I love travelling and I trust that in future years I will fly many times with all of your airlines. All of your companies have been extremely responsible corporate citizens, and certainly you all seem to play a role in our national response to the pandemic in repatriating people and transporting essential goods like PPE, and you all ought to be commended for this.
I also want to acknowledge the fact that you're all taking a big financial hit. I know it has been an existential threat to the airline industry, given that we practically have no one flying.
That said, Mr. Pugliese, and I think all of you have said that you have to be prudent as you reopen and start flying again, I'm thinking that we may not want to open all routes as quickly. For some routes like Toronto to Thunder Bay—and I'm the member of Parliament for Thunder Bay—Thunder Bay has very few COVID-19 cases, with maybe two cases a week, whereas metropolitan Toronto obviously has a lot more.
When the airlines were going full bore, about 1,000 people were going in and out between Thunder Bay and Toronto. Even though a lot of people in Thunder Bay have taken a big hit, such as the people who run restaurants, who have had to close down, we haven't had a hit because we haven't had that many cases. If we start opening these routes again, the hospital is potentially suddenly going to face a lot more difficulties, as will the first nations communities further up north, which are at high risk because Thunder Bay is that hub. I'm not sure we want to open Thunder Bay to Toronto.
That said, how about opening more routes between safe destinations? Places like Thunder Bay have pretty low rates; Newfoundland has fairly low rates and Manitoba and B.C. have low rates. There are currently no routes flying, for example, from Thunder Bay to St. John's or Winnipeg to St. John's. I think there was also mention made of international connections between safe destinations.
Is each airline potentially contemplating opening those kinds of routes, establishing new routes, to get going quickly?