CALGARY — WestJet CEO Alexis von Hoensbroech said layers of federal fees and taxes are raising airline travel costs in Canada, a burden he said was hampering the country’s efforts to fend off U.S. trade threats. 

At a Calgary Chamber of Commerce event on Tuesday, von Hoensbroech said a combination of sales taxes and other fees add roughly $133 to every flight Canadians buy, while comparable fees and taxes in the U.S. add up to $49. Citing a World Economic Forum report, he said Canada currently ranks 101st out of 119 countries in air travel affordability.

Higher fees have effectively led to higher comparable costs between Canadian destinations and U.S. ones, undermining the federal government’s efforts to bolster the movement of goods and people within Canada’s borders, the head of the Calgary-based airline said.   

“This is a self-inflicted internal Canadian trade barrier that Canada has created.” 

Government taxes and other added costs are only part of the issue. Canada’s sprawling geography and relatively small population has always made domestic travel troublesome, and repeated attempts to launch budget airlines in the country have run aground. 

Yet taxes and fees to regulatory agencies are making Canadian firms less competitive, von Hoensbroech argues. One example is the mandatory insurance Canadian consumers pay to cover reimbursements for cancelled or majorly delayed flights, he said, which add costs that many buyers might prefer to go without. 

Last week, WestJet was notified that security fees are about to rise 33 per cent, he said, calling the hike “a nice little revenue increase for the federal government.” 

Von Hoensbroech also criticized the federal government’s plan to build a high-speed rail network from Toronto to Quebec City at an estimated cost upward of $60 billion. “If I were to get the same amount of subsidy per passenger that Via Rail gets, I could not justify everyone for free, I would even hand out cash” to passengers boarding flights, he joked. 

“I’m not suggesting that the federal government should subsidize the industry, but they should please stop pulling money from it,” he said. 

Von Hoensbroech also spoke to the steep drop in air travel to U.S. cities since the Trump administration launched its global trade war, which led hundreds of thousands of Canadians to divert their travel plans. 

In response to Trump—whom von Hoensbroech called the “a new kid in town, south of the border, sitting in a big white house”—WestJet has shifted flights from Florida to the Caribbean, and from California and Arizona to Mexico, he said. 

Trade tensions also caused the Canadian dollar to plunge starting late 2024, hammering WestJet’s balance sheet given that the company pays much of its costs in U.S. greenbacks but collects revenues in loonies, von Hoensbroech said. 

WestJet hasn’t posted financial results since 2019, when Toronto private equity giant Onex Corporation took the airline private as part of a $5 billion deal. Earlier this month, Onex sold a 25 per cent stake in WestJet to Delta Airlines and Korea Air for US$550 million. 

The airline CEO on Tuesday argued that reducing costs through regulatory and tax relief could go a long way toward cutting travel costs, thereby generating economic output. (WestJet’s own budget airline, Swoop, was folded into the parent company in 2023.)

“At the end of the day, what we need to do is we need to build Canada now, even more than in the past.”

Correction: Swoop was folded into parent company WestJet in 2023. This story has been updated.