Transport committee  Good morning. Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee. My name is Howard Liebman. I am the Senior Director of Government and Community Affairs, and I represent Air Transat. By way of introduction, I want to express support for the presentation of our association, t

Health committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and honourable members of the committee. My name is Howard Liebman. I am the senior director of government and community affairs at Transat, and I represent Air Transat. With me today to help in answering your questions is Captain Dave Bourdages,

Health committee  Thanks for the question. That was also a question asked of our CEO at our quarterly results announcement last week. I want to say there are a couple of models out there. There's the model of the taxpayer paying or the model of the user paying. So far in Canada we have not follow

Health committee  I'm going to ask my colleague Captain Bourdages to weigh in, if you don't mind, sir.

Health committee  Thank you for the question. Just to clarify, we will be flying from Toronto to Rome as of the end of July, so that's the good news. More generally, to your question, I want to be very clear. First and foremost, our industry requires our customers, and we as a company put our cu

Health committee  Thank you for the question. I'll answer and see if my colleague Captain Bourdages wants to weigh in. I think, on behalf of all of us, that nobody wants to get this wrong. First and foremost, the UN civil aviation organization, ICAO, has laid out its CART protocols, and we, the a

Health committee  Sure. I'm happy to jump in as well for Air Transat, just to say that if we are able to safely restart, as we hope, in about a month's time, we're looking at about 15% capacity. In our leisure business, summer is do-or-die. We're already well into summer. Again, we're looking at o

Health committee  I do not exactly understand the question. To date, we have issued credits to our customers worth approximately $500 million on approximately $600 million in sales.

Health committee  No, I am not talking about refunds. Everyone has been offered a travel credit. We are not giving refunds.

Health committee  Mr. Chair, if I may, I'll answer for Air Transat just very briefly on the cargo question.

Health committee  I'm pleased to say that as part of our restart plan, we have converted two wide-body Airbus 330 aircraft to freighters, and we're in the process of reaching out to different partners and stakeholders. Just as we repatriated Canadians home at the end of our flying, once we get bac

Health committee  That we weren't flying. Absolutely.

Transport committee  Thank you for the question. Thank you also for the invitation to appear before the committee. The answer to your question is yes. We're very proud of this agreement and we anticipate that there will be others. It's very encouraging to travellers, because it greatly facilitates

Transport committee  I would direct the question to my colleagues who are in regional transportation. Having said that, Air Transat certainly supports any policy initiative to encourage regional tourism. Canada has a lot to offer, and regional tourism is an important economic driver in almost every

Transport committee  Thank you for the question. I want to point out to everyone that Air Transat was closed twice during the pandemic, for a total of 10 months. This winter, we were also affected by the omicron variant. So the impact has been great. Our industry was among the first to be affected