The backlog of air passenger complaints at Canada’s transport regulator has hit a new high topping 57,000, as dissatisfaction over cancellations and compensation persist three and a half years after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The numbers reveal that an average of more than 3,000 complaints per month have piled up at the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) over the past year, with the current tally well over three times the total from September 2022.

In June, the government passed legislation to overhaul Canada’s passenger rights charter, laying out measures to toughen penalties and tighten loopholes around traveller compensation as well as streamline the complaints process as a whole.

“There will be no more loopholes where airlines can claim a disruption is caused by something outside of their control for a security reason when it’s not,” then-transport minister Omar Alghabra told reporters in April.

While some reforms aren’t slated to take effect until Sept. 30, the rising tally of complaints comes as no surprise to some critics, who cite “practically enforceable and provide meaningful protection to passengers,” and a “dismal record” of enforcement by the government of Air Passenger Protection Regulations that are “so complicated, so complex … that it takes inordinate resources to actually verify eligibility.”

The amendments to the passenger rights charter allow the regulator to ratchet up the maximum penalty for airline violations to $250,000 – a tenfold increase – and put the regulatory cost of complaints on carriers. In theory, that measure gives airlines an incentive to brush up their service and thus reduce the number of grievances against them.