Mr. Speaker, since 2006, the Canadian government has signed over 30 open sky agreements with 50 countries and yet the number of tourists coming to Canada dropped from 20 million in 2002 to 16 million in 2011. We are losing five million air passengers to the U.S. every year due to uncompetitive prices.
According the UN World Tourism Organization, we have dropped from seventh in the world in terms of travel destinations to eighteenth . Obviously, these blue sky agreements do not seem to help our travel deficit, which is exploding, increasing sixfold in just the last decade to almost 16 million by the end of 2011.
How would more blue sky agreements help with our travel deficit and create jobs in Canada given that we have lost 11,000 jobs because of expensive fares.