International Trade committee  The internal analysis done by Transport Canada showed that the policy remains relevant and its implementation has been efficient and effective. For instance, it is calculated that negotiating with another country costs the government around $35,000 on average. That includes the p

International Trade committee  The trend is clearly upward over time. Yes, as Mr. Christie said, sometimes a carrier will cancel a service for commercial reasons. But overall we're seeing a clear upward trend in terms of traffic being carried by carriers under the suite of agreements that we have.

International Trade committee  As I mentioned earlier, we now have 112 partners around the world. There are very few instances where we have confidential annexes to the agreements. We don't promote such an approach; however, quite often when we negotiate with another country, the other country will request tha

International Trade committee  As I said before, the interest of Canadian carriers is a consideration that we have to take into account. After all, they are the entities that offer the services. But it's not the only factor we take into account. We also take into account the interest of Canadian airports. In m

International Trade committee  It's amazing. Even when you negotiate with a small country, you think it is going to be pretty smooth, and there's always something that comes up. Every country is very proud and usually wants to put its stamp on the agreement. The number of issues we have to deal with can vary q

International Trade committee  We have 112 partners. An air agreement is a treaty, so we're talking about a treaty in almost all of the 112 cases. Sometimes we have more of an administrative arrangement. It could be an MOU, for instance. The number 112 refers to the number of partnerships we have around the

International Trade committee  Okay. In almost all cases we have agreements where there is unused capacity. As we explained before, it may not be an open skies agreement, but the rights are there. They're not being used.

International Trade committee  For very large negotiations like the Canada-U.S. open skies negotiations or the negotiations for the comprehensive agreement with the European Union, for instance, we had in the delegation representatives of the labour movement.

International Trade committee  Yes. When we negotiate agreements, we have clauses that ensure all carriers are not discriminated against. If an airport somewhere starts to give a rebate to a carrier, we want our carriers to get the same rebate. But typically we ensure there is no discrimination for Canadian ca