Mr. Speaker, it is appalling to think that a worker in my great riding in Sudbury, who saves enough money to take himself, his spouse and his family on trip somewhere, would have to call the United States to see if they can go. We have certain rights and freedoms in Canada that would allow us to consider that going on a trip is not something where we would need permission from the United States.
The airport in my great of riding Sudbury is one that my hon. colleague from Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing and I are often in. We have a couple of great companies that are now establishing themselves at the Sudbury airport. Sunwing, for example, is starting to come to Sudbury more often. It is great to see international carriers, Canadian-based but going abroad, coming to my community in northern Ontario. That creates jobs and economic development.
If Sunwing starts to lose passengers who cannot take these flights to Mexico or Cuba because they would be flying over the United States, we will start to see job losses in northern Ontario. We have been seeing them over and over again, unfortunately, because the government's decisions when it comes to the Investment Canada Act and what has happened in some of our resource-based industries.
We are starting to see other industries come to northern Ontario, and that is great. However, if Sunwing is an example of what needs to be done to ensure we have development, then we need to encourage that travel. This bill is counter to that. Fewer and fewer people will able to fly to Mexico or Cuba, let alone the job losses, with not as many people flying.
I think we can encourage more people to fly, by ensuring that we are still protecting the airline industry with the right regulations, not the wrong regulations. This seems to be something that is very similar. Everything is reactive, nothing proactive. The opportunity to look at proactive legislation rather than looking at the reactive side would do a lot more for protecting Canadians and Canadian identity.