It's gonna be a disaster.

Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? You got the unions on both sides of the equation.

The pension fund wants to invest, and the unions don't wanna have anything to do with this, so it's interesting.

But I think that the answer to the unions is that, yeah, change is, change is gonna happen.

You know, we've, we've, we've privatized organizations, you know, around the country over the years.

Air Canada was a Crown corporation.

It went private many, many years ago.

How do you react to people who say there's a sovereignty aspect to this, and at least if we're gonna do it, it should be Canadian investors?

So, John, what do you make of this? Is this a big move that maybe voters should have had some inkling about or is it just, I don't know, inevitable? I don't know.

Well, this is not something new.

This is not something that's dropped out of the sky in the last few weeks or a few months.

This is an idea that's been around Canadian politics for at least a couple of decades, if not more.

We went through a whole level of angst when we created these national airports as nonprofit corporations.

couple of decades ago.

So it really is something that is inevitable that we were going to, in fact, one day, cross your fingers, see a model that comes out that basically kind of recognizes the underlying value that we have in real estate in our airports.

So where do they get it as opposed to what we have now?

What do you take from this announcement?

Oh, I, I think that the final...

You know, we're finally getting a position from the government and an announcement that was long overdue, I think.

We've been talking about this for close to 30 years on, in various ways, shapes, or forms about privatization, and I think that, you know, the, the, you know, the prime minister is right.

This is not privatization in the classical sense.

We are not selling airports.

We're basically creating a business model that looks at creating long-term leases, concessions.

Does it mean anything different for passengers, or what would passengers experience in an airport that has these investors?

Can you talk about the operation, what is done in Canada and how kind of important the connection is with the United States?

Yeah, I think Donald Trump has basically been focusing on where has this airplane been delivered from.

And, yes, it's being delivered from Montreal, just down the street from where I live in Ville Saint-Laurent and Dorval.

And, you know, there's about 5,000, 6,000 employees that basically do the finishing on this airplane.

But, you know, to build an airplane is not just the finishing of the airplane.

It's where the components come from.

So on this airplane, you know, the wings of the airplane are built in Roto, Texas.

Is this possible? Could Bombardier, I'm not saying they're going to, but could they easily move production all into the United States?

Moi, je lisais l'article et je me disais, OK, on est-tu complètement en sécurité? Est-ce que chacune des tours de contrôle à Athènes, dans les îles grecques, partout, est-ce qu'on a le plein contrôle de la situation tout le temps?

En l'espérant, en l'espérant.

On l'espère, OK.

On l'espère.

Mais la chose à faire, c'est vraiment, on a des systèmes qui sont des systèmes en place, des méthodes de contrôle qui sont standards à travers le monde.

Il y a des normes spécifiées par l'Association internationale d'aviation qui indiquent voici les méthodes, voici le chargement.

qu'on devrait considérer comme acceptable pour les contrôleurs et on essaie vraiment d'avoir des systèmes de reportage sur le chargement qu'on fait de chaque contrôleur et puis l'efficacité du contrôleur.

Est-ce que le président américain a le pouvoir de faire ça? Comment vous voyez, vous, cette menace-là?

On

l'espère.

La chose à faire, c'est vraiment, on a des systèmes qui sont des systèmes en place, des méthodes de contrôle qui sont standards à travers le monde.

Il y a des normes spécifiées par l'Association internationale d'aviation.

qui indique voici les méthodes, voici le chargement qu'on devrait considérer comme acceptable pour les contrôleurs.

Et on essaie vraiment d'avoir des systèmes de reportage sur le chargement qu'on fait de chaque contrôleur et puis l'efficacité du contrôleur.

D'abord, ce sont des statistiques qui sont généralement transmises à travers le monde.

Est-ce que le président américain a le pouvoir de faire ça? Comment vous voyez, vous, cette menace-là?

John, did we see this coming from somewhere? Has he brought this up before?

He's been doing the Bombardier advance since the beginning of the year.

That little bit of drama that we had earlier this year with the Gulfstream airplanes and not being certified because Bombardier was involved in the Canadian government certification process.

I think he's got a problem with Bombardier because Bombardier is doing so well.

All of his buddies, all his millionaire, billionaire buddies are buying Bombardier airplanes and not buying Gulfstream airplanes because the airplanes are better.

