Thank you, Mr. Minister and your colleagues from the department.
Of course, we would welcome the opportunity to ask you about all of those crown corporations for which you are responsible, and perhaps you will make yourself available as the reporting period for all of those crown corporations comes due before Parliament. We'd be delighted to take a look at all of the innovative components, if there are any that you ascribe to those organizations, and indeed to your own department, ones that don't begin with the introduction of, “This is a program begun in 2000”, “This is a program begun in 2002”, etc. But I know your heart must be in the right place, so we look forward to having that discussion with you.
I want to begin by referring to something, Mr. Chairman, that you handed out, and that is the statistical information on Transport Canada safety inspectors for civil aviation. This is something that came up when you were last here, Minister, and about which some of your officials, who I think are in the audience--yes, there we go, Monsieur Grégoire--promised to have information for us ASAP.
Well, two and a half weeks later, we're looking at allocated inspector positions going from 1992-93 to 2006-07. I don't see here the other figures that Monsieur Grégoire referred to us. There was a number like 1,400 and about 800-and-change remaining as allocated inspectors, even though he knew the numbers then.
I'm wondering, Mr. Minister, whether these figures for allocated inspector positions reflect the changes in the numbers of flights that have taken place in the country under the jurisdiction of Transport Canada, or indeed the numbers of flight miles, and whether these numbers are absolute numbers or whether they actually reflect a diminution relative to those expanding flights and flight miles.