Why don't I start not with some of the detailed questions that you have asked, but in terms of under the current law and under the current regulations the onus is on the government to regulate. We have a criminal law power, whereby the automobile companies have to report to us when they become aware of a defect that's related to safety. That's the rule.
The purpose of the law or the intent behind the law, as we understand it, is that for large automobile companies it is in their commercial interest to make sure their vehicles are safe, because this is about consumer confidence. If a car company is not actually putting out safe vehicles, I don't think their sales will work very well.
That's the main logic. The government regulations are there to make sure that the car companies actually take the appropriate action.
In terms of Transport Canada's powers, we feel that over the years we have a very good track record of ensuring that when we become aware of any issues or any problems, we have been able to raise that with the automobile companies. And they do act quickly. That's one thing.
If we feel any change to the regulations is required, we will look at that, for sure, but I believe my minister has said that we welcome any ideas that this committee may come up with. If you feel that there are things we should be doing differently, or that the law should be changed, we would be happy to look at every suggestion you have--the same thing that we will do as a reflection on the Toyota situation to see if there are any changes required. Whether the solution is to pull the recall power directly into the government and that actually will provide a better protection for Canadian consumers, we have to look at that very carefully, and we have to make sure that it will work appropriately.
Regarding resources, because I believe the committee is going to ask us about resources--because it has been asked--we don't have infinite amounts of money. We have the budget we have. We have the budget that Parliament has appropriated. We allocate that money to the best of our ability to manage the risks we deal with. We are a regulatory department. We have regulations on all modes of transportation. We do our best in matching our resources to the risks we're facing.
This is not an apples-to-apples comparison, but if we look at the United States and their NHTSA recalls and investigations unit, I believe they have 56 or 57 people dealing with 35,000 complaints. I'll get you the exact number. We have 16 people in that particular group, dealing with 1,100 complaints, but our system is different because we don't have the numbers like they do in the United States, where we have millions of cars and thousands of complaints.
So we have to go by the substance of the issue. For our investigators, they really take the time. They're professional people. They're engineers. They're car specialists. They look at and examine each case and each complaint we have. So that's what we go by. We believe that they actually.... They are very proud of the work they do.
Mr. Chairman, the honourable member said that Transport Canada was aware. I do not want there to be, in any shape or form, confusion that we were aware of a sticky pedal issue. There is nothing, according to my professional staff, who know these things and who deal with the complaints...that we had any knowledge of “sticky pedal” as being a defect. Our people heard about this from the car company, from Toyota, on January 21. So just to make sure that we correct the record, because it's very important.... Because an alternative suggestion is that we knew about it and did not do anything, which is absolutely not correct.
