Thank you for that.
I was going to address that as well, because I think this is obviously an extremely sensitive issue that we have to deal with. For me, from what I've seen of the file, though, it comes back to a lot of management issues. They hedged options at $1.10 a barrel of oil, and oil was only up past $1.10 for a brief period of time and yet they bought a lot of options on that, which didn't make a lot of sense to me from a business perspective, given the volatility in the market.
The pension plan and the realities of the pension plan are currently being investigated with the Minister of Finance, and the parliamentary secretary has that specific file to try to find a solution to it. So if we go and study that and step on their toes, I'm concerned about that being an issue that doesn't get to what's in the best interests of the people who are in the pension.
I'm very concerned with Air Canada. I probably fly more than anybody in this room, I would suggest, and I'm very concerned about it. But at this stage, I do believe that whatever is going to happen in the industry is going to happen well before we study this. And there might be a shake-down just like there was a shake-down back in the eighties and nineties, and just like Australia changed their....They probably have the best and most productive airline industry in the world right now because it's deregulated and it's working quite effectively. Canada is going to have a shake-up and Air Canada's going to be one of those companies shaken up. Although I'm very sensitive to it and I think this committee should be very sensitive to it, it is a private company, and no matter what we study and no matter what we find out, we're not going to be changing anything.
If we're going to study pensions, I think that's a finance issue, and they should study pensions. They're already doing it and the parliamentary secretary is well ahead of the game in that.
What are we going to find out—that they're going to be bankrupt? Well, we're not going to change that. The reality is that I'm concerned about the employees who have pension plans there. That's what I'm really concerned about, and the viability. Just like the auto sector; I'm very concerned about that, because that's not fair to those people who have pension plans that are going to fold.
So I think from that perspective that's a finance issue; that's not a transport issue; it's not an infrastructure issue; it's a finance issue. We should let finance deal with that.