Mr. Speaker, I want to draw to the attention of the transport minister this fact. These are not numbers pulled out of the sky; these are actual numbers if one were to buy an airplane ticket today flying from Edmonton to Calgary, or from Dallas to Houston. Edmonton to Calgary is 154 miles and Dallas to Houston is 225 miles. These are one way tickets.
The base fare for the Edmonton-Calgary flight is $70. The base fare for the Dallas-Houston flight is $95 adjusted to Canadian dollars. After all the fees, taxes, GST, security charges and airport improvement fees in both jurisdictions, adjusted to Canadian dollars, the Canadian ticket costs $108.30 and the American ticket costs $95 even and that is after all the taxes. That works out to taxes and fees on the Canadian ticket of 35.3% of the cost and on the American ticket, 14.9%.
Canadians are paying more than double the fees, taxes and surcharges that Americans are. It is a huge disincentive obviously to Air Canada which is trying to increase its capacity to fly transborder. Relative to what is happening in the United States this puts Canadian carriers at a huge--