Bombardier's airplanes are the best in the world.

They're not the cheapest, but they are good.

So again, that's not accurate either, right?

So where are we at now in this? What has been found out?

Well, I think that there's a, you know, active investigation.

The National Transportation Safety Board in the US and the Canadian Transportation Safety Board are both conducting the investigation.

They're nowhere near coming to a conclusion just yet.

They're still going through the data.

They're still going through the interviews.

You know, they're gonna ask the question not just what happened, 'cause we all saw what happened, it was why did it happen in the first place.

Is that still what we're looking at? Is that still accurate?

So why do you think then, like the federal government, it, well, it seized the plane, so why is it pursuing forfeiture then? It, like if we don't have the capacity to even get this plane, you know, ready to fly or don't have the capacity to, to get it to that level in the future, uh, w- why is the federal government pursuing this, do you think?

Well, that's I think, you know, it's, it's, it sees there's value.

This is a valuable asset.

Like I said, you know, there's only five of these airplanes that are flying in the world today.

Uh, and, you know, you've got the sixth one sitting in Toronto.

So you got 16% of the world's Antonov 24 heavy lift airplanes sitting at Pearson.

Um, that to me, and that's a valuable asset.

And given the complexity of the case, you know, I certainly don't expect to get into the intricacies of it, but can you perhaps just explain briefly what's at the crux of it and why the government is arguing that forfeiture is necessary?

This is the time to strike, isn't it?

Yeah, it is.

It's one where, you know, it's taken us 60 years to get to where we are in terms of the world-renowned of this airplane.

It's not going to take us, you know, I think the Haviland was really, you know, sounding the alarm saying we're not going to be the only guy in town over the next 60 years.

There will be competition catching up.

And the question is, how do you maintain your premier status as an amphibious water bomber with the competition kicking up their heels? The one thing about a competitive aircraft, those are years away.

That whole cycle of, they haven't even been designed yet.

They're built to last.

That's it, eh?

And that's it.

There's no other ...

They don't even pay for c- for cabs or rebooking or any, any obligations that are ...

You miss your connection from T- from Toronto to Moncton or St. John's or, or to Deer Lake, you miss it, um, you know, there's no obligation on, on Porter to basically provide you with any kind of compensation for a missed event or, uh, or a reservation that's been canceled as a result of you being late.

So the only obligation they have under the A- the Air Passenger Protection Rights legislation is for them to basically put you on another flight to get you to your destination within 48 hours of your original booking.

And of course, the flight left 24 hours late, so there you go.

So what are the legal ramifications of this, like long range or further?

That's it, eh?

And that's it.

There's no other...

They don't even pay for ca- for cabs or rebooking or any, any obligations that are...

You miss your connection from T- from Toronto to Moncton or St. John's or, or to Deer Lake, you miss it, um, you know, there's no obligation on, on Porter to basically provide you with any kind of compensation for a missed event or a, or a reservation that's been canceled as a result of you being late.

So the only obligation they have under the A- the Air Passenger Protection Rights legislation is for them to basically put you on another flight to get you to your destination within 48 hours of your original booking.

And of course, the flight left 24 hours late, so there you go.

So what are the legal ramifications of this, like long range or for-

Why is it so difficult then for an airline to plan for and mitigate a labor stoppage, knowing that the target was the August long weekend?

It's all a question of testosterone, in my view.

They're trying to basically outdo each other and basically saying, I won, you lost, you lost, I won.

And I think that this is an example that we saw what the offer was when the CEO of WestJet made public the offer.

And then within 30 hours of a strike, it looks like the union basically signed up on that offer.

In my opinion, I don't know the details, but it sounds like that's what they agreed to.

And I'm saying, what was the usefulness of a strike or a lockout, depending on how you look at it? You know, what did the union gain? What did the management team gain as a result of, you know, another 30 hours of bargaining? And I'm just kind of concerned that we're getting into the situation where we're getting strikes because that's what the rules say we can do.

Explain why this is a perennial theme and how that is meant to be managed in the contracts that they have.

All right

...

they still gotta go through ratification, which could be risky, you know? They, the union, the membership may not accept it.

So we've seen that happen before.

