We're not saying we want to do away with the regulatory framework, by all means. The example I used earlier was our flight time duty regulations. In Canada, if we compare ourselves with the rest of the world, we don't do a very good job, in my opinion, if we want to be leaders in aviation safety. In fact, if we compare the flight duty regulations around the world, we don't do a very good job, in our opinion, with that area of the regulations.
Fatigue risk management is a program that Air Canada, the regulator, and the associations all bought into. So we're not saying to do away with the regulatory framework, but we think we can improve flight safety by addressing pilot fatigue. It's a big issue for us.
What we have seen is that in the old days when we violated a regulation—for example, missing an altitude coming to Ottawa, which is something that would happen, when we were supposed to level off at 17,000 feet and the aircraft would continue at 20,000 feet—it would be reported, investigated by the regulatory authority, and that was the end of it. There might have been a fine; the pilot might have been disciplined and taken off the line for three days without pay. What does that really prove? Nothing.
But under SMS, what it did was drill down to the root cause. We don't want to make errors and we want those errors reported. So we drilled down and found out that there are those latent issues that someone mentioned earlier when they looked into the FAA, when those pilots reported: “Look at what's behind the scene; look at what's latent; look what's down there that's been about to bite us in the butt and make us have an accident.” Now, because our pilots are reporting, we can identify and be proactive and head those things off before we have an accident. That's what SMS does.
So I'm not saying do away with the regulations, sir. What we're doing, I guess, is saying it's another layer.