Yes, it would be my pleasure to speak about that because I feel very strongly about it.
I believe that the air sector is extremely important to Canada, and not only for the obvious reasons that people often bring up: that it allows us to travel for business, for tourists to reach destinations, for families to be reunited. Those are all the obvious points that are brought up, but let us remember that Canada is the second-largest country on earth. In some cases, there are no other practical options, and I think the air sector, even though it is sometimes maligned, plays a critical role in terms of unifying us as a country, because it allows us to see each other and to communicate with each other face to face. That is something that we may have taken for granted but is extremely important. It's a bit like the railway at the beginning of Canada as a young nation, which suddenly allowed us to reach from one end of the country to the other end of the country.
It's important for sovereignty reasons as well. I would like to think that a Canadian could get on an airplane in Canada and pretty much reach almost any other part of the world, instead of having to depend on going across the border to catch a flight or to go to another spot in Europe to take another flight to get to their final destination. I'm reminded of the tens of thousands of people that the airlines brought back to Canada at the beginning of this pandemic. We brought them back because we had the ability to do it, because we had airlines that could provide that.
Finally, I want to talk about and tip my hat to the smaller airlines that serve the north, the regions of the country that have small communities, sometimes in very remote areas, and that absolutely have no other alternative but to receive their support that way, whether it's for medicines, whether it's a doctor coming in, whether it's food or whether they need to be evacuated for hospital care in a larger centre. There's no question; the air sector in our country plays a critical role for this country.