Transport Committee on Dec. 3rd, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Are you splitting your time?

[Maninder Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

I am.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

You have about 60 seconds.

[Maninder Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Mr. Gooch, you mentioned rapid testing. We did dispatch millions of rapid tests to the provinces. To my understanding, there is a reluctance to use them, as they are not as reliable as lab tests.

Are you concerned about the accuracy of these tests? What are your thoughts on rapid testing?

[Daniel-Robert Gooch]

I'm certainly not a public health expert. My understanding is that several tests have been approved for Canada and there are others on the way. As I was referring to earlier, some places are administering a more accurate PCR test a couple of days prior to departure and then combining that with an antigen test.

We really need to move to having conversations with our colleagues from the air carriers about how to do this. We've been looking to advance discussion on this aspect since the spring. We are now having these conversations, but we don't have a lot of time ahead of us if we are to rescue Canada's tourism sector next summer. As people are getting vaccinated and as pent-up demand for travel starts to materialize next year, we think we're going to see Canadians wanting to travel and other people wanting to travel. We want to make sure they can do so and feel even safer with a test.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Gooch.

Mr. El-Khoury is next.

[Fayçal El-Khoury, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank the witnesses.

We know very well that the aviation sector is a key factor in our regions' development. It's also a pretty powerful driver for developing our economy, especially in a large country like Canada.

My question is for Mr. Larivière. The Fall Economic Statement announced that up to $206 million over two years from 2020 to 2021 will go to regional development agencies for a new regional air transportation initiative. I'd like to know if you have thought about how to spend this money.

Where should these funds go first?

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Mr. Larivière, you have the floor.

[Serge Larivière]

Thank you for your question.

We welcome this aspect of the economic statement. We will need to see the details of what is allowed within this envelope and which development agency will lead the project. We can well imagine that our project or others could help us bring air access solutions to all the regions with the resources needed to do that.

As I mentioned in my speech, the potential is there for some exciting opportunities. Mr. Gooch just alluded to that. In the coming months and years, Canadians will want to stay in Canada to see their country. Some Canadians have taken very nice trips to the regions. They hadn't done it for a long time, and they have realized that Canada is a huge country. [Technical difficulties] creating accessibility is one more tool to help us restart the economy. We will have to [Technical difficulties] later on—

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

I have a point of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Yes, go ahead.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

I think we're having some technical issues, which are leading to some translation issues.

[Fayçal El-Khoury, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Okay, I'm going to stop the clock here, Mr. Clerk.

[The Clerk]

We think it should be okay if he tries again.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Mr. Larivière, can you close out your answer, please?

[Serge Larivière]

I was saying that we can look inside the envelope announced in Monday's economic statement to get the details on what that means. It will certainly provide an extremely practical tool for initiatives like ours and others across the country to occupy territory and be able to provide quality air access at normal prices across Canada, particularly in Quebec. I agree with Mr. Gooch's comment that—

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Larivière. Thank you, Mr. Sidhu and Mr. El-Khoury.

We're now going to go on to Mr. Barsalou-Duval for two and a half minutes.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

My question is for Mr. McKenna.

Based on what I have heard from some, the government is working on potential assistance for the airline industry. Assistance in homeopathic quantities has been announced for regional transportation, but we don't know the details yet. For airports, they might have assistance for infrastructure, but I don't know how many years from now.

Are your members worried that only large businesses will get help in the end?

[John McKenna]

We are certainly not against helping large businesses. That is important. We have an aviation continuum in Canada, so we want to make sure that smaller carriers get something too. They connect with the larger carriers and the regional centres in Canada.

We are very concerned about this. We don't have any information. We have no contact with the government at this time with respect to assistance. We provided the government with a lot of information in June, July and August about financial data, job losses, daily losses and so on, but we've had no response whatsoever. The politicians are not talking to us right now about any sort of assistance.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Thank you, Mr. McKenna.

My next question is for Mr. McNaney.

Almost all other countries around the world have put together a plan to help the airline industry. In Canada, it feels like it's never going to happen and the only carrier that stands to benefit from it is the one best able to weather the storm, Air Canada.

In your opinion, why hasn't the government announced a real plan to help the airline industry yet?

[Mike McNaney]

I'm not quite sure that I follow the premise there in terms of only one operator benefiting at the moment. I think the entire industry is in dire condition.

If I might just make a quick point, as we're looking at different aspects of the aviation community, it does seem that there's an element of our conversation that it is taking on a bit of a Hunger Games competition between sizes small and large, and that is not our intent at all in appearing before you today.

In terms of the amount of time it has taken for the federal government, I think the federal government is the only one that can answer that question. We have certainly been hoping for some action.

There's another piece that I really do want to stress for this committee. It has come up, and Daniel and the others have addressed it. There is the financial piece, and that is very important and I certainly understand the interest in it, but there is absolutely that preparatory work, and it is all going to be tied to testing, border measures and quarantine levels. That is going to be equally critical if we're going to go forward and be able to pull in all the jobs from the airports and carriers of different sizes that we're talking about here.

I hope that in your report and your engagement with government you will place a very strong emphasis on the steps that need to be taken for the recovery. As has been outlined and as Daniel has noted, airlines and airports across the country are working very closely on trying to drive that in conjunction with provincial health authorities and federal health authorities.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. McNaney. Thank you, Mr. Barsalou-Duval.

We're now going to move to Mr. Bachrach for two and a half minutes.

Mr. Bachrach, the floor is yours.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll continue with some questions for Mr. McNaney.

Mr. McNaney, several of the airlines were utilizing the wage subsidy during the pandemic and then went off the wage subsidy. Currently the sector is looking for federal support but is not using the federal program that is set up to help ensure that employees are kept on the payroll, etc. Can you explain why that is?

[Mike McNaney]

Obviously I can't speak to any particular carrier's operations and the decisions it has made. At a general level, what we have seen—and I mentioned it briefly in my opening comments—is that we are down to approximately 10% of the number of passengers that we would expect to have in Canada at this point. That has been going on now for six or seven months.

The simple fact is that there is no business, no activity that can be sustained when you're operating on 20% overall of your fleet and 10% load factors on your aircraft. Again I have to stress that I don't speak for any particular carrier and the decisions it has made, but by and large, we have simply seen this continued degradation of passenger counts, etc., and that has left us where we are today.