International Trade committee  In 2006 we had two.

International Trade committee  We now have open agreements that cover 44 countries, so those are the open skies agreements, plus the comprehensive agreement that covers all of the 28 EU member states.

International Trade committee  Yes.

International Trade committee  We have not done a study of each open skies agreement to see what has changed afterwards; however, we have some numbers in terms of the new services and the new destinations that have resulted from the implementation of the blue sky policy in general, but not specific to each ope

International Trade committee  No. There are numbers we could provide to the committee. We'd like to do that.

International Trade committee  To explain where this number comes from, the metric we use to estimate the size of a bilateral air travel market is the number of one-way trips. If you take a plane from Canada to another country, that's a one-way trip. If you return to your home, that's another one-way trip. On

International Trade committee  Under the Canada Transportation Act the Minister of Transport has to designate a Canadian carrier to operate internationally under a specific agreement. The first step the carrier has to take is to come to us and request it be designated to operate, let's say, under the Canada-Ch

International Trade committee  We don't negotiate; we consult.

International Trade committee  Are you referring to the increase in terms of the partners we have?

International Trade committee  In terms of the traffic that I mentioned, the 47-million one-way trips per year, that includes both inbound and outbound.

International Trade committee  More or less. Usually somebody who goes on a trip somewhere will come back to their point of origin, but not always. There are students who come here for several years, people who move to another country, and so on, so roughly speaking you could divide it by two. But the number

International Trade committee  We've seen benefits from our agreements throughout the country. Most big airports have received new services since the policy has been in effect. The top eight airports in Canada represent about 97% of the international traffic. Beyond those top eight airports, it's maybe not as

International Trade committee  To define what you mean by “cabotage”, it is the carriage of a passenger by a foreign airline between two points in Canada.

International Trade committee  Right, exactly. Very few countries in the world allow for cabotage. The U.S. does not allow for cabotage. We have looked at possibly creating a common North American aviation area in the future like they have in Europe, but there's no interest south of the border to go down tha

International Trade committee  We didn't explore it with the Americans. We did an analysis internally at Transport Canada—