Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to begin by thanking the committee for the opportunity to appear as a witness today as you continue your hearings concerning the pandemic. The National Airlines Council of Canada represents Canada's largest airlines: Air Canada, Air Transat, Jazz Av

Finance committee  As an airline, Mr. Chair, I'm trying to bring us in on time, but I'll slow it down.

Finance committee  We promote safe, sustainable and competitive air travel by advocating for the development of policies, regulations and legislation to foster a world-class transportation system. Collectively, our member airlines carry over 80 million passengers annually, directly employ over 60,0

Finance committee  Thank you for the question. It's a good question. In terms of the tools the federal government has at its disposal, we are not proposing one set approach to how the government deals with this. At a top level, basically we have two issues, as I said in my opening comments. We wou

Finance committee  In terms of what we would expect, I must say that it's very hard for me to answer the question. What has been transpiring over the past several weeks is that carriers have been making the government aware of the challenges they are facing. That information has been presented and

Finance committee  You did a good job there of covering off the variety of approaches that are occurring. I am very hesitant to guess what the government's approach will be, and therefore, what terms and conditions may be attached to it. We simply do not know what that approach will be, the scope a

Finance committee  Thank you for the question. I'm cognizant of the time available, so I will try to be brief. The impact has been unprecedented. I know that's an adjective that has been used a heck of a lot over the past several weeks, but it has been unprecedented when you see the capacity that

Finance committee  I fully understand the difficulty that everyone is experiencing as a result of the pandemic and what it's been doing to flights. The use of the vouchers is driven by the pandemic. We would not be following this approach if it were not for the economic chaos it has created. The C

Transport committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I will get this in at four minutes and 45 seconds. The National Airlines Council of Canada represents Canada's largest air carriers: Air Canada, Air Transat, Jazz Aviation, and WestJet. That represents approximately 90% of domestic capacity and about 60

Transport committee  Thank you.

Transport committee  Thank you for the question. It's nice to see you, too. I think there are a few elements to it. The general view was that LEEFF was never set up to deal with the challenge that we are facing in aviation, particularly large operators, given the sheer size of the companies. Sorry;

Transport committee  Okay, thank you. There were a couple of reasons to it. We didn't think that LEEFF was necessarily set up for large organizations. Of course, it is just for large employers. It has been stuck at stage zero on the economic recovery continuum since the beginning of the pandemic.

Transport committee  We are starting to see the impacts now. It is unnerving for us from a commercial perspective, and it should be unnerving for us broadly from an economic recovery perspective as well. As I mentioned in my opening comments, we are seeing that foreign carriers have started to receiv

Transport committee  Mr. Chair, I think that's to me. I haven't seen those same media reports. I know that the government has said, and repeated a couple of days ago, that it is beginning confidential conversations because of the nature of the discussions and the commercial activity that they'll hav

Transport committee  I think it's reasonable that the government and the individual companies will confidentially discuss all the details that they need to discuss in order to ultimately get to a conclusion that hopefully provides support for aviation and the thousands of people who have lost their j