Evidence of meeting #24 for Finance in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was airports.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Jeffrey Booth  Entrepreneur and Author, As an Individual
Brian Gilroy  President, Canadian Horticultural Council
Jan VanderHout  First Vice-President, Canadian Horticultural Council
Scott Gillingham  Councillor and Chair of the Standing Policy Committee on Finance, City of Winnipeg
Bruce MacDonald  President and Chief Executive Officer, Imagine Canada
Natalie Drolet  Executive Director and Staff Lawyer, Migrant Workers Centre
Jason Brading  Chief Operating Officer, Quick Service Restaurants, MTY Food Group Inc.
Clerk of the Committee  Mr. David Gagnon
Jason Webster  Potato Farmer, Prince Edward Island Potato Board
Joyce Carter  Chair, Canadian Airports Council
Mark Scholz  President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association of Oilwell Drilling Contractors
Jim Armstrong  President, Canadian Dental Association
Ryan Koeslag  Vice-President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Mushrooms Growers' Association
Janet Krayden  Workforce Expert, Canadian Mushrooms Growers' Association
Joy Thomas  President and Chief Executive Officer, Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada
Gisèle Tassé-Goodman  President, Provincial Secretariat, Réseau FADOQ
Roelof-Jan Steenstra  Vice-Chair, Canadian Airports Council
Bruce Ball  Vice-President, Taxation, Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada

5:55 p.m.

Chair, Canadian Airports Council

Joyce Carter

It's a timely question. Thank you so much for your question.

Really key, at the top of the list, we asked for cash. We were told that cash isn't going to happen, so I would say elimination of ground lease rent. That doesn't help all airports, but most importantly, we're looking for loan bond guarantees and preferred payments to our lenders.

What's going to happen to airports—I talked about the debt—is that they're going to start to trip the covenants in their debt, and that will have a number of serious consequences. We need to get some relief around upcoming debt covenants and debt payments to get us through this really important time, and frankly, to allow us to do some of the borrowing I spoke of earlier, that necessarily we would prefer not to do, but we know we're going to have to do. As long as we're in a bad position with our borrowers, airports are not going to be able to continue to operate in the future the way they have done in the past. Those have been our main requests from the federal government to date.

5:55 p.m.

Liberal

Peter Fragiskatos Liberal London North Centre, ON

Thank you.

5:55 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter

With that, I certainly want to thank the members and thank the witnesses for their forthright answers, and for taking the time and giving their presentations.

I would say as well that I think there are a couple of people on here who have connections to Fort McMurray. I would send our best regards to the citizens of Fort McMurray on behalf of all committee members. You've had some tough times on top of difficult times, and all parties and all members pass on their best regards.

As a last point, it's been a long few weeks. I want to thank the clerks, the analysts and the technicians, who are working with quite a number of committees to make this system work as well as it can in these difficult times.

With that, we'll adjourn the meeting. Thank you, all, and we'll see you all next week.

The meeting is adjourned.