Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague from Calgary Southeast reminds me of when we used to have long playing 78 rpm records. We would put them on and they would skip and go over the same thing again and again like some kind of obsessive compulsive thinking.
The point the member made was that the airport security fee in relation to, let us say, a $4,800 fare from Vancouver to Halifax would have a different impact compared to a fare from Vancouver to Kelowna or Calgary to Edmonton.
The hon. member failed to mention that if we travelled from Vancouver to Halifax or from Vancouver to Kelowna and went through security it would be a fixed cost. If we went through the machines it would be a fixed cost. To change the $24 fee and make it dependent on the price of the ticket would be cross subsidization. It would say to people travelling from Vancouver to Halifax “I am sorry folks but you must pay a disproportionate amount. The people going from Calgary to Edmonton will pay a disproportionate amount less”. It would amount to a cross subsidy. There is an argument for that. However the member opposite got so wound up in his own rhetoric he failed to mention it would be a fixed cost. It would be the cost of going through security no matter where we were travelling.
The hon. member knows full well that WestJet has a robust business model. He has talked about it himself. Is he trying to tell the House a return trip from Calgary to Edmonton would decimate WestJet's volume of traffic because of a $24 airport security fee? I doubt it. I would like to hear his comments on that.