Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, the aviation industry in Canada has a massive economic impact. With $29.8 billion in revenues, it is the third largest aerospace sector in the world, supporting 211,000 direct and indirect jobs. Canada, as we all know, is a massive country and we just cannot function without air transport getting us from one end of it to the other. Unlike many places in the world, like Europe, that have rapid trains and other things that can help compensate when they have fluctuations in their air transport industry, we simply do not have that here.
I do not think there is going to be a lot of disagreement from my colleagues that we really need to get at this. To be quite honest, we are late to the party on this. I would like to see it go to the transport committee. The reason I did not put this forward as a bill is that, as we all know, private members' business requiring fiscal support from the Crown is typically not supported; plus we do not have time. Parliament is going to be dissolved probably in a year from now for a federal election. With a private member's motion, I can raise awareness on this issue. The transport committee can certainly recommend options to the Government of Canada that would cost the Crown some money, because I think that is exactly where this is going to go as part of a package solution that we need to get on with.