I think Air Transat's flight attendants rejected their tentative agreements at least twice before they finally got a new one.

So it, it, you know, this is not a slam dunk.

You know, we, we have to wait and see.

Now, how difficult is it gonna be for the thousands whose, uh, uh, vacations were messed up as they try to chase down the airline to get some sort of a compensation?

All right.

They still, they still gotta go through ratification, which could be risky, you know? They, the union, the membership may not accept it.

So we've seen that happen before.

I think Air Transat's flight attendants rejected their tentative agreements at least twice before they finally got a new one, so it, it, you know, this is not a slam dunk.

Uh, we, we have to wait and see.

So yeah, what's the state of the industry? Um, you know, there, there's a lot of change that's happening in labor relations between employees and employers.

Um, you know, over the past at least five or six years since COVID, we really have changed that contract, that compact that we have between employees and, and, and employers, uh, to basically reflect more of a work/life balance, more of a, you know, "You pay me for the work that I'm doing.

Now, how difficult is it gonna be for the thousands whose, uh, uh, vacations were messed up as they try to chase down the airline to get some sort of a compensation?

What's going on here? Why are we seeing these strikes like this?

I think that since COVID, the airline industry has fundamentally changed its business model in terms of labour.

And the labor force, I think that, and the labor force has awakened since then because of the fact that, you know, COVID saw their numbers decimated and people are not very happy about working in the industry anymore.

And the industry is having a hard time recruiting given the action that the airlines did in those early years in the COVID process about laying people off.

So I think the unions, the membership are saying, listen, we need work-life balance.

We need to make sure that we've got a living wage We want to make sure that we're being recognized for the work that we're doing.

We're not being averaged out, as has been the case.

costs,

Can you give us a sense of the scale of, of this disruption to travel in Canada right now? And, and how long people, we heard some off the top, how long people can expect it to take before flights ramp right up to normal service?

Oh, it's gonna take a couple of days.

Um, uh, you know, WestJet's own statement yesterday was that 250,000 passengers have been affected by the work stoppage so far.

Uh, and that's, you know, something's canceled on Saturday, they canceled yesterday, and they also cancel for today.

So there's, there's a, you know, and there's a significant number of passengers who are gonna have to get re-accommodated on existing flights that they haven't canceled.

So that's a lot of passengers to put on flights that are already full.

So in my opinion, it's gonna take them a few days not only to ramp up the planes, planes are supposedly where they need to be, but it could take a couple of hours to get everybody, you know, to the airplanes and get the airplanes up and running.

Well, let's go out on [laughs] what obligations WestJet has to those people who have had flights canceled over the last few days.

Yeah, and I guess in the public domain, the airline tends to have the upper hand because nobody wants to be inconvenienced.

No, and I think that, but this inconvenience, we saw last summer with Air Canada that, you know, when the same issue got brought up by the union at Air Canada last summer, that, you know, public opinion last summer with the Air Canada flight attendants was strongly in favor of the union and of the flight attendants being recognized to have paid for work being performed.

So I think the same feeling is going to be showing up with WestJet's passengers and Canadians in general that they don't understand why are these flight attendants not getting paid for work that they're performing.

And I think, you know, WestJet is using this credit hour approach, which is like a bump up of the actual salaries to kind of reflect on average what you would normally be spending in terms of time preparing for a flight, But that's old school.

That's long gone in terms of a practice.

The airlines in the U.S. have basically been paying flight attendants for the work that they're performing on the ground for the last three years.

Air Canada is starting to do that.

How do they get paid now?

You say the problem isn't about enough firefighting aircraft, it's about how quickly we deploy them.

Yeah.

I think that, you know, the big question we have to ask ourselves is that if you ask anybody in Canada, how many firefighting airplanes do we actually need? And you can't answer that question because nobody really has the answer.

We, we have what we have, and then when we run out of what we have, we then ask the federal government to kind of coordinate the movement of other provinces or even other countries to bring assets into play.

So one of the questions you have to ask yourself when you ask, you know, the, what's the plan for either firefighters or airplanes, is what strategy are you gonna use to deploy these assets once the need has been defined for them? And right now we, that, that plan doesn't exist.

Our, our strategies we have for firefighting have been primarily oriented towards evacuation.

