January 8, 2010 at 2:30 PM
Letter from Ken Lewenza, CAW National President to The Honourable John Baird - Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities
January 8, 2010
Via email: [email protected]
The Honourable John Baird
Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities
Tower C - 330 Sparks St.
Ottawa, ON K1A ON5
Dear Minister Baird:
On behalf of the CAW and especially our airline leadership, I appreciated the opportunity to meet with you this week. We welcomed having the chance to express our concerns and recommendations directly to you.
As a follow up to that meeting I would like to propose that you consider the idea of forming an airline transport advisory committee. We would welcome the opportunity to be part of such a committee and to have open dialogue on an ongoing basis. We believe that this sector continues to face many challenges and would benefit greatly from getting all key parties around a table.
As you know we continue to have serious concerns about the boom bust cycle of the airline industry with more than 25 carriers going bankrupt and ceasing operation since deregulation. Many others have merged into Air Canada which has also gone bankrupt once and nearly did so a second time last year. Your Government's intervention at that time was important. But the industry can't keep lurching from crisis to crisis. And believe me, there will be more crises if there is no sanity restored to the sector in the form of capacity regulation.
If your Government took an equity stake in Air Canada in exchange for its significant investment it would have a window on this carrier and the precariousness of the industry as a whole.
We also appreciated the opportunity to raise with you the issue of pension insurance for federal jurisdiction workers and the need to beef up our Canada/Quebec Pension Plan. As you well know the crisis in the global economy has in turn created a pension crisis and retirees need to be assured that their pension promise is secure.
I look forward to you reply and again my thanks for your time this week on what I know was an extremely busy day.
Sincerely
Ken Lewenza
National President
| c.c. |
Peggy Nash
Leslie Dias |
KN/PN/kvcope343
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