To answer your question, yes. I just think that after all these years--and we've been flying airplanes since Kitty Hawk, for a hundred-plus years--that being a professional pilot.... We use the words “professional pilot”. We call ourselves that, but are we really professional in the sense of other professions? The answer is no.
You're an engineer, sir, so you know that when you got your degree as a graduate, as I did, that was a degree. It didn't allow you to practise engineering until you became a PEng. Professional engineering is self-regulating and self-governing, and it's empowered by provincial acts. Audits are done by the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers. Pretty much every three years they'll hit every engineering school in Canada.
It is done that way because it means that the people who do the work control those who are doing the work. So if you've been an engineer for 20 to 30 years, you will then get involved in controlling the people who are actually going to follow behind you.
To my mind, it's time that aviation come of age in some ways, grow up.
I stood in front of a dispatch one day with a director of flight operations. It was 80-some years into aviation, and I just turned to him and said, “Sir, don't you think after all this time we'd be a little bit further ahead than we really are?” We were having a bit of a discussion over some winter operations question.
I think with a self-governing, self-regulating association for the people who are licensed to do the work, in the long run, if we started now, then 10 years from now we would see a different environment out there, and you wouldn't have to talk to people like me. You just wouldn't. That's my wish.
I don't think self-governing, self-regulating professions are the be-all and end-all, but when we look at the way we do business in a democratic country like Canada, I think it's the way to proceed. And then the words “professional pilot” will actually mean “professional”.