It's having enough for what is an average response, and then having cooperation agreements so that we can borrow from other provinces if we need it." So what the-- where does the strategy lie here, John?

Well, that's, that's the firefighting mentality we've had for sixty years in Canada.

So the question is going to be one

of, you know, what is, What does a plan B or plan C look like, especially if you already bought your ticket? No, if WestJet cancels a flight before you cancel a flight, There is protection that Air WestJet has to offer you in terms of trip coverage, the rules, and the regulations in Canada are pretty strict.

If your flight gets canceled by the carrier for any reason, including a strike or potential for a strike, the airline has to offer you alternative transportation, confirmed transportation, so that you arrive within 48 hours of your original itinerary.

So you might get, you know, you might get an eight hour, 10 hour, 12 hour delay, maybe a day, but they will in fact provide you with transportation to get you to your destination.

The trick is where, how are they going to get you there? This is August 2nd, August 3rd.

This is a long weekend.

Everybody's full, whether it's Porter, whether it's Air Canada, whether it's Flair.

Sometimes you've got to fight, and sometimes it just doesn't happen right away.

Is that some of the stuff that's happened here since COVID back in 2020?

No, that's probably a remnant.

I could go back and talk about Southwest Airlines in the 80s and the 90s and what they started when they did their operations out of Love Field in Texas.

They were basically in there to fly cheap seats and anything you want to bring on board the airplane, you start paying for it.

And then Ryanair and EasyJet in Europe about 25 years ago started to institutionalize that model and it's caught like wildfire, not only among the low-cost carriers, but Among all the carriers, this is a nice and easy way to take stuff that people would have taken for granted as part of the airline package and monetizing it.

And it's billions of dollars, repeat, billions of dollars of incremental revenue for the airline industry.

You'd be amazed how much money airlines are making out of what they call these ancillary fares, these ancillary fees.

What's going on with them? Where do you see things going for them over the next couple of years?

Are you buying that?

Well, it's, it's picking up.

It's picking up in certain markets in the US and certain timeframes.

So if you wanna go to Florida around December 22nd, December 23rd, uh, you're gonna pay big bucks to get there if there is space.

So it all depends on the markets that you're flying into, the time of year.

So yeah, it's kind of flattening out, but there are still some city pairs that Air Canada identified yesterday that were, I would say, the usual suspects.

The Montreal, Minneapolis, or Montreal, uh, uh, routes that they were looking to Montreal, Detroit and stuff, and Toronto to, uh, Indianapolis, St. Paul as well.

What happens to you?

That is what hasn't changed.

Ottawa does have carriers that were not there back in the late '90s.

You know, Air France is now in Ottawa in a big way, but we still need carriers, you know, British Airways.

We still need TAP.

We still need Iberia.

We still need Swiss Air.

We still need Lufthansa, as an example.

So what do you think is gonna flip things around to get more direct flights in and out of Ottawa?

So first and foremost, how did we get into this situation?

Oh, we don't want to go into too much history, but I think a little bit might help.

This is all COVID, and COVID really was a genesis for some of these industries we're having with staffing.

If we remember, aviation was shut down back in 2021 for months at a time, and the aviation industry, including air traffic control, had to reduce its staffing levels accordingly, and they did.

They offered voluntary retirements and cut back a significant number of controllers.

They went from somewhere just north of 2,000 controllers to, you know, a couple of hundred or about 400 or 500 controllers were eventually let go.

So that basically got them through the COVID shutdown.

At the end of the day, why do you think the government didn't move faster on the situation? Because certainly they must know where we were headed very quickly post-COVID.

Does this suggest to you that the program, this, this, this new round of orders suggest to you that the program can make it without more money from taxpayers?

Two point one billion that the Quebec government has invested total into this program.

I think the Quebec government, given the, um, issues that we've had with profitability of that plan, I think Quebec has written th- off the investment.

I don't think that the Quebec government is expecting a financial return on that investment.

Um, but they are gonna get their money back, but that's, that's probably about it.

There's no, there's no g- capital gain on that investment.

But the, the, the big issue right now, you know, is, is really understanding, you know, the, the, the investments, uh, by Airbus are done.

... federal investment necessary, or should this company be able to do this on its own?