Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses for being here today and answering our questions.
I'd like to start off by briefly responding to Ms. Martinez Ferrada's line of questioning around whether the issues raised by the Auditor General in 2013 had been adequately followed up on by Transport Canada. I'll just read a passage from the transcript from the Auditor General's visit to our committee on April 13. This was regarding her follow-up audit in February of this year. She said:In this audit we examined whether Transport Canada implemented selected recommendations from our 2013 audit on the oversight of rail safety. Overall, we found that eight years later, the department had yet to fully address our recommendations and that, in fact, there was still much to do to improve the oversight of rail safety in Canada.
I think that makes fairly clear the point that was raised at the public meeting that the honourable member referenced. There's a real concern that this hasn't been adequately followed [Technical difficulty—Editor].
The interim commissioner of the environment stated that, based on his assessment, the window for a Lac-Mégantic-type disaster is very much still open.
First, Mr. McCrorie, do you agree with that statement? If not, why not?