Thank you, Louise-Hélène.
We respectfully welcome the Commissioner's announcement regarding the auditing of our policies and procedures, including recruitment, training and the assignment of our front-line employees in accordance with their language skills. Almost on a daily basis, we study the Commissioner's analyses of complaints, we discuss the measures needed to remedy the situation and we organize meetings with our management to stay up-to-date on various problems. A few weeks ago, Duncan Dee, the Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer, along with his team, met the Commissioner and the Commissioner's team to discuss the various challenges resulting from the provision of a more complete bilingual service.
Air Canada is not perfect and it receives its share of complaints about language. Even one complaint is one complaint too many. That being said, without evaluating the validity of the 355 complaints that were received over a 5-year period, if we consider that each of our 30 million annual clients meets face to face with our personnel at 5 or 6 service points, the rate of complaints comes to less than 1 for every 1.5 million service points.
As I mentioned, Air Canada's language services team is working together with the operational teams to make sure that every complaint is looked into, and that appropriate measures are taken to correct the situation. All information and correspondence relative to the investigation and follow-up of complaints sent to Air Canada and to the Commissioner is also sent to the Commission. When a complaint is filed only with the Commissioner, but not with Air Canada, the identity of the complainants remains confidential. Nonetheless, every complaint receives the same attention.
A grid was distributed to the committee members as an appendix describing in detail the volume and the kind of complaints received by Air Canada from the Commissioner. We invite the members of the committee to discuss these complaints in detail.
As promised to the members of the committee at the last audience in October, we have updated our 2001-2010 linguistic action plan--it is on our website--and it will be completely revamped for 2011.
Once again, the solution to our challenges consists in increasing the bilingual capabilities of our front-line employees and in raising the awareness of our personnel. Each recruiting activity is aimed at adding further bilingual resources to our labour force.
With regard to training, great efforts are being made at every level to maintain or to improve language skills. Awareness-raising sessions are regularly held so that the employees can adhere to the bilingual values of Air Canada that are shared by our chief executive officer.
My colleagues and I are now ready to answer your questions.