TRAN Committee Report

Bloc Québécois Supplementary Report entitled:

“State of airline competition in Canada”

Tabled by Member of Parliament Xavier Barsalou-Duval before the Standing Committee on Transportation, Infrastructure, and Communities (TRAN) on September 26, 2025

The Bloc Québécois MP Xavier Barsalou-Duval hereby submits a supplementary report to the report of the Standing Committee on TRAN adopted on September 23, 2025. The Bloc Québécois partially agrees with this report, but believes that the final recommendations do not adequately and directly address the major challenge posed by the concentration of the airline market.

The Bloc Québécois supports the requests made by several witnesses to review the Minister of Transport's absolute power to approve or reject mergers between airlines. Several of them expressed concern about “the approval of mergers despite the recognition of a lack of competition” as Mr. Ebrahimi pointed out. Currently, the minister can request a review by the Competition Bureau, which assesses the public interest. However, it is up to the minister to decide based on the report produced.

We understand the political reservations associated with a possible complete transfer of this decision-making power from the minister to the Competition Bureau, especially since the latter, although independent, reports to the Department of Justice, and it is ultimately elected governments that remain accountable to the public. We also recognize that the minister takes into account “a broader set of factors” and that the public interest may justify the consideration of various criteria. On the other hand, the democratic principle also implies that elected officials may sometimes make questionable choices.

However, despite the absence of definitive solutions, we question the possibility of establishing stricter guidelines governing the minister's discretionary power in approving mergers. This question is based in particular on a recurring point raised by several witnesses: market concentration, embodied by the Air Canada-WestJet duopoly, which highlights the difficulty for smaller competitors, particularly at regional and remote airports, to enter the aviation ecosystem and survive.

In a context where new companies are finding it difficult to gain a foothold in the domestic market, this exclusive right of the minister to decide on mergers appears to be an obstacle to respecting passenger rights. Reasonable and judicious measures must be considered to strengthen air competition in Canada, including in circumstances involving airline mergers.