OTTAWA—Airline passengers are getting hit with fee hikes to pay for tens of millions in new security equipment at Canadian airports.

Transport Minister John Baird announced Thursday that the security fee was going up to cover the cost of extra security screeners and scanners.

Fees now range from $5 to $16, depending on the length of a flight and its destination.

The cost of the fee on a one-way domestic ticket will rise by $2.58; for a trans-border ticket it rises $4.37 and $8.91 on an international ticket.

Coinciding with the extra fees is a $1.5 billion investment in aviation security over five years, Baird said.

The extra cash is meant to cover ballooning security expenses.

That’s a stiff price for travellers who are already paying a price of added hassles for the extra security screening put in place in recent months.

Airport security was dramatically boosted after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist hijackings and heightened again after a foiled bombing this past Christmas on a Detroit-bound jetliner.

That last incident prompted Ottawa to buy sophisticated—and costly—body scanners for major airports nationwide.

The announcement at Ottawa International Airport is a bid by the government to get the bad news out of the way before next Thursday’s budget.

But it calls into question the pledge by senior Conservatives that this budget would not raise taxes.

“A tax is a tax is a tax,” said New Democrat finance critic Thomas Mulcair.

He said the government is trying to “rationalize” a new tax by calling it a security fee.

Mulcair called Baird’s airport announcement one week before the budget a bald-faced “communications effort.”

“If Baird can get away with putting lipstick on this pig, then they figure maybe next week they can announce a whole bunch of new tariffs and fees and say that they haven’t raised taxes, they’ve just raised tariffs and fees?”

To say the fee is not a tax because it only applies to air travelers, not to everyone is “ridiculous,” said Mulcair. “It doesn’t even make any sense.”

“They are nickel-and-diming the travelling public, but their choice is to give billions in corporate tax reductions. That’s what this is about. Instead of doing the responsible thing, and saying they won’t give the next round of tax reductions to corporations, they’re going after the travelling public.”

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“Of course they’re trying to give themselves a clear conscience by saying it only applies to the people who are using airports, but let’s be serious.”

Mulcair said the fact that new body scanners are coming online is irrelevant, because technology constantly changes for services provided by the government at the airport.

“Who cares? This is just a new tax for something that was already being provided by government, and for him to be referring to new machines as if we wouldn’t have been buying new machines without this new tax is just nonsense.”

“They’re just not being honest with Canadians,” said Mulcair, adding all the fees and taxes tacked onto passenger airline tickets make it harder and harder for the airline industry. “They can call it whatever they want, but at the end of the day, a tax by any other name is a tax.”

Liberal transport critic Joe Volpe said in a televised interview it is “outrageous” that the government is passing on the cost of scanners –initially pegged at $11 million a year – by raising $1.5 million over five years.

Volpe said it’s tantamount to the government trying to raise “$300 million a year to cover something we said was only going to cost $11 million.”

He slammed the fact the fee was announced “outside” the usual budgetary process and outside the parliamentary precinct.

“They’ve already made the expenditures and now they’re going to tax a portion of the public in order to ensure that it gets covered.”

“I don’t know …how gullible they think people are. But this is a tax by any definition,” said Volpe. “This is another boondoggle perpetrated on the Canadian taxpayer.”

“This is an indication that the government is not going to live up to any of its promises about no taxation. They don’t know where they’re going, but you know that we’re all going to pay for it.”

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