Mr. Speaker, taxes kill jobs and this particular tax is capable of killing many jobs. The aviation fuel tax is an excellent example. It puts our airlines at a competitive disadvantage.
The old way of dealing with economic sectors that are in trouble has been grants and handouts. The new way of dealing with that is tax relief. If Canadian employees are willing to make sacrifices to save their jobs, surely the federal tax collector would make some sacrifice as well.
Again, we are asking the parliamentary secretary for an answer to this, not a general comment. Will the federal government offer to reduce the federal aviation tax as a means of saving these 16,000 jobs at Canadian?