Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Crichton, you put a figure of $500,000 on this problem. There is no longer any service at Mirabel because you wanted to save $500,000. However, I am concerned with the development of the aerospace industry. Everyone is talking about the situation in Montreal. Various figures are quoted, but they say that Montreal is second or third in the world, after Toulouse and Seattle. These two cities have airports with control towers 24 hours a day. And Mirabel has no control tower, to save $500,000!
You said that you had two meetings. Thus, let me share with you some comments that were made after those two meetings. The local newspaper is following this story, and states that a representative of Bell Helicopter declared, following the meetings, that some people did not understand the importance of the safety challenge.
Moreover, I spoke with representatives of the industry. These people do not want me to give their names; they seem to be afraid of you. Nonetheless, they say that it was a non-starter and that the meetings did not yield anything at all because, very simply, you did not want to spend $500,000. That is the problem.
We have safety problems. People from the aerospace industry tell us that they are conducting trials. There are some CF-18s. Pratt and Whitney is testing its motors, that is where they have their tests stand. There are also Bombardier and Bell Helicopter. All those people sign a letter, and all you have to say is that it is not important. You certainly know that two potentially unfortunate events occurred. They were close to being accidents. Now you tell us that it is not up to you to control these things, but those people know how things work. If they tell us that a control tower could have helped to avoid such incidents, I think that we should, at the very least, believe them, Mr. Crichton.
You said that you would hold a meeting this week. I wonder what for. Will you be telling them the same thing? Will you tell them that you did a study and there is absolutely nothing to be done?