That is an excellent question. Does Air Canada feel that all other transport companies should be subject to the Official Languages Act? We don't think that's a bad idea but it is ultimately up to members of Parliament to make that decision.
Why have there been so many problems with official languages since the year 2000? Because that's the year the real problem started. I note that Mr. Godin does not agree, but if I may say, prior to that year 64% or 65% of our staff was bilingual and there were less problems. The problem started with the integration of Canadian Airlines because the level of our staff's bilingualism dropped from 65% to less than 40%, approximately 38%, and that had a rather significant impact on Air Canada's activities.
We were able nevertheless to take several steps in order to mitigate those inconveniences. For example, under Air Canada's policy, for two or three years now, only bilingual candidates have been hired. When we cannot find qualified bilingual candidates in one region, then we attempt to find those people elsewhere and transfer them to that region. For example, we have flight attendant staff based in Vancouver. Unfortunately, that region did not have enough bilingual candidates. We therefore transferred flight attendants from Quebec to Vancouver in order to achieve a higher level of bilingualism. We have done that on a regular basis to improve our level of bilingualism.
Are we asking for government assistance to achieve this? No, however the fact remains that a large number of our employees are still unilingual anglophones. We do not want to fire them, we want to train them. However, as you may have noted yourselves within the federal government, training 38 to 42-year-old individuals in a language they have never learned is not only difficult but very costly because daily immersion in a language is necessary in order to learn it. From our perspective, we absolutely agree that other airlines should be encouraged to become bilingual or obliged to offer services in both official languages, but that is a decision for Parliament to make.