OTTAWA — Canada’s airports participated in the first National Air Accessibility Summit hosted by Minister of Transport, Pablo Rodriguez, and federal Minister of Diversity, Inclusion and Persons with Disabilities, Kamal Khera.

The summit included representatives of Canada’s air sector and the nation’s disability community focusing on the passenger experience and working to identify solutions to address ongoing issues.

CAC President Monette Pasher says the CAC is participating to collaborate and highlight the significant work underway at airports across the country.

“Air travel plays a vital role in our economy and society, fostering connectivity and driving growth,” says Pasher. “The CAC is committed to going beyond regulatory requirements with initiatives to improve accessibility in Canadian airports. We want all passengers to feel that they belong in Canada’s airports.”

She adds that the CAC is developing a five-year roadmap aimed at taking meaningful steps forward toward Canada’s goal of achieving barrier-free travel by 2040. As part of this work, CAC in collaboration with Harper Learning and Universal Access Design, has developed and recently launched a new national training program for airport employees. The goal of the training is to better assist persons with disabilities throughout their travel journey.

According to Pasher, barrier-free goes beyond programs and training and a challenge facing

smaller airports is the cost to change the physical built environment in the older infrastructure they currently operate. The association sees federal government funding support as being critical to achieving this.

“The government of Canada has a funding program, the Airports Capital Assistance Program, where eligible funding includes support for barrier-free infrastructure projects at small airports. But unfortunately, no projects have been funded in this area for nearly two decades as there is simply is not enough funding to address barrier free projects for small airports,” she says.

From Pasher’s perspective, a major challenge with the small airport program is that it is underfunded at $38 million a year, an amount that has not changed for the most part in 20 years. She says small airports have requested $95 million annually to help meet infrastructure needs across the country, which would