I'm going to cite a number from Air Canada as an example. A flight from Montreal to Rouyn-Noranda covers a distance of 640 kilometres. A flight from Washington to Charlotte, North Carolina, is also a 640-kilometre flight. To travel the same flight distance, you have to pay $158 in charges in Canada and $73 in the United States. It's more than double in Canada.
I don't want to get into the details of each of the charges, which include navigation charges, security fees, airport improvement fees and so on. There are, of course, good reasons for charging some of those fees, but when the companies we compete with can sell tickets for half price, because they offer fewer of them, the market is no longer competitive.
As I was saying, there's a certain irony involved in subsidizing ticket purchases. We're saying we're going to use taxpayers' money to subsidize the purchase of tickets that consumers otherwise can't afford so they can pay $500 for a ticket. At the same time, all kinds of fees are added and inflate ticket prices. And the problem gets many times worse if consumers want to travel to a destination that's not eligible for $500 tickets. So—