding boost, is not living up to its mandate to protect Canadian air passengers.
While the federal government and the agency have made some strides toward improving the system (though Lukács describes the moves as 'window dressing') it's still clearly broken.
The CTA is relying on companies to co-operate with investigators when they don't need to, say Lukács. If airlines fail to produce documents quickly, he says, investigators like Capstick are empowered to seize them in the public interest. (See
subsection 178(2)
and section
178.1 of the Canada Transportation Act
.)
It's unclear what other information the CTA requires from Air Canada to move forward with the McLachlans' case.
Air Canada has publicly acknowledged its mistake. The regulations on the matter is clear, and the company did not comply with the regulations. So what, really, is the holdup?
On the upside, Molly McLachlan may be old enough to read the report herself by the time the CTA publishes its findings and determines whether a penalty is warranted.
That's not how the system should work.