Transport committee  I would like to take a crack at this. As I said, this is a magnificent aircraft. The market appreciates it. Lufthansa, Delta, Air Canada are major global airlines that purchased this aircraft. I think the sales of this aircraft will grow quite significantly. At the same time, th

Transport committee  I think it'll have an impact on air travel costs for people flying Air Canada. It will help them get better competitive choices to maintain the high safety standard that Canada requires of them. As they become more competitive that I think will get translated, not just for their

Transport committee  I don't know the number in Singapore. I do know that aviation is one of their strategic sectors. They don't have mining and forest industries, for example, so aviation is one of the most important sectors they invest in. I agree. I have a preference for Canadian engineers and ma

Transport committee  China is increasingly developing both aircraft manufacturing—they have products that compete with Bombardier now. They assemble A320s and other aircraft in China. I'm expecting they are going to become very aggressive in entering the aircraft market. The good news is 30,000 narr

Transport committee  I will answer what I think the question is. Certainly state intervention is important, and not just in aviation maintenance but in the film industry—there are lots of industries. My own opinion as an economist is that state intervention through forcing carriers to have to compete

Transport committee  I think that privatizing Air Canada was a very enlightened thing to have done. As I said, the rest of the world now has private airlines. Where you still have government-owned airlines are exceptions, and problems are often associated with that. Air Canada faced a lot of challeng

Transport committee  Certainly Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Singapore. In Singapore's case, tax differences have definitely encouraged the type of investment you need in the modern high economies of scale, high specialization. Singapore has picked up a lot of the work, specifically from Austr

Transport committee  I confess I'm not as familiar with Mexico. They don't have a manufacturing sector there. They have severe constraints in their airports. I confess I can't think of any examples of aircraft from Europe or North America or Australia that go to Mexico for maintenance. They certainly

Transport committee  I find it hard to understand why we have a 25% foreign ownership limit in the Air Canada Public Participation Act when the Canada Transportation Act has exactly the same limit applicable to the same airline. It just strikes me as being peculiar that this is the case.

Transport committee  If I could add here I do think the key success factors are things such as investment in training and sometimes that's in educational institutions. Peter made a reference to here in Vancouver where we have the B.C. Institute of Technology, and again their graduates seem to get pla

Transport committee  I think we have a way to go. When I look at some other countries, for example, I run an annual conference in Europe and most of the time we're in Germany and when I look at the education programs there and the funding they have for both trades education as well as a higher maint

Transport committee  Australia has I believe grown in total maintenance jobs, but not so much on the heavy checks. They tend to move offshore into much larger plants where they can even out the flow of maintenance. Qantas has got 12 A380s and they can't possibly justify a maintenance line for the hea

Transport committee  If I can add a few remarks, this has been 30 years and in that 30 years we have seen new important airlines created and grow, whether it's WestJet and Porter Airlines, or Air Transat and so forth, and government, rightly or wrongly, decided to use competition. I would suggest tha

Transport committee  I know that places where they used to, like Australia, no longer do that. I don't believe the U.S. has any regulations on that. I confess I don't know the details for Germany, but Lufthansa Technik has actually grown into a global maintenance group and I don't believe that Luftha

Transport committee  I don't think we protect by legislation. Go ahead, Peter.