Ottawa Held Back Airline Fee While Complaint Backlog Exploded: Report

Have you been trying to recover a payout from airlines after submitting a complaint to Canadian Transportation Agency? Well, that delay in the process may be for a reason, according to new documents obtained under Access to Information requests.

Internal government records seemingly suggest the federal government played a direct role in delaying a fee that was supposed to force airlines to help fund Canada’s air passenger complaints system, according to reporting by CBC News.

The documents show officials at Transport Canada and multiple transport ministers intervened in the work of the CTA after Parliament ordered the agency in 2023 to introduce a cost-recovery fee on airlines. More than two years later, the fee still has not been implemented.

CBC News reported that the CTA proposed charging airlines $790 for each eligible passenger complaint as a way to offset costs and reduce a growing backlog. Instead, taxpayers continue to cover roughly $30 million a year, while unresolved complaints have climbed past 88,000.

Records obtained through access-to-information requests show repeated requests from Transport Canada officials asking the CTA to delay or reconsider the fee. One key document is an October 2024 letter from then-transport minister Anita Anand, who asked the agency to pause implementation and criticized it for moving ahead without her input.

“I should have been accorded, as the incoming Minister, the opportunity to provide my input to the proposal,” Anand wrote.

She also questioned whether the CTA had done enough analysis to justify the proposed amount and asked the agency to delay any decision until broader regulatory changes were completed, changes that still have not been finalized.

Administrative law expert Pauly Daly told CBC News the minister’s request crossed a legal line. “The clock doesn’t restart on consultation or anything else when a new minister takes office,” Daly said, calling the move “constitutionally inappropriate.”

Air Passenger Rights founder Gábor Lukács, who reviewed the documents, said the pattern shows political interference. “What we are seeing here is that the government, and the minister in particular, are sabotaging Parliament’s will,” he told CBC News.

By May 2025, the CTA informed then-transport minister Chrystia Freeland that it was ready to move ahead with the fee. The records end shortly after, and it remains unclear why the process stalled again.

CBC News also reported that airlines have held nearly 150 lobbying meetings with federal officials since Parliament ordered the fee, while internal projections suggest the complaints backlog could exceed 150,000 cases by 2028 if delays continue.

Besides fighting and complaining about telecoms as a past time, next in line for Canadians are airlines. Even the Competition Bureau says Ottawa should let foreign airlines take on Air Canada and WestJet.