Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
The check pilot program action in Transport Canada has been around for about 30 years now. Very clearly, the intent is to continue with that program so, first and foremost, the program is not ending. In fact, Transport Canada is going to enhance that program in taking the resources that we have now and using them in a more effective and efficient way. What that will do for us is enhance the safety and security that our pilots have in terms of their responsibilities, while at the same time providing us with a more robust system that we can use in terms of checking pilots.
Specifically, what happens is that we have a set of inspectors who go out and test pilots yearly or every two years, when they come up for their annual testing period. Sometimes our inspectors do it, and sometimes we use check pilot program people from our industry. They receive the same amount of training that our pilots do to do this particular responsibility, and we do that so we can broaden our area of scope in terms of being able to use more resources.
Transport Canada has approximately 1,200 or 1,300 inspectors right now, of whom about 675 are responsible for civil aviation. We look at all those resources and then we focus them on the task they need to do. In fact, we're not cutting any resources. We're not changing the program in terms of the amount of assessment that gets done, but we're focusing it on the key high-risk areas to ensure that we have the safest and most secure aviation system.