Madam Speaker, I >have a little more time than before to put my question.
As I was saying, after meeting with Canadian and Intercanadian, the numbers are not there because it is expensive and it is expensive because the numbers are not there, in short, it is a case of which came first, the chicken or the egg. Or it is the case of Maple Leaf sausages, the more we eat, the more we like it, and the more we like it, the more we eat. We live with that.
I would like to put my question by citing an example. There are two sorts of travelers. There are those obliged to travel and those travelling on holiday.
The first type of traveller may be a business person who must get from point A to point B, for example from Baie-Comeau to Montreal. That person must be in both places on the same day, then come back the next morning to be at work. Another example is a person who leaves Baie-Comeau for treatment in Quebec City or in Montreal, and who comes back the same day or the next day. The return trip between Baie-Comeau and Montreal for such a traveller not leaving the country costs $900.
If a person travels from Baie-Comeau to Montreal on his or her way to Paris or Florida, or anywhere outside the country, for a holiday, it will cost that person $285. Where is the problem? The problem is that people in the regions pay for the air miles that frequent flyers collect. Some airlines give air miles and access to the V.I.P. lounge, but the person who must travel on business, or for treatment, helps pay these promotions from major airlines.
That should be abolished. I said earlier that we should help the regional carriers that bring passengers to hubs and to interprovincial or international carriers, so as to have lower airfares.
After talking to people from the chamber of commerce—and all chambers of commerce make representations at that level—one realizes that they are penalized, in terms of the airfare, because they leave from a region to go to a major centre. They are told that this is because the aircraft is half empty, or half full if one is an optimist. But the problem is that it is not profitable.
Why? Because it is costly. Let us eliminate the gadgets and the promotional items and let us provide competitive prices for the regions. In order to do that, the Minister of Transport must promote regional development in the context of the air transportation industry. I would like to hear the hon. member's comments on this.