Transport committee  They also faced a loss in their last quarter, I believe. Let's not forget that, of course, airlines, as one of the most, if not the most, hard-hit sectors during the pandemic, have taken on huge amounts of debt. I believe you heard that from one of our members, Air Transat. I would question the premise of your question.

Transport committee  I repeat what was said before: Nobody wants to see airlines fail. When Lynx failed, nobody raised any champagne glasses. As I said in my opening remarks, we want a competitive system. We want to see regional carriers, such as those around this table, succeed in a system in which all entrants have that same opportunity to succeed.

Transport committee  Very quickly, I have two points. First of all, as you can imagine, as a national association we can't discuss the individual pricing strategies of our individual airlines, especially on a study with respect to competition. You can understand that there are concerns there. What I will say, first of all, though, just to the question of....

Transport committee  I find it interesting, Mr. Muys, that you have an Israeli pin on. At the IATA conference I was just at, one of the airlines I talked to was El Al. They indicated that they have not returned to Canada postpandemic because they recognize that flying back to Canada is too costly for them.

Transport committee  Thank you. Very quickly, within the past two years I believe we've seen a 29.5% increase in air navigation fees. We've seen a 33% increase in the air security charge. We have seen a dramatic difference between fuel excise taxes in Canada versus the United States. We've seen the more punitive approach being proposed under the APPR, which frankly will do nothing to improve overall air travel.

Transport committee  Thank you for inviting me to appear before the committee, Mr. Chair. Once again we are before this committee to discuss air travel in relation to rural, northern and remote communities. First let me acknowledge that we are on the traditional territory of the Anishinabe peoples.

Transport committee  I absolutely do, and I would say, as you well know, that the supply chain in Canada is very fragile. We may be facing, within a couple of days or weeks, a strike in one of the major transportation modes. We all hope that does not happen, but if it does, it will underscore the fragility of the system.

Transport committee  Thank you for the question. Absolutely. Again, airlines don't oppose user-pay. What I have said, and I think what you heard from the academics last week, is that the Canadian model, compared to other jurisdictions, is heavily skewed on the user-pay side of the equation. In the United States, during the pandemic, the federal government invested $40 billion of public monies in airports, whereas in Canada we had $400 million come out of the system.

Transport committee  First, let me thank you for raising the notion of airlines as a key component of the supply chain. That's one of their key roles and is often forgotten. We're all sitting here in person because airlines transported vaccines a couple of years ago. Otherwise, we'd all still be at home.

Transport committee  Absolutely. Again, it's about anything we can do to better integrate the modes. We're seeing, even here in Ottawa, for example, the need for rail and bus modes in order to access other airports. That better integration, I think, will serve not only businesses but passengers as well.

Transport committee  There are two points. On airport rents, we believe that a $400-million subsidization of airports and passengers by the federal government for land that was transferred is unacceptable. In the last panel, you discussed slots and the concerns about airport capacity and how it's unable to grow.

Transport committee  Thank you for the question. I think one of the challenges we have when dealing either with user-pay or with this question of passenger rights is that oftentimes the discussion becomes very binary—either you support it or you don't. The reality is that with both passenger rights and user-pay, the answers lie somewhere in between.

Transport committee  You bring up the term “subsidies”, but just to be clear, some of our recommendations are not subsidies, per se, in order to rebalance the user-pay system. Our first recommendation, for instance, to reinvest the $400 million more that the federal government takes in airport rents than it reinvests in the system is not a subsidy; it's simply keeping the money in the system where it was paid.

Transport committee  I will answer your question in English.

Transport committee  Okay. Thank you.