Mr. Chairman, there is no doubt that the most difficult decision we had to make during the pandemic was to lay off almost 20,000 of our employees. Luckily and with good fortune, they're almost all back to workâthe ones who chose to come back.
We accessed the CEWS fund, as many companies did, and we retained roughly 40% of our staff, yet during the pandemic we only flew about 10% of our regular flights from 2019.
The money for French-language classes and support was not part of those funds from the government. We've always funded separately the French-language aspects of our business. As CFO for 12 years, I certainly was always supportive of sufficient funding to meet our goals and objectives on the French-language file.