Good morning, Mr. Chairman, and other panel guests.
I'm in charge of the technical and safety division for the Air Canada Pilots Association. We have 3,000 professional pilots who have input into what we do each and every day. Each one of those pilots is the subject-matter expert. They're the front-end users of their system. We're the ones who know about the backside of the clock, the window of circadian low, when we're working with our flight and duty times.
Our group is the only association in Canada that is collecting data on fatigue. This came from several meetings that we had with Transport Canada saying that there was no data.
We could fill this room with CDs full of fatigue-related data, and yet it has not been recognized in Canada.
ICAO annex 6, amendment 33, says that flight and duty times shall be based on scientific data. That's where we want to go. That's where we're looking to move. In December all the pilot groups, including ourselves, have sent a letter to the minister, from 7,000 of the 11,000 commercial pilots in Canada, recognizing that fatigue is a significant safety issue.
We want to move forward on that, and we're willing to help you.
I'll defer to the panel.