Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good morning.
My name is Michelle Travis. I'm a representative of Unite Here Canada, which represents hospitality workers across the country. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to speak to you this morning. We appreciate it, and welcome to Vancouver.
To get here today, all of you likely came through YVR airport, the workplace of nearly 1,000 airport members who our union represents. Unite Here represents over 25,000 workers across Canada and more than 275,000 throughout North America. Our members are the backbone of the tourism industry. They're the room attendants, front desk agents, bellmen in hotels, and the servers, cooks, and dishwashers in restaurants, including those at the Vancouver International Airport.
Our members are among the friendly faces who greet you when you land, and they are that unseen army responsible for the preparation and delivery of thousands of inflight meals each day. Our diverse membership includes many recent immigrants and a high proportion of women. Our members have made thousands of traditionally low-wage jobs into good family-supporting, middle-class jobs. I will touch on that again in a moment.
Your committee is posing the question of how the federal government can help Canadians be more productive in their workplaces and communities. We want to focus attention on one aspect of the tourism industry that the federal government can play a critical role in addressing, and that is the issue of airport authorities. There is no question that our airports are critical components of our economy and an important source of employment. Some of Canada's airports have received attention for being among the best in North America. However, there's another side that is often overshadowed that can have an adverse impact on our communities, and that is the lack of accountability and transparency on the part of airport authorities, which impacts our members, our communities, and our municipalities. For years various stakeholders have criticized Canadian airport authorities over this issue.
The Emerson report, in its review of Canada's transportation sectors, noted concerns that airports can potentially abuse their monopoly position by assessing fees and by competing in the same businesses as their tenants. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has urged the government to review the special privileges enjoyed by airport authorities, which can impact municipal finances, and to compel them to abide by municipal bylaws. There have been two attempts to create a legislative framework to improve airport governance and accountability, but those attempts have failed in the past and the issue has been sidelined.
When the Government of Canada originally transferred the operation of airports to non-profit corporations in the 1990s, it failed to create an adequate oversight framework for airport governance. That failure has given airport authorities the unfettered ability to raise user fees, the freedom to carry out land development projects without local approval, permitted the appointment of board directors who are beholden to airport authorities and not necessarily to the municipal and elected officials who appoint them, and the freedom to enter into business ventures without checks and balances.
Similarly, airport workers contracted by airport authorities see a lack of accountability. Airport authorities take no responsibility for ensuring that outsourced airport jobs are decent jobs. I'll give you an example. You may have grabbed a cup of coffee on your way through the airport. The typical airport concession worker who sold it to you is a women, likely older, who immigrated to Canada for a better future. However, many airport concession workers hold two jobs, work long hours, and juggle long commutes to make ends meet.
Unionized workers tend to be better off, but whether they're union or non-union, airport concession workers face precarious, unstable work because airport authorities will flip contracts to cheaper bidders, and that can push workers out of their jobs. There's little recourse for workers to make their case to a governing body that is self-governing. Right now in Canada, Canadian airport authorities, who act as stewards of public infrastructure on behalf of Canadian citizens, are essentially self-governing.
The federal government is currently reviewing the future of airport ownership and considering whether to privatize airports, as recommended in the Emerson report. We think that what has been overshadowed also is the question about airport government that was also raised in the Emerson report. We recommend that the federal government ensure airport authorities more productively contribute to our communities by compelling the authorities to comply with municipal planning bodies, pay an equitable share of taxes to our cities, create an advisory role for a local and regional body to have a say in setting airport improvement fees, shine a light on board of directors' deliberations and better reporting on certain business ventures, and urge airport authorities to adopt responsible contractor policies that would create more stability for outsourced workers and end the race to the bottom.
We believe that the question of accountability should be tackled now to remedy some of the errors of the past and create better practices for Canada's major airports going forward.
Thank you.