Airline Association

[Guest erialx]

It appears the gov't treats our industry as a big 'cash cow' and shamelessly encumbers it with endless taxes and fees. What gov't fails to understand is that less equals more. Excessive taxation leads to less economic activity and thereby propagates a downward spiral. What we need is an association of everybody involved with this industry and then have it focus on reducing those outrageous taxes. If everybody wrote their MP, Prime Minister, Finance Minister it would surely make the decision makers pay attention. Every passenger could be presented with an envelope and info sheet (detailing the myriad of taxes) on board - for mailing to the PM. After gov'ts get through beating up the average guy's paycheque there leaves little left to afford the highly taxed cost to fly somewhere. No wonder this industry is trouble.

[Guest rance]

Great post.Goes to show you how short sighted the "leaders" are in Ottawa.Don't know how to think outside the box or have the strength to cut or reorganise certain policies(ie) flying the north how many snowmobiles are at the bottom of lakes every spring.

[J.O.]

We have ATAC which serves the interests of all member carriers. They are often in Ottawa lobbying for this and that, but they seem to avoid going public with many of their complaints. This may be because they've had better luck getting attention when they avoid embarrasing the government in the media. It can't be easy getting your concerns heard in Ottawa these days. Between the P.M.'s default position of "NO" to virtually everything and the distraction of the Liberal leadership campaign, it's an uphill battle.

Recently, ATAC has lobbied hard in Ottawa to get NavCan's proposed fee hike reduced from over 20% to 6.9%. It's still a big hike, but it could have been a whole lot worse! I'm willing to bet that they're hard at it behind the scenes trying to show Ottawa that the whole industry is struggling, not just AC.

[Guest mars]

Who did ATAC lobby in Ottawa? The government doesn't run the ANS so you must mean that they lobbied NAVCAN. Boy, that must have been tough seeing as J. Clifford Mackay, President and CEO of ATAC is a Director of NAVCAN. In fact the airlines/aviation appoint 5 of the BOD directly. Example; R. Lamar Durrett, former CEO of Air Canada, is also on the Board. The airlines control NAVCAN through the BOD, and even they relized a hike was necessary, but had to make it look hard fought. The 20% reduced to 7% was a smoke screen in IMHO.