The Canadian Association of Tour Operators and the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law held a private session for members and media November 8th to discuss some of the legal issues the industry is facing.

The afternoon session, titled, Trains, Planes and Contracts: Legal Issues in the Travel Industry, was moderated by associate professor for the University of Toronto's Faculty of Law, as well as Canada Research Chair in Law, Economics, & Innovation, Anthony Niblett.

Joining Niblett in the panel discussion were CATO’s Brett Walker, Vice-Chair; Pierre LePage, Executive Director, and Tim Croyle, Chair.

Niblett explained laws are never black and white and in the travel industry especially, many loopholes exist when it comes to who’s on the hook should something go wrong. For example, how transparent should a tour operator be with product descriptions? And how does that responsibility fit with recent debate surrounding changes to the Travel Industry Act?

“It’s a good question as there is some crossover between contract law and the obligations laid out in the Act,” said Croyle. “It becomes who did the traveler contract with?

Having an act that spells out what should and shouldn’t be done is a very good reference point. We have been working with TICO and the government on revisions to the Act. It was written a while ago so we did have some revisions that started about three years ago. We’re continuing to have those dialogues to really try and help modernize the Act to help reflect conducting business today which is a lot more online and a lot more global than it would’ve been when it was written ten to fifteen years ago.”

LePage agrees.

“CATO and ACTA in particular have been cooperating to try to change and update the Act. Including compensation fund and our view on whether it’s effective or not. We have no issue with the Travel Industry Act as it applies to registrants because that is in fact, sort of a list of basically here are the ways that you as registrant, whether a tour operator or agent must behave towards the business,” he says.

“Whereas what we’re talking here was literally a contract whether verbal or written, between travel agent and operator and by extension the customer. That was an interesting aspect of it, and as far as the Act is concerned we just want it fixed. “