RE:RE:Help from the Fed on the way for Airlines Does AC really need emergency funding as urgently as some other areas of our economy? If time goes on with no change to restrictions this need may become more urgent but is it really right now? Are there not other areas of our economy and actual people that may need assistance on a more urgent basis and where our tax dollars should be used?
Great if they can access cheap money through low or no interest loans and defer losses but does this solve the people crisis that this and many other industries face? It is the people they are having to lay off due to lack of business that are impacted by the current situation the most. Those people with retirement packages and benefits programs that are better than what they will be able to replace them with. Jobs they are needing to replace that may or may not pay as much as the one they currently have. Mortgages and rents that they are struggling to pay or are accumulating debt on. Families they are desperately trying to provide for.
There needs to be way more clarity and debate to what relief is urgent and what the positive side of any loans or government involvement in private industry is. There is no debate on the urgent financial crisis of many many many Canadian citizens including laid off airline employees, There is no debate that small business is in crisis and will face a more devastating impact from this crisis than any other sector of business. Does a relief program bring jobs back, reduce/remove flight restrictions, increase passanger numbers and activity at airports? No. If we can't get the pandemic under control is this relief going to have any long term benefit. No. Is the government going to make Air Canada more profitable and run more efficiently? A big No.
To the Federal Government -
- Help those who have lost their jobs, This is your job
- Get the pandemic under control through investments in vaccines, treatments that reduce the impact, testing times that allow tracing and controls. This is your job!!
- Relax restrictions and get return to travel through the investments in vaccines, testing and treatments. This is your job!
Then and only then will the airlines be able to rehire al those people. All the money the government spends should be about lowering impact and decreasing our time to return to more normal activity. Once we can get there maybe consider loans for early hire backs, repayments of benefits and retirement programs, low cost infrastructure loans etc.
We do not need the government to think they can run an airline. Let them prove they can run an unemployment and virus relief program and a pandemic control program and perhaps even figure out how to form a simple committee without needing to disolve the government.
To all those workers in this and other industries and lines of employment who have already lost their jobs i hope you receive actual, realistic and immediate assistance not a federally owned WELFAir Canada.