Mr. Chair, I'd like to thank our guests for attending this morning.
I want to add my comments. I know that we all feel around this table the empathy for the 2,600 employees and their families and frankly about the spinoff jobs that go outside of that as well. I think we all appreciate that. In my own city, that has certainly happened. Any time any company fails, it isn't just the company, obviously; it's clearly the employees and the spinoff work. It isn't just the union jobs; it's the management jobs, the non-management jobs, and all the others that are impacted by feeder organizations in those communities.
Your hearts can't not go out to those people. I want to make that very clear. This is an interesting discussion, interesting from the standpoint.... I'm not sure if I want to call it “mixed messages”, but I'm a little confused.
Mr. Hiscock, in some of your testimony earlier you said just unlock the door and turn on the lights. You indicated that this is a turnkey operation and to the extent that equipment is all in good repair and in order, which it presumably is, within 72 hours it could be operational again. As a person with some business background, I'd say if it were only that easy to do it just that way. I'm certainly not talking about the technical aspect of unlocking the door, but there is the other aspect. There's the part where it's important that we keep employees working, but it's important that a company needs to make money to do that.
One of you indicated, I think it was Mr. Hiscock, that they were never profitable. I guess when I look at the investment that they made.... I have to believe that Aveos as a company initially acted in good faith to try to create a profitable organization. If it's not profitable, you can't sustain yourself. In business, just like a budget, we all understand that.
Could you presume that any company that would invest in the assets of this organization, with the labour force that's there and the markets that are there, could be profitable? How long do you think it would take to get to profitability?