I will let you know, Mr. Chair; if I have any time left over, I'll return it to Mr. Jean as a favour.
First of all, Mr. Laframboise brings up something that's very important to the discussion here. I think often we get groups who come and want to contribute. We have a lot of aspirational talk around the table, but the actual mechanics of what we're doing is important here. I think we share a lot of the same aspirations. I don't think anybody at this table would argue that passengers deserve no rights. So how do we get from shared aspirations to reasonable outcomes? Is Bill C-310, in other words, the right tool? We already know, because it's a private member's bill, that there is only so much change that can be done.
Mr. Maloway listed off a whole bunch of cosmetic changes—we can play around with the amounts of compensation, for example. That's a cosmetic change. But those of us on this side of the table, I think, will argue that the bill is structurally wrong, which presents us with some real challenges. I don't like Mr. Maloway's suggestion that we plunge the airline carriers into the business of going after other people who may be responsible for problems that happen that are beyond the control of an airline.
At the end of the day, from our perspective, Bill C-310 is about punishing air carriers while letting other responsible parties off the hook. That's a problem. We can't really necessarily change the bill to reflect that. So this is the real debate we're actually having here at the table.
I want to go through a series of potential situations. Some may be extraordinary circumstances and some will be less extraordinary circumstances, and I want to take you through them.
An accident on a runway, a hostage-taking on a tarmac, and a medical emergency on an aircraft may be extraordinary circumstances, but if they happen to cause a delay for somebody such that they have to stay overnight, the airline is still on the hook. They may not be on the hook for maximum expenses, but they're still on the hook for expenses that were not their problem. Is that just?
I'm going to ask Mr. Fruitman whether he thinks a situation like that is just.
Mr. McKenna, you can chime in as well.