Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
My name is Mike McNaney. I'm the VP of regulatory affairs at WestJet. I'm appearing today under the NAC banner. We just thought, because this is an east and west discussion, it might be useful if two of our members were here. And indeed, it's a banner day in Canadian aviation, because WestJet agrees with everything Air Canada just said—and that has never happened before.
I will be very brief. As Joe said, we're not here to condemn or oppose high-speed rail, but we do have concerns about the policy environment in which it would operate.
As Joe noted, in the airline industry in Canada we are ostensibly 100% user-pay. So in 2008, WestJet paid $56 million in security taxes, $128 million in navigational fees, $155 million in airport improvement fees, and $183 million in airport landing and facilities fees. We were fortunate enough last year to be one of the few air carriers in North America to turn a profit. When you take out all the operational costs and all the charges and fees, etc., our profit came out to approximately $13 a passenger. We're actually quite proud of that margin, but as you can see, it is a fairly tight margin. That's just the nature of the industry and the nature of the business.
We are not arguing that the various fees and charges we pay should be eliminated or be reduced to zero. The user must pay. But over the years in Canada, this user-pay principle has taken on a life of its own, and we face continuing increases in these fees and charges. And it's because of these cost realities, as Joe noted, that when we hear the notion of billions of dollars of public money for high-speed rail—and we understand there have been no decisions made as to what percentages will be between private and public.... Nonetheless, when we hear these discussions, I guess we suffer from a little bit of modal envy—which is the best way I can phrase it—that in the name of competitiveness and public investment in infrastructure, another form of transportation will have a very different environment in which to operate.
To quickly conclude, Mr. Chairman, it isn't the competitive aspect that has us concerned; it's the policy environment and cost environment under which this competition may present itself to the air carriers.
Thank you.