International Trade committee  In our case, I think one of the biggest was the signing of the first blue skies arrangement with the United States in the 1990s. That has had a tremendous impact. Before that point, the only cities in the U.S. that were accessible were cities that had major customs/immigration po

International Trade committee  There's a very good example of a Canadian government policy that was particularly well timed and well placed, and it has had a tremendous impact. I think the European free trade arrangement will have the same impact.

International Trade committee  I'm not aware of any specific issues in there with respect to security that would give us cause to be concerned. I know we're very diligent about which countries we fly to and which countries we allow service to be extended to. I had personal experience when we extended the righ

International Trade committee  I wanted to go back to an issue regarding cargo. One of the things people don't realize is that probably 60% to 65% of the cargo that goes in airplanes actually goes in the belly of passenger airplanes. When Mr. Staples refers to lift, it's that if we don't have passenger flights

International Trade committee  If I didn't pay rent anymore, the corollary question people normally ask me is, where would that money go? It would go to three or four different places, depending on how we wanted to play it, and this is something we would look at. We would be able to directly reduce the airpor

International Trade committee  One thing I'd like to see the Canadian government work on is facilitating and improving or streamlining the visa process. I mentioned earlier that we've been working for a long time to try to get a direct link to China. Over the years I've met three different Chinese ambassador

International Trade committee  I think it's a great step in the right direction. I would like to see some more development more quickly in some markets. I mentioned two or three in my remarks. I think there are a few countries where there could be considerable additional origin-destination traffic, not just pa

International Trade committee  In order to illustrate that point, allow me to tell you what “Montreal International Airport U.S.A.”, as they call themselves in Plattsburgh, New York, has as a cost base. They have received a strategic air command base for nothing, so they have a 12,000-foot runway and a tarmac

International Trade committee  Sure. In the last 10 years we've gone from about 8 million passengers to about 14.8 million passengers, so that's pretty considerable growth. Most of that has been on the international side. Our domestic sector is probably pretty static. The U.S. as a proportion of our traffic ha

International Trade committee  The ultimate limit of an airport is not the buildings, because you can add buildings, add capacity. Technology has allowed us to flow more and more people through small buildings. The ultimate limit to an airport is the airfield. Just to illustrate that, at the same time that Mon

International Trade committee  We compare ourselves regularly to the other large airports in the country, and we're about middle of the pack. We're substantially cheaper than Toronto, a little higher than Calgary and Vancouver. It depends on the type of aircraft as well. It tends to vary. Fees are a function o

International Trade committee  What I was suggesting was that these things have to be taken in a much broader context. If we want to liberalize the air rights between ourselves and a country, it should be taken in a much broader context of an economic review in general, much as we've done with the European fr

International Trade committee  Well, I think that's generally what we end up doing in most free trade arrangements. I know that those are central elements of the NAFTA arrangement. I know that there are central elements of that in the European free trade arrangements, so, yes, I think that would probably be a

International Trade committee  Well, I don't have the benefit of Mr. Staples' experience. We do have issues on both customs and the CATSA side. I think there's a lot that could be done, and we've been having many conversations lately with the Ministry of Transport and with CATSA, and there are in fact some a

International Trade committee  It is definitely the highest in the developed world. We find ourselves in the situation where the last time I looked, while Canadian airport infrastructure and air networks are ranked among the best and safest in the world and the most developed, our tax regime is seen as 139th o