Good afternoon.
Thank you for the opportunity today to present the Coopérative de transport régional du Québec initiative, TREQ.
There are many major impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on many industries. For sure, today you have been presented with the impacts on the airlines and the airports of our country.
This unprecedented crisis might also be viewed as creating an opportunity to rethink our domestic air transportation systems. As you might know, a large part of the country is poorly served at the regional level. More specifically, the east—Quebec and the Atlantic provinces—doesn't have a normal regional service.
Everyone knows about the high price of tickets, but what's more important to know is the impact of these prices on utilization. IATA and Stats Canada reveal the magnitude of the dysfunction of our regional air transportation on this side of the country. There are five times more passengers per capita flying point to point on regional carriers in Ontario than in Quebec. On the domestic side, just to bring us back to the national level, Quebec is missing 10 million passengers in its airports.
What are we saying? While the rest of the country and the continent are using air transportation for their need of long-distance travel, those of us in the east of Canada are either driving six to 12 hours to get to a meeting or a medical appointment, or worse, we don't travel. This goes to our ability to occupy our territory, develop our economy and our tourism industry, or just to provide quality of life to many remote communities on this side of the country.
Our project mission is to correct this situation for the province of Quebec. We are breaking away from the paradigm by using a collective approach, putting the regions and their communities at the centre of our governance. Our model will combine the drive of the private sector with the nobleness of the public sector. That model is a co-op, the Coopérative de transport régional du Québec. Without going into the detail of what it looks like, our model is similar to that of Porter Airlines in Ontario, and we will be flying 78-seater Q400s starting in June 2021.
Thank you.