Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, gentlemen, for being here.
Mr. Séguin, I will have to pass on your regards to our good friend Kirk. It's interesting that we know people in common.
Mr. Chowdhury, I want to talk about something you presented to us about cultural relevance. I worked in disability and risk management for a number of years: industrial accidents and injured workers. We used the same iceberg that you are using. There were some different numbers, but the same concept applies. I was impacted particularly by the last video you showed about the individual crossing the railway tracks and the risks they're prepared to take.
I guess, Mr. Dunlap, I come to you, because there is a cultural issue here that we have to change. People don't want to take risks with their aviation security. They want to know that they're going to be on a safe flight. So we have some work to do in changing a culture. I think that what we saw as a result of what happened on December 25 was a reactionary situation in our culture, where people said, ”Do something, do anything, but just do something to make sure I am safer”.
I think one of the comments you made was on detection capabilities. For all existing detection capabilities, there are complementary vulnerabilities. It's the law of physics, isn't it? For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.
We're doing our best with the technology we have now. We have to make a capital investment in scanners in order to ensure the public is travelling safely, but we need to look to the next generation. You made a comment that, first of all, Canada and the U.S. need to foster better cooperation on security.
The issue is productivity. You talked about the number of seconds it takes for an individual to go through a scanner, which is 45 seconds. If there's only one scanner, it will take however many hours to get 300 people through. Hopefully we'll have more than one scanner so that it duplicates the process.
The United States has become very protectionist in its attitude, and rightly so. They have a responsibility as a government to ensure the safety and protection of their citizens.
How do we as Canadians go about fostering a climate of trust? How do we do that for our aviation security, keeping in mind that we have a culture that we have to change? How do we do it to ensure productivity is not interrupted?