International Trade committee  I think the falling price of oil should lead to less expensive airline tickets, and that should lead to an increased demand in air travel. If there's an increased demand in air travel to particular markets, that could influence us to want to expand agreements with those markets.

International Trade committee  Not at this time, no.

International Trade committee  Well, what we're thinking is that basically we're consulting with the main users of air travel, so we cover the airlines and their priority needs, and the airports and their needs, but through the tourism commissions we can get a better sense of what individuals and consumers wan

International Trade committee  In an open-skies type of agreement, those types of rights are unlimited, but in the list of expanded agreements, they all take on a nature of their own. In some cases, we start by negotiating three frequencies per week to one destination in each market, and then we would graduall

International Trade committee  We would designate the airlines in the agreement, and it would be based, on our side, on the interest of the Canadian carriers that are interested in accessing that market.

International Trade committee  We would negotiate an agreement to allow all of them access to the market, if we could.

International Trade committee  Perhaps I should defer the question to Marc. I've been in this job for four months and I've negotiated five agreements—

International Trade committee  —and I didn't have too many challenges at the time. It's like any negotiation; there's a give and a take. Normally you're negotiating on behalf of your stakeholders, your carriers and your airports, and the other party is trying to maximize the benefits to its side. Obviously, a

International Trade committee  I guess the answer to the question is that the reason we're at 91% is that we proposed open skies agreements for those reasons you outlined, and the other countries have said they're not interested. They preferred a more piecemeal approach, or a gradual approach.

International Trade committee  Yes, it does.

International Trade committee  Yes, there are, but I really wouldn't be able to get into the details of those at this time.

International Trade committee  They would touch on national security.

International Trade committee  I assume it would be. If we were to seek a negotiating mandate from our two ministers, the Minister of Transport and the Minister of International Trade, they would have to look at all factors in terms of the bilateral relationship between Canada and that country, and some of the

International Trade committee  I would say they're strictly complementary. I can't think of an example where an ATA collided, in terms of Canada's objectives, with a free trade agreement. Again, it's a supporting mechanism. When we look at the amount of cargo representing Canada's exports, for example, I think

International Trade committee  The answer to your first question is that I don't know if we have more updated information, but we'll certainly look into that for you. In terms of the trajectory of that growth, it's difficult to predict how that would grow. As you know, with some of these trade agreements, the