I'd like to congratulate you in person and wish you good luck.
I think I will use my four and a half minutes to make a comment. I hope that there is someone here from Air Canada. Personally, I do not feel as charitable towards Air Canada as others may.
I was minister responsible for official languages as well as President of the Standing Committee on Official Languages. At the time, we were forced to summon the President of Air Canada to appear before the committee. He did not want to come. This dance lasted a few months.
Based on my experience, Air Canada has in the past — and continues to this day — tried to evade or shirk its responsibilities, to do as little as possible, and to use every opportunity to do as little as possible. The company uses every possible excuse to do as little as possible when it comes to mergers, and by using various tricks of the trade when it comes to restructuring. That is what we're seeing today.
I'm far less charitable towards Air Canada, the supposed national carrier for a country which has linguistic duality as a cornerstone, as stated by Mr. Cannon and previous governments. The corporation which sees itself as Canada's national airline should not wait for us to twist its arm in order for it to respect linguistic duality.
At first, Air Canada was a Canadian government agency, and then it was later privatized. The legislator's intent was clear: Air Canada was to remain subject to the Official Languages Act, period. There was no mention made of Jazz, Tango or of any other yet to be named companies which were going to be added to this structure which was created and invented in part to avoid respecting the will of a nation. I'm not going to get into this debate today.