Finance committee  Certainly, a lot of the technology that we have and the kiosks that are in place are new, so some of the familiarity with how to use the systems will come with time. There is an educational component to this. I would say it's an ongoing effort with CBSA. You're seeing kiosks being put further downstream or upstream, in terms of being closer to the gate and further away from the customs hall.

Finance committee  Kelowna is actually the only one that I'm aware of that's a national system airport that did come from municipal. It is a special case. We know consultations and work have been done on the file. Our understanding is that most of it has concentrated on the eight largest airports, of which Kelowna is not one.

Finance committee  I really don't know the extent that they've been looking at airports other than what we—

Finance committee  When large organizations are considering communities to locate themselves in, access to efficient airports with a lot of air service is one of the criteria they will often look at. We've made recommendations today in terms of CBSA and CATSA. If executives can't get through the airport and have a reasonable experience along the way, they're not happy about that.

Finance committee  Thank you for the question. The subject is quite complex. But the cost of air tickets really is a problem, especially for airports close to the border. On that, on the revenue side, as I've said, we've put forward a couple of recommendations allowing airports to be a little more creative and inventive in terms of how they develop their businesses.

Finance committee  Correct. We did spend a lot of time working with CATSA on some of that stuff in terms of education, trying to improve processes, and that sort of thing. It's one of the reasons why CATSA Plus helps because, in terms of the process, you actually have four parallel stations, so four individuals are going up and putting their bins in; if you have one passenger who's slow, he or she is not slowing down the others.

Finance committee  There's a reason for that. Our airports have a variety of views on the file, so at the moment, we're not taking a position. Nothing concrete has been put forward, so there isn't anything to react to and that's why I didn't address it. Our airports have a variety of views and they are expressing those individually, which is absolutely appropriate.

Finance committee  Well, we have. CATSA Plus employs technology, but it's also procedural changes. There is some capital investment required, and CATSA has a plan to roll that out at the highest volume airports. Unfortunately, budget 2017 has stalled that, so it's only partially implemented in Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, and Vancouver, I believe, at the moment.

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for this invitation to appear before you today as part of your pre-budget consultations. My name is Daniel-Robert Gooch, and I am President of the Canadian Airports Council. Let me start by thanking you for supporting the CAC's 2017 budget submission.

Transport committee  That's what I'm talking about as well.

Transport committee  Yes. That's an ongoing thing. That happens all the time. When there are major incidents, everybody gets together and asks what they did wrong here, how they dropped the ball, and how they could do this better. And it happens not just—

Transport committee  There are. Each airport is set up differently, but there are situation rooms. Some of these things happen very quickly, and when situations like this occur, it's a mess and everybody is just trying to do their best job. They're trying to get the travellers to where they're going safely, securely, and to get together afterwards to help ensure that it doesn't happen again.

Transport committee  As I said earlier, the interaction at an airport is quite complex. There are many different parties involved, and it's not always visible where the issue is. The ramp employee you spoke about actually is usually an airline employee. There's a lot of misunderstanding about who does what at an airport.

Transport committee  I'm not as familiar with the technical details, but it would be something that would be created by the airport authority in conjunction with the air carrier partners in that airport. Airports vary quite significantly from one part of the country to another in terms of complexity.

Transport committee  Thank you for that question. I heard what was said at a meeting with Air Transat last week. Clearly, the situation is really complex. After two days of discussion, I never managed to find out who was responsible for that situation. I think it's fair to say that the passenger doesn't really want to see a lot of finger pointing, that the passenger wants people to take responsibility.