Feds to hike max fine for airlines caught violating air passenger bill of rights to $1M

The federal government says it will hike the maximum fine that can be levied against airlines for repeated violations of the air passenger bill of rights to $1 million.

Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon made the announcement during a news conference on Friday.

“Financial penalties are a last resort. They’re meant to be there for clear breaches. When there is a clear breach, there should be a stiff penalty and one that dissuades these events from happening again,” MacKinnon said Friday.

“I’m pretty confident that airlines will want to live up to the expectations that we’ve set.”

The regulations, formally known as the air passenger protection regulations (APPR), came into force in 2019 and require airlines to compensate passengers for delays or cancellations that are within their control.

Airlines found to repeatedly violate those regulations can be hit with a maximum $25,000 fine. The government proposed boosting that penalty to $250,000 as part of a suite of changes to the regime introduced in the 2023 budget, but those changes have yet to come into force.

Ian Jack, a spokesperson for the Canadian Automobile Association, said the increased fine could be an “empty threat” unless there is follow-through.

“I think it’s been in their interest until now to test the boundaries of the system because the government has been very reluctant to issue those fines,” Jack, whose association offers travel services including flight bookings, told CBC News.

“We will have to see those fines actually applied in a couple of cases, I think. Otherwise, it’s an empty threat.”

The Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) — a quasi-judicial tribunal and regulator tasked with settling disputes between airlines and customers — has been dealing with a backlog of air passenger complaints since the air passenger bill of rights was introduced in 2019.

The agency told CBC News last month that the backlog had hit 95,000 complaints.

As part of Tuesday’s economic update, the Liberals announced that it plans to outsource the resolution process for air passenger complaints to “a neutral, third-party dispute resolution organisation.”

The government hasn’t yet indicated what sort of third-party adjudicator would be brought on to help relieve the complaints backlog, but it pointed to the U.K. and EU systems as models to follow.

Air Canada announced earlier this month that it would pilot a program that would transfer air passenger complaints to a third party.

Jack suggested that the third party resolution process could help to clear the backlog, but suggested that the government should be prioritizing simplifying the regulations.

“The minister himself said today, the rules are very complicated and take too long to administer. So it’s kind of difficult to see how bringing in the private sector is gonna magically wave a wand and get everybody’s satisfaction a lot faster,” he said.

The government had promised in the 2023 budget to update the regulations in order to simplify the process and make it easier for passengers to understand.

“We put in place a system that in hindsight was onerous, expensive, took too long…. We are going to change that system,” MacKinnon said on Friday. “If you are one of the 100,000 or so people involved in this backlog, help is on the way.”

The CTA proposed a new set of regulations in late 2024 and wrapped up consultations on those proposals in March 2025. Those proposed regulations still haven’t been brought into force.

Pressed on when those changes would be implemented, MacKinnon said that his priority is to see the backlog cleared.

“The first thing we have to do is get rid of this backlog that has developed, achieve fairness and outcomes for people who have filed complaints. That we are determined to do and determined to do quickly so that we can move to a better system,” he told reporters Friday.

But Jack argued that the new regulations should be brought in, otherwise the backlog may continue to grow.

“How are you going to get a 100,000 backlog to zero super quick, while still using the same rules that have proven to be very complicated and slow and onerous?” Jack asked.