This is a power that the airline sector has been subject to since 2000. If I understand this legislation correctly, originally Bill C-26 proposed to extend it to other modes as well.
Our opposition to it, again, just comes back to that principle of trying to look at the customer's perspective: “What does this do to help lower the cost of travel, help improve the efficiency of my travel, and offer me choice?” Nothing.
Certainly I apologize if I made it sound like it's a much more dramatic measure than it probably is. In terms of the practical effect to our industry since 2000, it's had a minimal one. Taking the big-picture view, I would encourage parliamentarians, as part of their broader deliberations, to consider that in an industry that is very capital-intensive, with a lot of money to do start-up and to just keep the day-to-day operations going, it is very low-yield on the revenue side. Does it make a lot of sense to create a climate that sends out a message that limits the investment potential in this sector? If you're trying to improve service, if ostensibly you're trying to improve levels of competition, this doesn't do that; it has the opposite effect.
Certainly your concerns about foreign ownership are very legitimate public policy considerations, which we don't propose to comment on. We just say that if you keep the interests of the passenger at the forefront of your considerations, it might give you a different perspective.