Transport committee  Are you talking about the bigger airlines, the ones in the south?

Transport committee  I have not been part of that. I'm fairly new with NATA, but no, I have not talked with them.

Transport committee  If I may, I've gone over the Auditor General's report. Looking at the northern infrastructure, obviously it's hard to build roads. In some places, they will never have roads. As we mentioned before, 117 airports or maybe more communities are touched by that. It's only air service.

Transport committee  I have an answer for your question. The committee did a report on that, but it was from the Office of the Auditor General. There was a report tabled in 2017. The OAG identified 117 airports that serve remote and northern communities, which are defined as “communities for which the only reliable year-round mode of transportation was by air.”

Transport committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I'd like to sincerely thank the committee for inviting me to testify on this very important subject. Since the end of January 2024, I've been the executive director of the Northern Air Transport Association of Canada, better known by the acronym NATA.