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Airline Complaint Secrecy Takes a Hit, and The Bank of Canada Gets Rate-Path Static.
News for residents of the “11th province”: Canadians abroad.
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Airline Complaint Secrecy Takes a Hit
A court has knocked out the rule that kept Canadian air passengers quiet after they complained to the country’s transport regulator. The Ontario Superior Court said on Wednesday that the confidentiality clause violates the Charter right to free expression.
Since 2023, travellers and airlines could not publicly share complaint outcomes unless both sides agreed. That covered fights about refunds, accessibility, cancelled flights, and compensation. Canada’s largest airlines opposed the challenge, saying complaint files can include sensitive commercial, privacy, and safety information.
The Canadian Transportation Agency backlog recently neared 100,000 complaints, and Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon has already promised a cleanup. For Canadians flying home, flying family out, or fighting an airline from abroad, the complaint might now carry a little more weight if the airlines know there’s likely to be public backlash.
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The Bank of Canada Gets Rate-Path Static
The Bank of Canada is getting a little jostling from two directions before its Wednesday (July 15) rate call. Rosenberg Research says the Bank’s neutral rate may be as much as 50 basis points too high, and C.D. Howe’s Monetary Policy Council thinks the overnight rate should stay at 2.25 percent for the next six months.
The policy rate feeds into savings yields, mortgage costs, the loonie, and the exchange-rate that affects Canadian pensions and other investments. A lower neutral-rate estimate would make today’s rate less easy-money than it looks.
C.D. Howe’s council (made up of, among others, the chief economists of the six largest Canadian banks), voted unanimously to hold next week and again in September. Members referred to shaky population growth, weak business investment, CUSMA uncertainty, and inflation near the Bank’s 2 percent target. What this split means is that the next “boring” rate meeting may still move the numbers.
Read more: Financial Post / C.D. Howe Institute