Canada's Association of Retail Travel Agents (ARTA Canada) says the “broad assessment” by the Ontario Government that TICO generally followed proper and established procedures in the handling of One Step Travel obscures the deficiencies in the regulator’s approach.
“While TICO acknowledged that the review did find shortcomings in a variety of areas, TICO did not offer specifics as to the depth or sizing of the areas which the review found significantly lacking,” ARTA said in a statement. “In fact, as to the main issue, the primary issue raised by registrants being financial compliance, scrutiny, and sanctions, TICO was not in compliance with its own policies and procedures.” the ARTA statement said.
ARTA Canada President Bruce Bishins says TICO only agreed to a review of the situation because of “ongoing pressure from the industry,” and accuses the regulator of creating “its own parameters and scope of the review, loading up on issues which were never called into question such as handling of consumers and management of claims.”
Bishins contends that TICO did not do enough to discipline One Step Travel for repeated transgressions of Travel Industry Act requirements and suggests the failure of the company and subsequent $1 million hit on the Ontario Travel Industry Compensation fund should have been avoided.
"We are pleased that the Government's analysis of the One Step Travel matter affirms our suspicions that TICO was remiss in suspending an agency which for 10 out its 10 years was woefully late in filing financial statements and had gross working capital deficiencies, including years of negative working capital. What may have ended up being a fraud by the owners could have been prevented by a suspension that simply never took place,” Bishins says.
To support its arguments, ARTA Canada offered several quotes from the independent audit performed by the Internal Audit Division of Ontario’s Ministry of Finance Ontario that are critical of TICO’s actions, despite an overall report conclusion that TICO “largely followed established policies and procedures and reasonably handled the closure and related claims from consumers.”
ARTA points out that the review stated, among other things, the following:
- "TICO was not in compliance with sections of their policies and procedures manual relating to when proposals to revoke registration are to be issued."
- "TICO only issued a proposal to revoke OST’s [One Step Travel's] registration once in the ten-year period noted (in 2003), when the policies and procedures manual would have required more enforcement be exercised."
- "Based on our review, inspections had been conducted at OST’s Head Office; however, these inspections missed a significant portion of OST’s operations. TICO should have been aware of these operations and should have conducted a review of them, as these two branches were registered and were in the TICO database under the OST profile."
