I would refer to some of the recommendations I made in my notes, but to your particular question regarding regional and remote communities, which I know your riding is very emblematic of, I would say two things.
One, I would go back to the point that Mr. Strahl and I were just discussing. I used to work in the health care sector. In health care, the first principle is always “first, do no harm to the patient”. At a time when we're discussing competition for rural and smaller communities, the one thing I would say is let's not make the problem worse by introducing onerous APP regulations, which your premier, other premiers, unions and small airports have all suggested would harm regional connectivity. That would be the first thing.
Second, I believe it was Madam Koutrakis who mentioned that there's also a role for foreign carriers in this. Unfortunately, we've heard from our American counterparts at Airlines for America that due to the high cost of the fee system within Canada, since the pandemic there's been a roughly 50% reduction in the number of American carriers that are flying to non-hub or smaller Canadian airports. That's a reduction in access that we don't want to see.
Overall, I would suggest that we create a more competitive system in which all airlines have the potential to succeed. That's our vision for air travel in Canada. I think that would benefit smaller and regional communities, and to your point, it's also something that would benefit us all.