Thank you, Mr. Chair.
We are appearing before the committee today to talk about the devastating effect of COVID-19 on air travel.
I'm with Dr. Jim Chung, Air Canada's chief medical officer.
Before I begin, I would like to commend our employees—flight attendants, pilots, mechanics, airport staff, dispatchers and so on—and our partners and our suppliers, for their work during the pandemic, which has enabled us to continue our operations.
I would also like to reassure all those whose jobs have been affected by the pandemic that the entire Air Canada team is working tirelessly to protect our company and maintain it in a position from which it will be able to rebuild its network.
In 2019, we carried more than 50 million passengers across all inhabited continents. Our network connected the regions of Canada to each other and to more than 150 destinations around the world. Our three main hubs—Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal—were each ranked among the 50 most internationally connected cities. Apart from China and the United States, no other country, regardless of size, population or GDP, had three cities in this select ranking.
Prior to the pandemic, Air Canada directly employed close to 38,000 people in Canada, and another 6,000 at our regional partners. We also supported 190,000 jobs in spinoff industries and generated an estimated $50 billion in total economic output, or more than 2% of the country's GDP.
Air Canada and the aviation sector are truly economic enablers.
As an airline, we are in the business of safety. The safety of our passengers, crew and employees has, and continues to be, Air Canada's core priority.
This has guided us throughout this pandemic. Air Canada quickly implemented industry-leading measures or the CleanCare+ program to ensure the highest levels of safety—in many cases ahead of government regulation—including pre-flight passenger temperature checks, and passenger and employee face coverings.
As the Prime Minister said last Friday, carriers sat down with the government and, at the government's request, agreed to suspend their flights to sun destinations starting this week.
Despite these efforts, the impact of COVID-19 has been catastrophic for the whole travel and tourism sector.
Governments in Canada have imposed some of the strictest restrictions in the world, limiting intraprovincial, interprovincial, transborder and international travel. Demand for air travel has been devastated and airlines are losing massive amounts; in our case, we are burning around $15 million per day.
We had to act to mitigate our losses and preserve our liquidity. We took the difficult decision to suspend a number of routes networkwide, including regional routes. We also had to reduce our workforce by more than 20,000 employees. These decisions were not taken lightly, but, unfortunately, they were necessary.
This situation is unsustainable and could well cause major, irreparable and structural damage to Canada's transportation infrastructure. As several witnesses have mentioned, Canada must adopt an industry-specific program to help its carriers through the crisis and prepare a plan to ensure that travel can resume safely. The numbers that I have presented are telling. Our industry is an economic catalyst for the recovery of tourism and the aerospace industry as a whole. However, more is at stake, namely, the entire human aspect of air travel.
In a large country like Canada, air travel unites us. It allows us to see our families and loved ones, enables workers to be mobile and opens our country up to the world. Aviation facilitates trade and exports, which thousands of Canadian businesses depend on, and it fosters immigration, which is essential to our country's growth.
Governments in other countries have taken action by providing the equivalent of over $200 billion (Can) to their carriers, many of which are in direct competition with Canadian companies.
There are discussions ongoing between carriers and the government that are confidential, covered by NDAs, and on which our ability to comment is, of course, very limited.