If you wish to have citations for rulings in respect to the validity of an airline tariff in Canada, I recommend that you visit the CTA proceedings data base and review the listed decisions. If the tariff was invalid, it would not be used for the basis of successful complaints, nor for the dismissal of complaints against Air Canada. In respect to this incident, I made my comment on the basis that the authorized regulator has previously accepted and applied the Air Canada tariff. When the tariffs have been contrary to applicable legislation, the regulator has ordered amendments. More specifically, to quote the CTA;
- Tariffs are governed by the Canada Transportation Act, the Air Transportation Regulations and the Montreal Convention.
- Provisions incorporated into a carrier's tariffs must meet certain legislative requirements, which include not being unreasonable, unjust or unduly discriminatory and are enforceable by the Canadian Transportation Agency. Passengers can file complaints with the Agency if they feel an air carrier has not acted in a manner consistent with the tariff, or if they feel the tariff is unclear, unjust, unreasonable or unduly discriminatory. In these contexts, the Agency has the authority to address the terms and conditions of carriage for domestic traffic on complaint and for international traffic on complaint and its own motion. It has the power to suspend, disallow or substitute the terms and conditions of carriage, and can order the air carrier to change its tariff and its terms and conditions. In the past decade, what we have seen are (infrequent)rulings from the CTA directing the airline(s) to amend the tariff(s). A notable example is the 2012 ruling on the multiple complaints of 2009 relating to overbooking, cancellation, delay and rerouting, which found that the Air Canada and West Jet tariffs were unreasonable. In this same period, I am unaware of any rulings which required Air Canada to amend its fraud prevention practice, nor to reduce its human trafficking and child abduction control measures. I am not aware of a ruling that an airline should not verify the identity of the credit card holder used to pay for the travel of two unknown relationship passengers, Also, in respect to general transactions, I am unaware of any legal requirement that a merchant must accept a credit card payment if the merchant is unable to verify validity of the card payment.