Mr. Chair and members of the committee, on behalf of the Canadian Airports Council, thank you for this opportunity to join you today. I'm pleased to speak to our sector's views on supply chain resiliency, a critical file that has become intensely important over the last several months, including for our sector.
We are encouraged by the interest of parliamentarians in ensuring that Canada's supply chains are resilient and effective, so that Canadian families can count on access to goods like food, medicine and other critical supplies needed for their daily lives. For our part, we see opportunities for strengthening our current approach to better handle disruptions and to stay competitive.
The Canadian Airport Council represents more than a hundred airports across the country. Our members handle virtually all of our nation's air cargo and international passenger traffic, and 90% of domestic passenger traffic from coast to coast. Prior to the pandemic, Canada's airport sector saw over 160 million passengers and employed more than 200,000 people.
As members of the committee know, the pandemic has had an enormous impact on our sector, primarily due to the steep drop in passenger volume, which is our main source of revenue. The pandemic has also put into perspective the important role that our airports play in Canada's supply chains. As e-commerce has climbed and the importance of parcel volumes has risen as a share of shipped goods, airports have played a growing role as key transit hubs in a web of global supply chains. Our airports are not only transit points for dedicated cargo aircraft, but passenger flights carry an important share of cargo in their bellies as well.
To illustrate further, excluding trade with the U.S., prepandemic almost 25% of Canada's imports and exports were shipped by air. What's more, 80% of our cross-border e-commerce is transported by air. Express air freight, pharmaceutical and health products, and food and beverages are three categories of goods which rely on air cargo for a substantial amount of transportation due to their shipping requirements.
As such, based on the trends, we project that our sector will continue to play a growing and important role in supply chains. This means a range of measures will need to be considered to protect those channels and support their effective growth and resiliency so that Canada's interconnected gateways will effectively get Canadians what they need.
For our sector's part, there are a set of key recommendations that we would like to highlight today.
The first point is infrastructure. We recommend the continued recapitalization of the national trade corridors fund, and providing funding for on-site infrastructure investment and ground access improvements. For air cargo, it will be essential to conduct active forward planning on the use of industrial land and roads around our country's most significant logistic zones, which include airports.
We also need to modernize our current foreign trade zones to create real free trade zones that will move Canada forward in its competitiveness and attraction of business. Canada's current FTZ offering is confusing, not competitive, and an administrative burden with minimal benefit. This does require legislation.
With the disruptions experienced in our supply chains, Canada has an opportunity to reap the benefits, but we need to reduce the paperwork and the red tape and create one common digital technology platform to move and clear goods. We need to make it more seamless for companies and shippers to want to move goods through Canada. Navigating a myriad of different legal frameworks and requirements is more challenging in a heavily paper-based environment and fragmented system.
All-cargo seventh freedom rights are also in need of review. ICAO has been encouraging a wider adoption of seventh freedom rights to foster greater resiliency in the global supply chain. For us, doing so would create a greater opportunity for trade with the U.S. and an ongoing key source of revenue for our country.
Another key element is protecting and developing Canada's labour pool. We will continue to need drivers, pilots, warehouse workers and beyond. Increasing access to training and long-term career opportunities could be a possible measure to ensure that these workers will be available to sustain Canada's needs.
I hope this gives the committee members a helpful snapshot of the role that airports play in Canada's supply chain.
That concludes my remarks. I look forward to the discussion.