Transport committee  Yes. I think we need to step back and take a look at the network. We look at these as individual airports, as if any one of them could survive on its own. However, every flight has an origin and a destination, and many of them have connection points in between. The big change that took place back when the airline industry deregulated was that we got the hub-and-spoke model.

Transport committee  Absolutely. The fundamental should be that this is one great big network. Some of these airports are going to be profitable, and some of these airports aren't going to be profitable, but they all are necessary for the entire network to work. However that money gets transferred back and forth is for you guys to work out, but we have to stop thinking of these as individual airports.

Transport committee  I'm not particularly qualified to answer the supply chain piece. To my knowledge, there has not been a significant market study for quite some time in this region. I think that would be very enlightening. We've had some looks around the edges, but data-driven decision-making is always the best decision-making, so that kind of work would be welcome.

Transport committee  That's correct, absolutely. I think we are probably into it for about a million dollars a year right now. I don't even want to think about what would happen if we lost the one remaining flight—and we've seen it. When you get to one flight a day, we've seen in other communities that it becomes unsustainable, because now you're distributing the cost of operating that airport across those few users that are available.

Transport committee  Yes. You're familiar with any coffee conversation, and it sounds very familiar to what I'm hearing from my colleagues on this committee here. People compare that they could have gone to Switzerland for the price of a round trip to Vancouver. Yes, absolutely.

Transport committee  It places the burden on the taxpayer. We have a life-saving requirement to keep that airport operating, so that burden that's been shifted over the years from other levels of government down has only one place to land and that's on the local 12,000 people who are trying to do the Lord's work here on the north coast in terms of building Canada's great gateway.

Transport committee  That's correct.

Transport committee  You know, the airfare part is something that is hard, but I think a certain amount of minimum service could be a requirement of a licence. It could be a requirement. If you're going to operate in British Columbia, in Canada or wherever, there should be some requirement to say that you're going to maintain a minimum amount of service in this community or that community.

Transport committee  I would say it's the latter in our case. There are many benefits, so I don't want to rain on the whole parade. There's been tremendous benefit. I think it has lowered costs for Canadians. There have been efficiencies achieved. Certainly, for the major airports where there is significant traffic, you can actually make a go of those airports.

Transport committee  It's hard to describe it, but everything goes to the winner here. If there's a nearby airport.... There is, in the case of Terrace. It's accessible most of the year. It's not reliable for us on an emergency basis, but it's available most of the year. As more traffic goes through there, as WestJet and Air Canada hammer it out and fight each other for fares and whatever, more traffic flows there.

Transport committee  Thank you, and good morning. As you said, my name is Herb Pond. I'm the mayor of Prince Rupert. As an aside, I happened to work in the airline industry for about 20 years when we went through airport devolution and the deregulation of airlines, so I kind of have an interesting perspective on all of this.

Transport committee  Thank you. My understanding is that it's not possible under their mandate. There's a fairly strict set of rules in terms of what they can and cannot invest in. As I said earlier, in large urban centres, ports, or the Government of Canada with ports, will invest in decongesting, because that's the most immediate need to grow the port.

Transport committee  Thank you very much. It was great to host you. You're welcome back anytime. I enjoyed our conversations so much. First of all, I absolutely support port expansion. As I say that, I'm increasingly pinched every time they expand. We want the growth, but the challenge is.... As I described earlier, we eventually get taxes from that finished project, but we endure three, four or sometimes five years of construction activity in which no extra taxes flow to the community, yet we're required to make all kinds of moves, whether it be in our landfill or on our roads and streets.

Transport committee  The consultation is not, I think, what it could be. Sometimes the issues get in the way. We talked, earlier, about the challenges around arriving at a number on the payment in lieu of taxes. That becomes an adversarial relationship, and it spills over into other things. There's room to improve.

Transport committee  It would be in that neighbourhood, if not greater. One of the pieces that drives my slightly different view on all of these issues is that the port is so huge relative to the size of the local community. Certainly a third would be conservative.