For years and years now, Toronto's Pearson, Air Canada and its lobbyists have been preventing Vancouver International Airport from growing as it should be.
Countless airlines have wanted to set up new, direct, or even more frequent routes to Vancouver, only to be blockaded by Pearson and Air Canada through their lobbyists in the federal government.
For Toronto's Pearson, it means they get more flights and a forced transfer for flights from Vancouver....this has only been exasperated with more revenues needed, thus more flights, after the white elephant new airport terminal was built.
With Air Canada, they have blockaded proposals from other airlines to set new or direct routes to Vancouver....routes that Air Canada doesn't even serve nor does it ever intend on serving. Some airlines, after years of trying, have given up and have instead decided to set up shop in Seattle, just south of the border of Vancouver.
To put it simply:
Air Canada and the interests of Ontario and Quebec (to a lesser extent) are being given priority at the expense of the rest of the country, particularly at airports like Vancouver, which are expanding vigourously in anticipation of future growth and world prominence.
Protecting Air Canada costs jobs, lowers revenue, raises prices
Federal government slow to sign 'open-skies' agreements
By Miro Cernetig, Vancouver Sun
September 28, 2009
For almost 10 years, Air France has been making a simple request to Ottawa. Let it start up a daily, non-stop flight from Vancouver to Paris.
And for 10 years, the same answer came back: Forget it. That's Air Canada's route.
No surprise there. Protecting the national airline has been the federal policy for decades. Trouble is, Air Canada never got around to starting up its non-stop flight to Paris. It was just holding the air space, to keep out competitors.
Well, Air France finally had enough.
In June it took its business to Seattle, a city eager for another direct link to the European Union.
How much business did Vancouver lose? Well, the Vancouver Airport Authority estimates a daily international flight generates about 221 jobs, $10.2 million in annual wages and $17.4 million to B.C.'s GDP.
I heard about the city losing the Paris run to Seattle from Brian McDermott, a businessman with almost four million kilometres of jet travel under his belt. I met him on the Canada Line, on his way back from the airport, and he was still frustrated at not getting a direct route into Charles De Gaulle.
"Can you imagine being able to fly directly to Paris in 9-1/2 hours?" he said, adding Paris also offers connections to Africa and beyond. "I just don't know what we were thinking as a country losing a deal like that."
It might be easier to forgive if it were a one-off.
Sadly, it's a pattern undermining Vancouver's future as a major global destination.
A few weeks before Air France chose Seattle, Vancouver also lost a link to Singapore. It's been reported Singapore Airlines' cost-cutting was what ended its 20-year service here. But the back story is the airline actually wanted to increase service from three days a week to a daily flight, but was refused, and left.
These defeats happen because the federal government has been slow to sign "open-skies" agreements with other countries.
Mainly to protect Air Canada and partly because Transport Canada and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade are bureaucratic, Canada is a laggard in air liberalization.
Ottawa will have chances to redeem itself, though.
Behind the scenes, there are talks of more direct routes from Vancouver to the world, maybe even Paris. Air Tahiti is considering switching its Tahiti-Los Angeles-to-Paris route to Vancouver. Vancouver would provide a shorter route and passengers wouldn't need visas to enter Canada when transiting between flights and destinations.
Airlines in Taiwan, China, India and the Philippines are eyeing Vancouver, too.
Emirates, the fast-growing airline of the United Arab Emirates, also wants a daily direct flight from Vancouver to Dubai, connecting us to the Middle East.
Premier Gordon Campbell hosted the other western premiers last week to try to push air liberalization to the top of Ottawa's agenda. He predicts open competition will mean cheaper flights, more visitors and "hundreds and hundreds of millions, if not billions, for the B.C. economy."
Ottawa may finally be catching on. The feds recently signed an agreement with South Korea, which Campbell estimates will likely increase traffic by 37 per cent and decrease fares by 17 per cent in the first two or three years. International Trade Minister Stockwell Day promises more of the same.
Let's hope that's true. But it's a tough job. The Montreal-based Air Canada has a strong and entrenched lobby in Ottawa. The West, not so much.
Back on the Canada Line, Brian McDermott posed a solution: "I'm all for protecting the home team's airline. But when another airline announces it will fly to Vancouver, let's give Air Canada 12 months to offer the same service. If they don't, then let the other airline do it."
mcernetig@vancouversun.com
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
Open skies advocated for B.C.
