Transport Committee on Oct. 1st, 2024

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you, Ms. Wright. I don't have much time. I'll have to interrupt you there.

[Susan Wright]

Thank you.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Do you have anything to add regarding regional airports, Mr. Paradis?

[Bruno Paradis]

Thank you very much for your question.

Yes, for regions such as ours, the fact that we don't have any inter-carrier connections is becoming a problem. If I can't connect to a meeting via video conference, just imagine how hard it can be to buy two or three airline tickets, not to mention situations where people miss a flight or lose their tickets.

The problem's getting very complicated, and people have simply stopped flying as a result. Consequently, we need to establish an inter-carrier service or find a way to enable all small, medium and large carriers to connect with each other.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you.

I'd like to go back to you, Ms. Wright, for the last minute I have.

You mentioned the burden of flight duty regulations, among other recent regulatory changes. I wonder if you could comment on, in particular, the flight duty regulations and how you would see that this would be best adapted to the northern reality when you are already operating with very small crews, but at the same time often very experienced pilots.

[Susan Wright]

The one thing I need to recognize is that the pilots who operate in the north are different. They're trained differently. Their experience is different.

Given the distances they need to travel, the issue really is that the flight duty regulation restricts the number of hours that they are able to fly in one day. Looking at our Sahtu region, between Yellowknife and our region, those are long distances, and, unfortunately, I would say that it's about the number of hours per day that they are able to fly, as well as their accumulated hours. That would be what I would have to say.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Paradis, do you have any more brief comments?

[Bruno Paradis]

We have the same problem with the idea of going around to many airports: the number of accumulated hours. That significantly pushes up costs and requires too many crew members.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Hanley.

Mr. Barsalou-Duval, the floor is yours for six minutes.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome to the witnesses. I'm very pleased that they're here today to discuss this very important study.

Mr. Paradis, in March of this year, Le Laurentien quoted you as follows:

The federal government abdicated responsibility in many regions when it turned over the management of municipal airports years ago while continuing to manage certain airports under its wing, thus creating situations of unfair competition. The federal government has simply abandoned many regions and now appears to have washed its hands of them.

Would you please tell us a little more about that? What are the consequences of this situation, and how is the government washing its hands of it now?

[Bruno Paradis]

It's already doing it in various ways.

As I said earlier, our airport, which formerly belonged to Transport Canada, was retroceded. However, Sept‑Îles' airport, in our neck of the woods, still belongs to Transport Canada.

There are three facts here: some airports belong to the Quebec government, others to the federal government, and still others to municipalities like ours.

Our airport has to be financially independent. As for those belonging to the other two levels of government, they pay their operating expenses out of our direct and indirect taxes. This situation causes unfair competition because our own levels of government compete with us for carriers and flights in our regions.

As for its washing its hands of the matter, let's remember that, at a certain point, even though I didn't like the arrangement of paying Air Canada for it to serve certain regions such as ours—the service was provided by the Jazz airline for several years—Air Canada ultimately told us that it needed additional funds to continue providing the service. Even though that wasn't a constructive long-term approach, it at least let us have a service.

Air Canada stopped serving our region during the COVID‑19 pandemic, and now we have no service. Even though I've frequently appealed to the federal government since the pandemic ended, I've never received any answers to my questions. Now the Quebec government seems to have taken over, unfortunately, because to my mind this is still a federal issue.

We would have preferred a hybrid arrangement under which we would have co‑operated with various parties to establish air services that met needs and were suited to the situations of the various regions, rather than pay businesses—because Quebec has started doing that, and I don't think it's a very good arrangement.

In regions such as ours, all stakeholders, which is to say the municipal world, businesses, the chambers of commerce, the Quebec government and the Canadian government, have to get involved.

I'd like the federal government to get more involved.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Thank you for your answer.

Since time is flying by, I'm going to ask another question.

You mentioned in your opening remarks that the regional air service is an essential service, and I agree with you.

Would you please explain to us why it's an essential service and especially what that means in real terms?

You can make that kind of statement, but it necessarily entails certain obligations. Some will say that, since the Mont-Joli region is linked by a road, people can travel by car, but is it still an essential service despite that fact?

[Bruno Paradis]

The regional air service is an essential service for many reasons.

First, we operate 700 flights from Mont-Joli for medical reasons; that amounts to nearly two a day. In many cases, these are emergency flights to the major centres. We need revenue to maintain this infrastructure, and that revenue comes mainly from aircraft landings.

Second, many workers travel to the north to mine important metals for various companies.

Third, this enables businesses to continue accessing Montreal and Quebec City markets and especially to get there quickly.

Furthermore, as a result of our aging population, we need access to health services, and people must be able to get to Montreal and Quebec City quickly.

We think that a hybrid arrangement should be put in place, and that would require certain legislative changes. The fact nevertheless remains that we should consider providing airports with a certain basic revenue, which would enable us to revise landing fees upward or downward. The result could be greater competition among carriers.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

As I understand it, you're telling me that regional air transportation is considered an essential service and that the federal government should provide regional airports a kind of minimum revenue to maintain the service.

Is that correct?

[Bruno Paradis]

I think that's correct.

As we've shown, in the study on improving our infrastructure, for example, our airport brings in $82 million a year in direct and indirect taxes for the various levels of government. The regional air transportation service is therefore more an investment than an expense.

