Good afternoon. My name is Doug Keller-Hobson and I am the executive director of Hope Air.
I appreciate this opportunity to appear before the finance committee during the budget 2015 consultations and share with you our proposal for a very specific legislative change that would improve access to necessary health care services for low-income Canadians regardless of where they live across Canada.
Hope Air is a registered charity whose mission is to provide free flights for those who are in financial need and must travel long distances to reach specialist medical care. The only Canadian charity dedicated to providing this service from coast to coast, Hope Air helps low-income Canadians of all ages who are suffering from a wide range of illnesses.
Hope Air is not an airline. Rather, we are a lifeline for many fellow Canadians who need to access the advanced medical technology and specialists that are typically available only in larger urban centres across our country. Since its founding in 1986, Hope Air has arranged over 87,000 free flights for low-income Canadians, including over 7,000 flights last year. There are over 8,000 projected in 2014.
Hope Air's submission to this committee is focused and specific and can be enacted at little cost to the treasury. Our budget proposal seeks an exemption from the air travellers security charge for all flights being provided free of charge by a registered charity to low-income Canadians travelling to required medical appointments.
The air travellers security charge is a flat rate fee currently set at $7.12 plus HST for a one-way flight to cover security costs in place at the 89 airports across Canada. This proposed change would cost the treasury approximately $57,000 for 2014 and can be made by either revising or adding a clause to section 11 of the Air Travellers Security Charge Act.
More to the point, for today's mandate of exploring ways to support and help vulnerable Canadian families, this change would enable Hope Air to provide an additional 230 flights per year for fellow Canadians in need.
There is a precedent for enacting a change such as this. Although the act contained an exemption for air ambulance flights when it was passed in 2002, the ATSC still applied to other non-emergency medical flights. Recognizing the importance of excluding necessary medical travel from the ATSC, the government passed an amendment in 2007 making flights donated by air carriers to registered charities exempt from the ATSC.
Since that time, Hope Air's business model has adapted to changing circumstances to include more private donations and funding partnerships. This enables us to directly purchase many more flights for our clients, but also makes us still subject to the ATSC levy. The continuing impact of the current ATSC legislation is to restrict the number of clients we can serve.
Almost half of Hope Air's flights are provided for children and their parent or guardian, most of whom live in a household where the average income is close to their community's low-income line. This means that the vast majority of the families that Hope Air helps devote a larger share of their income to food, shelter, and clothing than the average Canadian family does.
Canadians who live in communities far from larger urban centres face many challenges in accessing the health care they need. They frequently face long-distance travel to get to their medical appointments at their own expense, and in winter they risk dangerous long drives. This puts low-income Canadians at risk, as they often decide to cancel or delay treatment due to the travel costs. It also takes people away from work, school, family, and community for much longer than is necessary.
Making the legislative change will benefit many Canadians by supporting families and vulnerable Canadians at a critical time when they are focused on improving their personal health.
I appreciate your consideration of this issue for inclusion in the 2015 federal budget, and look forward to your questions.