Madam Chair and ladies and gentlemen, thank you also for the opportunity to speak to you this afternoon. My name is Geoff Dickson. I am the president and CEO of the Victoria International Airport and I'm also chair of the Canadian Airports Council small airports caucus.
Just so you know, Canadian airports are economic engines and drive some $79 billion in economic output. That's the most recent information we have. A total of 355,000 jobs are generated directly and indirectly through airport activities, and close to $5 billion in federal taxes are generated. Victoria International Airport alone generates close to $1 billion in economic output for the greater Victoria region.
I commend the committee for its forward thinking, and I look back to another time, in the 1990s, when Transport Canada had the foresight to step out of operating airports and focus solely on being a landlord and regulator. If you move forward to today, since that time Canadian airports have grown from 65 million passengers in the 1990s to 147 million passengers in 2017.
Over $25 billion has been invested in airports by the Canadian airport authorities. I contend that without this model, a choke point in a trade corridor would have been created through lack of taxpayer-available funding to support this growth, and the appropriate infrastructure investments wouldn't have been made. The government of the day ran a deficit of $135 million annually, so it was a very good move all around.
Unfortunately, we see that one of the elements in the aviation supply chain has not been addressed, and that's the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, which remains a government agency. It's allocated annual funding by no specific formula. It does not match revenue to expenses and is not keeping up with passenger growth at Canadian airports. You just heard some of the growth numbers I provided to you.
You have highly skilled individuals at CATSA, but their hands are somewhat tied, which leads to congestion in security, long lineups, delays for airlines, potentially missed slots, and inconvenience for customers. It adds potential barriers to trade growth. That area needs to be addressed.
At Victoria International Airport, we feel the velocity of travel created through the continued North American and global expansion that you just heard Mr. Bruno speak of at YVR. Hubs are gateways. They don't just rely on the local market economies, but on the overall strength of the arterial feed system from airports such as Victoria International Airport.
While we're of a size that we can make the appropriate infrastructure investments, smaller airports throughout British Columbia cannot. For YVR to continue to grow, it needs a strong economy and sophisticated connections throughout Canada, the U.S., and internationally, combined with the needed feed to and from the regional airports, such as in Prince George, Kamloops, Nanaimo, and Castlegar. There needs to be federally funded mechanisms in place to ensure these regional airports have the required access to infrastructure funding.
This is all part of a cohesive gateway strategy, and while my comments here speak to British Columbia, they are true for the airport hubs in regional feeder airports across the country. There is a program called the airports capital assistance program, or ACAP, and that has been a valuable program for small airport funding. The funding levels, however, have not changed in 18 years. There are presently six airports in the national airport system, the NAS—Prince George, London, Fredericton, Charlottetown, Saint John, and Gander—that aren't eligible for ACAP funding, and they're not able to meet their capital needs. There just simply aren't enough passengers at those airports to generate the revenue that's required for infrastructure investment.
There has been progress, and you're to be commended for the national trade corridors fund. It's been a tremendous initiative, but those levels are uncertain and it's not predictable for the future. Consideration needs to be given to raising the current ACAP funding level, which has been held constant, as I said, for the last 18 years, at least by historical CPI, and hasn't kept up with the inflationary impacts of what we see in equipment, the cost of labour, paving runways, and in apron facilities.
The economic prosperity of a region is inextricably linked to its connectivity to the rest of the world, and that's why it's so necessary to make those appropriate airport infrastructure investments.
Thanks very much for the opportunity to be here.