Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. Dee, and thank you to your colleagues who are here with you this morning.
Mr. Dee, I would like to go back to some of your comments, as well as some of the comments that I made when Air Canada appeared before the Standing Committee on Official Languages during the 38th Parliament.
Firstly, I hear what you are saying about the comment cards. I assume that you followed up on our suggestions and asked your employees to ensure that comment cards were put in all seat pockets. However, while this might have been done in the period following your appearance before the Standing Committee on Official Languages, it does not appear to be practised today.
Over the past six months, I have taken a good number of Air Canada flights and, each time, I have checked to see if the comment cards were available. Each and every time, whether it was Air Canada Jazz or whether it was Air Canada, the card was nowhere to be found. I am bringing this up because I made sure that I checked each time. Perhaps you are going to try to tell me that this was just a coincidence, or that my assigned seat was reserved for the exclusive use of unilingual passengers. Regardless, I can assure you that this has happened each time that I have flown Air Canada or Air Canada Jazz over the past six months, around a dozen times in total.
I represent a riding in Northern New Brunswick. We will not get into services available in my region, because there are none. Let us take then, by way of example, a flight from Quebec City to Montreal. I would like to know why the flight attendants do not give their safety briefings, etc., in French first. I am talking about a flight from one city in Quebec to another. This is something that I have just witnessed once.
Does Air Canada have a policy on this matter? Do you have a policy stipulating that, in French-speaking cities, announcements should be made first in French, and in English-speaking cities, they should be made first in English? I would ask that you address this later, when you have the opportunity to reply.
You argue that the government should make a choice and either subject everybody to the same rules or treat Air Canada like any other carrier.
If I remember correctly, Mr. Dee — and this is what I said during the 38th Parliament —, when Canadian International and Air Canada merged, one of the conditions was that Air Canada was to ensure that existing rules on the provision of services in both official languages continued to be respected. Those were the original terms of the acquisition agreement with Canadian International.
Today you are telling us that all carriers ought to be subject to the same rules, but the rules agreed upon in the Canadian International acquisition agreement stipulate that Air Canada must continue to provide bilingual service on board its aircraft. I am not saying that all carriers should be subject to the same requirements — that is another debate, and one that I am sure we will have in the near future. But, regardless, this was a clearly defined condition of the agreement that Air Canada signed. If it has been a condition in the past, why would it no longer be a condition today? Why is Air Canada asking for access to public monies when it has already made a commitment under the agreement?