Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Thanks, ladies and gentlemen, for being here this morning.
I hardly know where to begin in the wake of the testimony. It's frankly unbelievable. It's shocking to hear what we're hearing from front-line inspectors, from folks with 30, 40, and 50 years...with 100 years of combined experience on the front lines—former pilots—because it flies in the face of everything we've been hearing this week from the government, from the government's Transport Canada officials, and from the airlines.
Mr. Chairman, it's hard to know where to start except maybe to ask.... Maybe I'll start with Mr. Slunder.
Mr. Slunder, you were talking a moment ago about the poll, or the survey, that you conducted with your own members, with all of the inspectors. On several occasions in this committee, the government members have tried to dismiss these findings, because they have this problem with organized labour. They can't see past their bias against organized labour, which is very unfortunate, because I think that's dangerous for Canadians. For the front-line folks who are doing this work each and every day, who really care about what they're doing, and who are seized with these matters, and bringing, as you have here in all these briefs, some really positive recommendations for change, I don't know why the government is fixated on its anti-labour, anti-union ideology, but it's really dangerous for Canadians.
The minister was asked in the committee of the whole whether she had seen your survey, and she said she had not. She had not seen it. She had not read it. She was there with her deputy minister and ADMs. They had not seen it nor read it, apparently, but she went on to repeat the same claim that you have debunked here when you talk about “30,000 inspections with only 250 front-line pilot inspectors”.
Can you help us understand what would possess a minister of the crown to put out numbers that are clearly not right?