Thank you very much.
First of all, I am grateful for this opportunity to appear. I'm in my home office on the unceded territory of the Wet'suwet'en First Nation and I'm grateful to be here.
I must say that I'm feeling a little daunted by the professionals who have come before, so I'm going to just speak about my community, the importance of air travel and why I think some regulation might help.
Smithers is a town of 5,400 people in central British Columbia. What has been said previously affects what I'm thinking about.
Our airport is very accessible. It's five minutes from downtown. It has a good runway of 7,500 feet that can land major aircraft, and has done so. It is a critical piece of the transportation that makes our community healthy.
Currently, Air Canada serves our airport. It's not the same every day. Some days there are two flights a day and some days there is one. We are really grateful for that service. Prepandemic, we had more service per day and we had a regional carrier, which was Central Mountain Air.
I'm reflecting on the circumstance of this community and why I think air transport, air access and fair pricing are so important to us. Before the pandemic, we were able to operate our airport like a business. There was enough traffic and enough money coming into the airport. I should say that the municipality owns it. We were able to consider it as a self-paying business.
Now, a couple of years out of the pandemic, we've returned to about 75% of prepandemic revenue and 85% of passengers. We're definitely still recovering. We've done the research to know that our airport is one of the lower-cost airports for aircraft to come into. We do what we can to be competitive.
Who uses our airport and why do we need it?
Like many other communities, it's used by residents for leisure travel, business travel, and medical and emergency travel. We have a solid business to the northwest of us, where industry uses the airport for shuttling. There's a good charter business that comes out of the airport.
Also, in the face of climate change and wildfires in the last few years, we have a wildfire base at the airport, and emergency aircraft can be staged there. We've actually been able to house people at the airport when there was a real shortage of accommodation for firefighters.
I would say that the airport is absolutely essential to the health of this community. We've done our part, as I've said, in keeping good investment in the airport, the taxiways and the terminal, etc. We've made good use of the funding that the federal government provides.
Just down the road from us—in northern terms, so people understand this, it's about a two-and-a-half-hour drive—is the Terrace-Kitimat airport that's served by two carriers, which are Air Canada and WestJet.
This is one of the keys, I think, in pricing fairness. I did a scan this morning of prices. Smithers is generally priced higher. It was random; I just picked days in the future. Smithers is generally priced higher than Terrace, and the air miles are very similar. If the air miles are similar and the aircraft are similar.... I heard that earlier. Generally Q400s are flown. When the miles are similar for Smithers, Terrace and Prince Rupert, it is hard to understand how the pricing is consistently lower.
What that means is that our residents and businesses are making decisions on where to locate. That affects the overall health of the community. Rural communities are facing enough challenges. When residents are forced to drive.... I guess they're not forced, but one sees the difference in pricing for families and for people moving students to universities. They're making those decisions to travel to another airport, sometimes in the winter when it's dangerous.
I believe that regulation can help. It's about considering what a fair price per mile is when the aircraft is the same or it's at about the same part of the country, in order to provide this economic benefit and economic stability to important communities. We're all important across these corridors.
I'm sorry; I forgot to start my timer. I'm going to hope for the best here.