Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, witnesses, for coming here today and providing follow-up information.
Obviously there is a lot of information: I received three CDs in my office yesterday. It took 20 minutes to open the CDs just to get at the documents; there are some 58 documents, I understand, with 221 pages in total. Quite frankly, I will be reserving my opportunity to call you back as witnesses to answer questions from those documents.
Originally, I did receive a letter from Toyota Canada in relation to a request I made for pedals...in particular, at a committee meeting, I asked whether or not the defects that we're talking about in Canada--the pedal assembly and the material utilized--were the same as what was found to be defective in Europe. The answer to that in the first letter was a wiggle letter, quite frankly, as we call them in law; it didn't answer my question. I was very disappointed with that. I want to put on the record how disappointed I was with that answer by Toyota Canada.
Certainly, the response that I received just recently, on May 31, 2010, in a letter from Toyota Canada answering those questions in more detail, is quite frankly what I would have expected from a professional organization in the first place, and it indicated that in essence the material used in Canada resulting in the sticky pedal phenomenon was the same as that used in Ireland and the United Kingdom.
I understand that you have indicated you feel everything was done, in particular in relation to the notice period, but I would argue that point. I do not believe adequate notice was given for me personally. In this particular case, you had notice a year before. I'd like to talk about that first.
What recall mechanisms, professional notices, technical service bulletins, etc., would have changed hands among Toyota Europe, Toyota Canada, or Toyota United States? Because, in essence, Toyota International--I suppose I could utilize that--owns a percentage of everything; it in fact owns Toyota Europe and Toyota U.S. and owns 50% of Toyota Canada. So what was exchanged between Toyota Europe and Toyota Canada or other branches in Toyota? Because certainly, I would suggest, you should have notice of that.