I'll start with saying that there's no disagreement with your statement with respect to the origin or the genesis of the need for this committee to be founded.
I've spent a good part of my career working in this industry in Canada with two of the biggest national carriers. They can tell you that this is a topic that has been discussed in Canada for many years. We are in desperate need of good facilitation at airports. It's good, then, to see this happening. I think all of us have made that point very clear.
What we are very concerned about is the manner in which we are approaching this. It is rushed; it appears to be thrust upon us at the eleventh hour, if you will, through a budget bill. Now we're being told, in the midst of all the other regulatory reform we need to prepare ourselves for as an industry, that we need to embark on this.
The challenge and the issue we have with this is that we are the ones who are going to have to live with it—we, our customers, the travelling Canadian public and international travellers—for many years. If it's not done right, we're going to be back at having to take on reform.
The manner in which it has been suggested, with the transfer of costs and the transfer of assets to it, is—much in line with what Massimo has shared as well—that it's going to layer on additional costs to the travelling public. Today, based on rates, fees, and charges, we in Canada are one of the most expensive jurisdictions in the world to travel within.
It is our hope that for once, when we sit down as an industry with policy-makers and regulators, we come up with a solution that doesn't just transfer additional costs to the travelling public but in fact introduces efficiencies that could potentially get us to the point that we could increase service and accessibility, rather than just layer on additional costs for facilitation.