That's right.
I'm not certain why it is that at least on flights that originate in Canada we have to have a system that creates such a misleading, downright devious system of fares from Canada's airlines, one of which the Conservative government seems to be very friendly to—this is Air Canada—because you did threaten to legislate them back to work. I would hope that you're not delaying the implementation of these very needed regulations because of your friendship with Air Canada. I think it's something all the airlines are engaged in. They're all doing exactly the same thing.
We end up with these published fares that are completely erroneous in terms of the actual cost of getting somewhere. Air Transat recently published a fare of $25 to go to London, England: $25. Now, the fees were $277 on that same flight. It was actually a pretty good deal, but those fees are not taxes. They're not GST and the cost of security at the airport. They're really the cost of transporting somebody.
What we're suggesting.... What this law we thought did was force airlines to display on their advertisement and on their website, and on everywhere they put forward the cost of transportation, the entire cost of transportation and to not hide it in these so-called surcharges that are really all about breaking up the price.
If I don't want to pay the fuel surcharge, we'll just coast; we'll coast from the coast of Ireland into London because I don't want to pay the fuel surcharge, so you don't have to carry as much fuel for me. But it doesn't work that way. A plane has to have fuel to get all the way across the Atlantic. It's not realistic; there's nothing honest about pricing something in which you have a price for the fare, a price for the fuel, a price for the Nav Canada charges, and somehow a price for the insurance.
They are providing a service. They are providing a way for people to get from points A to B. As I understand it, Air Canada can no longer, because of the American regulations, hide their costs with surcharges in transborder flights and inside-Canada flights, because they have to be competitive and because the U.S. has already engaged these regulations. But between here and other countries, when a flight originates in Canada and is a Canadian airline, we ought to be in a position to at least make sure that there's some honesty in the pricing, and that's what Ms. Chow's motion is suggesting.
I understand completely the necessity to be competitive against foreign carriers in other places in the world. Maybe there will have to be some higher-level negotiations at the country-to-country level in terms of how these carriers will advertise their prices, and maybe there will have to be some negotiations undertaken between the Government of Canada and governments of countries where these airlines are engaging in these duplicitous practices. But surely in Canada, surely where we have flights originating in Canada, where we are regulating in Canada, we should be in a position to now tell the airlines that enough is enough: publish the fare and the taxes and that's it.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.