Thank you very much.
It's very nice to be here at the transport committee to talk about competition in our airline sector. Yes, we have a major problem with competition. We have a duopoly controlling over 80% of flights in Canada. I'm happy to participate in some of the questions with witnesses here on how to fix this competition problem we have with airlines.
To give perspective, Canada had 85 million domestic travellers in 2019—the year we could track before COVID. Compare that with Australia, which only had 63 million. We had a significant number of travellers domestically. If we include international travel, Canada had 166 million passengers on Canadian airlines in 2019. To say they're struggling is.... They're doing very well. Of course, it's split almost equally between WestJet and Air Canada. There was a comment made earlier that we allowed WestJet to buy Sunwing. That boosted those 166 million passengers into just two airlines, so we have a major issue with that.
Professor Moore, you talked about the demand being there for airlines, but I want to focus on the barriers. They are high, it seems, for new airlines to come in. What I want to specifically focus on is competition and what rules we need to change in Canada to enable more competition.
The example I'd give right now is this: If you were going to buy a round-trip flight between Toronto and Ottawa next week in an off-peak time, it's about $585. If you're going to buy a round-trip flight right now between Toronto and Vancouver, it's only $385. The difference is that Flair Airlines is trying to compete in the Toronto-Vancouver market. We have Porter between Toronto and Ottawa. You can see the difference.
What do we need to do to ensure there's more competition and that barriers are lower for any airline that wants to compete against the duopoly in Canada?