Bonjour. Good morning. Ohayou gozaimasu. I hope I pronounced that correctly. My parents always taught me that it's good manners to wish everybody a good welcome in the language in which they feel most comfortable.
Gentlemen, thank you for coming before the committee.
I guess all of us are concerned that businesses continue to protect and promote their interest. Cynical people think that's spin. I think that's a healthy approach to garnering profits. The second part of that, of course, is that there's an appropriate investment in engineering soundness to ensure safety. I think that's what the committee is concerned about.
I know, Mr. Inaba, you're quite familiar with the concerns that have emerged in the United States that perhaps somewhere along the line the balance between lives and profits has been approached a little bit too closely. We are concerned about accountability and transparency, both from the producer side and from the government side. As Mr. Beatty just pointed out, there's a very close connection between the two. It's not a partisan issue; it's a consumer-driven issue.
The reason we wanted to speak to you, Mr. Inaba, is to get an understanding of whether there is a corporate definition for safety-related defects, and I guess you would be in a better position to address that than your Canadian counterparts. Do you have such a definition?