If you don't mind, I'd like to pursue that line of questioning a bit further.
Maybe, Mr. Balnis, you might come back into this.
It strikes me that the discussion we've had over the last several years on this is all about changing a culture, and a culture that's in a business, that involves trust. You've heard other witnesses who have come forward and have said, well, the SMS system is a great system. They've said that it fits another layer on top of the mandatory inspections and the sufficient number of inspectors. I think everybody was agreeing on that, but nobody can agree as to what the number is.
Transport Canada actually eliminated some of those inspector positions. They've admitted that they're going to reinstitute them. I had the same problems as Monsieur Laframboise and Monsieur Bevington and others about just where this fits in.
We've had Transport Canada come before us now, and this is where I'd like your comments. They have said, pursuant to what the minister's observations were a couple of weeks ago, that you have small aircraft, some of it owner-operated, and business aircraft. In this area, his impression was--I'm paraphrasing now, so I hope the government members don't get upset--that the trust factor, i.e., the culture of this self-imposed responsibility, hadn't penetrated sufficiently, and so we need to re-regulate, because on the risk assessment and risk management side, people don't know what's good for them.
On the commercial carrier side, the question of trust is a little more difficult. Here, the government has not completely walked away from the on-site inspections, the impromptu inspections, unless I'm wrong, Mr. Balnis. So the culture of whistle-blower legislation, which was another fact that we needed to bring in with SMS, that would get people to report what needed to be done, was essentially beginning to penetrate. So we've had fewer incidences of breach of trust, of examples of a broken sense of responsibility, in the larger commercial carrier business.
Is that a wrong assessment of what's been happening? Ms. Dias or Mr. Smith might want to respond to this, for the mechanics and the maintenance people who actually are supposed to have that first line of defence, and then Mr. Balnis, please.