So Mr. Lapierre believes that the way to help airlines is to force them to include taxes in the base price of an airline ticket.
Total air ticket prices proposed
CANADIAN PRESS
OTTAWA – Canadian travellers may never again see ads for $1 air fares and that’s not because discount carrier Jetsgo has gone belly up.
The federal government introduced amendments to the Transportation Act today that would force airlines to include all taxes, fees and other charges in their advertised ticket prices.
Consumers have been agitating for a clearer system of ticket pricing for some time, said Transport Minister Jean Lapierre.
He’s hoping Canada’s airlines will voluntarily change their practices.
“If not, we’re going to act directly,” with the legislated amendments, Lapierre said following a cabinet meeting.
“Whenever they advertise specials and everything, we want to make sure that the consumer gets the real price and not the divided price.”
“So it’s just for the consumer to have the truth.”
Jetsgo suspended operations earlier this month after offering specials as cheap as a buck on some routes. By the time government taxes and airport fees were included, those tickets actually cost closer to $100.
“Some of those advertisements were really inviting people to travel for a very cheap price and then when they got to the counter they were pretty surprised,” said Lapierre.
He is right, when I paid $69 to fly to Toronto from Winnipeg, the taxes doubled that! What Mr. Lapierre is really trying to do is get the taxes hidden so that people are not upset at the Federal Government for ripping them off! This has nothing to do with helping the industry and everything about helping the Liberals in the polls.