Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. Minister, and your colleagues in the department.
I would like to begin by thanking the Minister for acknowledging the work done by members of this Committee. It is not out of the ordinary for a minister to acknowledge the work of committees in resolving government issues, and we are pleased to receive that acknowledgment.
Even though it gives us pleasure that you would recognize our work, I'd like to ask a few questions.
Realizing that we don't have a lot of time, Minister, I can't let go of the opportunity to ask you about the Auditor General's report on your department, and in particular about the SMS system as it relates to aviation. I do that because members around this table worked diligently and in a most non-partisan fashion to ensure that we would have an appropriate system in place. However, it would appear that the Auditor General confirmed some of the findings of the Canadian Business Aviation Association. Specifically, just to name a few, the system is not delivering in a fashion consistent with the expectations of this committee, at least.
I'd like you to address some of these, Minister, because we still haven't passed that piece of legislation in the House, and some of the support that members around the table have been giving might be conditional upon your answers.
First of all, it would appear that there is insufficient training of your officials in the department for the oversight capacity they were charged with: 15% of the officials haven't completed their training, and another 15% are insufficiently trained or qualified to do their work. And the number of inspectors, which we had been led to believe would remain constant, if not increase, has actually been dropping at a rate of about 8% per annum. So the combination of departmental oversight, plus direct inspection and regulation, plus the auditing of systems that first had to be approved appears to have fallen by the wayside.
I'm sure you have some answers for that, but from our perspective, the effort and energy we have put into trying to fashion a system that would receive public support does not appear to be reflected in the performance or ability of your department to deliver on the expectations of this committee and of the public.