Mr. Chairman, I'll respond in order, and I apologize in advance if I have missed some of the questions. I trust you'll remind me. I think I have them all.
As to your first one—how much an airline would save in going to a 1:50 ratio—I have to admit we really don't know. Each individual carrier is going to have to determine for itself what the potentials are.
Some of the factors and the reasons we don't know are that so many different factors play in deciding how many flight attendants to deploy and essentially what the costs of deploying a flight attendant are under given situations.
As to your second question—why not call for the strongest possible safety standards as a competitive advantage—this is a very important point, and I'm glad you brought it up. It allows me to once again reinforce this message to the committee. I don't even know if it's unspoken, but it's a pretty blatant tradition in the industry that you do not use safety as a competitive element. Safety is something that should be and is taken as a given. The regulator exists to ensure that we operate in a safe environment. Airlines exist to ensure they provide safe service. We do not compete with each other on safety. Safety is a given, and if there is anybody out there competing on safety, they're really doing a disservice to the entire industry.
And to that point, just before I leave the question, we don't accept the premise that staying at the 1:40 ratio would ensure the strongest possible safety standards, because the data-driven assessment of the CARAC process has shown, as Mr. Grégoire rightfully pointed out, that there would be no appreciable decline in the safety levels. We don't accept the premise of the question.
As to your third question asking why, if the CARAC process is open and inclusive and CUPE's views, as the union that participated, were opposed and their views aren't reflected in this process, the committee will be interested to know that their views were in fact included.
The way the CARAC process works, objections are noted in detail, and members around the table are required to respond to them. When they can't respond quantitatively to those objections, the CARAC committee then decides whether further study is needed.
In fact their views were very much noted, and each and every one of their concerns was addressed at a substantive level. Were we able to make them happy at a political level? No, and I cede the point that I don't think we'll ever be able to.
As to your fourth question, whether we would be able to release to the committee a substantive study that we cited as having been made, I referred to the same study Mr. Grégoire referred to, which he indicated is either already on the record or he is about to submit it to the committee. I will defer to this. If in fact he does not submit it, I invite the chairman to get in touch with me, and we'll do our best to make it available.
Concerning your fifth question, about the Transport proposal showing there are in fact emergency exits not covered, despite my comments that suggest one of the mitigating factors would be that all emergency exits would be covered, unfortunately I didn't get a copy and haven't seen the Transport Canada proposal. But we noted with interest the reference to the Boeing 737-700 having four exits. It's our understanding it actually has more than that, but that's not even the issue here.
The specific mitigating measure that's put in place is that on all wide-body jets—that's jets with two aisles or more—irrespective of the 1:50 ratio, if you choose to adopt it, you have to have one flight attendant for every exit door on that aircraft.
As to your sixth question, about the TWA report showing that the flight attendant ratios were a factor despite my statements that they are not, what I actually said was—I can give my exact words—there is no report that shows the lack of flight attendants was a reason why people were harmed.
Perhaps we're playing with words a little here, but going to that same point, I can refer to the quote you read. It's important to note that what they actually qualified it as was I think “a contributing factor”. Maybe I'm mischaracterizing the word, but—