Analysts say Ottawa’s continued focus on preserving Air Canada’s monopoly is stifling international air transportation opportunities in Western Canada
Andrew Petrozzi
Ottawa should negotiate “open-skies” deals between Asian governments and B.C. and Western Canada even if it continues to refuse to open the entire country to international air carriers.
So says Tae Oum, UPS foundation chairman at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business and president of the Air Transport Research Society.
Oum chaired a recent panel discussion in Vancouver on the economic benefits of open-skies agreements, which give more airlines greater access to the country’s airports.
During a BIV interview, Oum cited the example of a 2006 bilateral agreement between Korea and China that includes transborder open skies between Korea and the Chinese provinces of Sandong and Heinan.
Oum’s suggestion was one among many aimed at realizing gains for B.C. and Western Canada under the federal Conservative government’s 2006 blue-sky policy, which was designed to liberalize Canada’s policies that preserve a monopoly for Air Canada, the country’s former national airline.
While there have been some recent gains (see “Canada-South Korea air agreement to provide $300 million tourism boost to B.C.” – issue 1031; July 28-August 3), many carriers, including Emirates Airlines and Singapore Airlines, want to increase service to Canada in general and B.C. in particular, but their requests have fallen on deaf ears in Ottawa.
Oum said the federal government and Transport Canada need to change their approach to the airline sector.
As an air-transport industry matures, its direct contribution to the economy becomes smaller relative to the size of tourism, foreign trade and direct investment generated by expanded air access.
“We’re spending a lot of time and effort trying to protect this small pie at the expense of consumers and the national economy as a whole including tourism and international trade,” said Oum.
According to Oum, air transportation’s contribution to Canada’s economy was $5.9 billion in 2008 compared with $30 billion for tourism and $932 billion in international trade. He said the antiquated policy of protecting national airlines is inconsistent with maximizing national economic benefits.
Oum added that Canadian air policy needs to become pro-economy and pro-consumer as are policies in jurisdictions like the European Union, the U.S. and Australia.
Andrew Parker, Emirates Airlines’ senior vice-president, also spoke at the September 25 B.C. International Open Skies Summit. He told BIV that his airline has been seeking “reasonable access” to Canada since the late 1990s. But it remains restricted to three flights per week to Toronto. The airline also wants to fly into Vancouver and Calgary.
“Other than Transport Canada and Air Canada, we have met no one who is opposed to letting carriers like Emirates have reasonable access to bringing tourists and carry goods out of Canada in a reasonable way.”
Vancouver is a desired tourist destination, and business connections between the gas and oil industries in Alberta and the Middle East make it a natural choice for direct air flights.
“We are very frustrated that this policy remains that very heavily restricts international carriers from getting access,” said Parker.
He estimated that every landing of a Boeing 777, which is what Emirates flies to Canada, generates about 800 direct employment hours in Canada.
“We would employ thousands of extra people in Western Canada if we were given access,” said Parker. “Clearly we think there would be, in the first 10 years of operations, a multibillion-dollar injection of tourism, exports and direct economic activity.”
Parker said that while summits and the support of provincial premiers such as B.C.’s Gordon Campbell and Alberta’s Ed Stelmach generate momentum, his airline and others who have been “in the queue for a long, long time” are resigned to “continue politely writing letters” to the federal government.
Canada needs to adopt open skies as a principle when negotiating air bilateral agreements with foreign governments, Oum said.
He added that Ottawa must also abolish the confidential addenda connected to bilateral air-services agreements, because they’re “fundamentally undemocratic.”
“Confidential addenda are not about security questions. [They are] about how prices will be regulated, how frequencies and capacity will be regulated and all commercial matters.
“There is virtually nothing about security matters. They are signing confidential agreements to hide true information from independent analysis by academics like myself.”
According to the B.C. government, Canada has 82 bilateral air-service agreements, but only eight classify as open skies. The other 74 have restrictions that prevent airports in Western Canada from competing with airports in the U.S. and Central Canada for international air travel and commerce.
By press time, Transport Canada had not responded to requests for comment from BIV. •
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Toronto's stranglehold on Vancouver's YVR and other Canadian airports
They're screwing Calgary, too. Why is it that Emirates wasn't allowed to fly to Calgary, again?
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