The fact remains that some of our operations are currently on shaky ground. Furthermore, since our basic mission is to provide services to our general public, we need to use considerable human and financial resources if we want to offer flights to Montreal and Quebec City once again. However, those resources could be invested elsewhere.

These services could be provided under various arrangements, but not the same ones as in the past, under which the airlines were paid. On the contrary, we want to work in partnership with the region, businesses and the other levels of government.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

From what I understand as well, you think the main cause of the problem was high landing fees. For example, it's hard to make an operation profitable if passenger volumes are low and landing fees high.

Wouldn't a basic revenue from the federal government help lower landing fees and thus make them more affordable? Then it would be more appealing for carriers to operate.

[Bruno Paradis]

That's absolutely the case. We don't bill the fees that we bill in order to make money. They're for snow removal and security services, which have to meet regional airport standards. The basic revenue would lower fees, including those from private carriers that are required to land. That revenue would also help carriers that are required to land at multiple airports.

You also have to consider the number of hours, as was mentioned earlier. That currently makes it difficult to “faire la tournée du laitier”—to use a very Quebecois expression—to do a milk run to the various airports to establish a critical mass of passengers. The number of hours and landing fees are therefore two factors that have consequences.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Paradis.

Thank you, Mr. Barsalou-Duval.

Next we have Ms. Idlout.

Ms. Idlout, the floor is yours. You have six minutes for your line of questioning, please.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

Qujannamiik, Iksivautaq . Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for appearing in front of this committee.

I don't normally sit here, but I thank my colleague, MP Taylor Bachrach, for inviting me to sit here today while you study air travel in the north. My questions will be directed to Susan Wright.

Thank you so much for providing us with your testimony. The purpose, why I want to ask you questions, is that it's a bit more comparable to what my reality is in the riding of Nunavut.

As we all know, Nunavut has 25 remote communities, which are all fly-in communities. There are no roads between them, so the airline industry is very much the lifeline for Nunavut.

I want to do a quick comparison, Susan. A one-way ticket from Iqaluit to Ottawa is about $1,500, and the distance from Iqaluit to Ottawa is about 2,085 kilometres. Then, compare a flight from Ottawa to Winnipeg, where the distance is about 2,138 kilometres. It's just a little further, but not by much. When I look at the price comparisons between Ottawa-to-Winnipeg and Iqaluit-to-Ottawa, I see that they're astronomical. A one-way ticket is anywhere between $68 and $600.

Since you're in the airline industry, are you able to help us understand why there's such a huge discrepancy between flights that have relatively similar distances?

[Susan Wright]

This is actually a question that I feel has been around a lot. Being a northerner myself, residing in Norman Wells, I know the exact same feeling. I can't speak for any other airline, but one thing I notice is that flights into the north are typically less frequent and have either a combination of cargo and passengers or just have, I believe, not as many seats. Flights from Ottawa to Winnipeg are maybe more frequent, and there are more seats on the plane.

We constantly get asked, “Why are your prices the way that they are, when we can go to Europe for three times less the price?” Really, I believe it all comes down to the number of seats that are on that plane and how frequently that plane is flying.

Also, up in the north, companies really have to look out for these surprise costs that come out of nowhere. I think it was in Kuujjuaq where they had the same situation that we had last November, and are in right now, of having a surprise fuel shortage: There's no fuel available. When you're going those long distances, I can only imagine—although I can't speak for them—that this has a lot to do with it, and to go those long distances I think would drive the costs up.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

Thank you so much.

I'm going to expand on that question a little bit and provide a quote from the president of North Star Air, who noted that “Approximately 10% of our flights are cancelled...due to infrastructure deficiencies, such as the lack of precision approaches, the scarcity of de-icing equipment and the lack of precise weather reporting.”

Several others noted that the lack of paved runways forces airlines to use turboprops, which have less capacity for passengers and cargo, have less range and are less fuel-efficient.

Can you explain to us whether that lack of infrastructure investment has an impact on your ability to operate services in rural and remote communities?

[Susan Wright]

Absolutely. I would say the biggest thing is the infrastructure deficiency. That's our main problem, aside from the fuel issue.

We have very short, very narrow runways. Our runways are gravel. If there's slush.... Let's say it snows in the spring and the fall. It's what happens; we get slush. We will try to fly into a community like that and we will write off our propellers, which will be a $250,000 thing that just comes out of nowhere. We've done that before in landing in our communities.

The service is so important to us, and we don't cancel our flights. We just try our best to get our flights in there. We'll wait. We'll wait as much as we can, but then there are some things that we just have to cancel.

We try our best. One thing that I know about us is that we do try to work with what we have.

Our navigational systems are a little bit primitive. Just recently, within the last eight years, we got instrument approaches into some of our communities. Some of our weather reporting isn't available after five o'clock. Some places have cameras, but there aren't cameras in every location.

There are a lot of different things that affect us. The infrastructure is one thing, but there's also the availability of fuel. Fuel is the biggest problem for us right now.

Thank you so much for your question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Ms. Idlout, you have 26 seconds if you want the time.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

Maybe I'll just ask this question for the next round: Would you have suggestions as to providing better lighting at the runways, knowing that north of 60, we have less light to rely on?