Yes, I completely agree.
I would add that there are three sectors that I call critical infrastructure sectors. These are telecommunications, finance, and transportation.
I'm just going to give a quick example of transportation. I know it's off topic, but if you think of the recent debate in Alberta, there are a lot of people from Alberta going to Dubai or to Abu Dhabi, because there is a lot of investment going on between these two locations. So the Emirates want to do a direct flight from Edmonton, or Calgary, to Dubai or Abu Dhabi. The flight would be by Etihad, but Air Canada is preventing that. Air Canada is saying, “No, we want people to go from Alberta to Toronto, and then Toronto to the U.A.E.”
The question I ask is, why doesn't Air Canada provide this flight itself? Why would it want to prevent another carrier from flying it? As a result, everybody in Alberta who wants to do business in the gulf area, where we have a lot of synergies, has this huge cost of having to stop in Toronto. Toronto is a great city, but they only see the airport, and they sit there for four or five hours before they make their transfer to another flight over to the U.A.E.
So there are three sectors that are critically important, and when you raise the cost for business of using those three sectors, you have a ripple effect that impacts the entire economy. I would argue that those three sectors contribute to a large part of the prosperity gap. Restrictions on entry to those sectors explain a large part of the prosperity gap that Canada sees and a hit to our competitiveness.
Thank you.