Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the team from WestJet for joining our committee meeting.
I'm looking through some of these high-profile stories from last year alone involving the mistreatment of passengers with disabilities.
There's the situation involving Melanie Carlbeck's wheelchair, which was left behind on her flight. She was given a wheelchair that wasn't suitable and her own chair didn't arrive until days later.
Also in 2023, Phil Gilliard was dropped by WestJet staff who did not know how to use an eagle lift. This resulted in a bloody wound and bad bruises on his arm.
Four-year-old Blake Turnbull went without a wheelchair for over a month after WestJet damaged the rim of her wheelchair, making the brakes unusable. The staff allowed Blake to pull herself off the plane by wriggling along the floor, and proceeded to call her a salamander.
Finally, and we heard this cited earlier in questioning, former Paralympian Sarah Morris-Probert had to lift herself up the stairs of the aircraft because the only other option WestJet gave her to board her plane was to be carried up the stairs in a wheelchair, which I don't believe is a safe practice.
Perhaps your answer to the last question provided some indication of this. These are the cases that received media attention. What percentage of the overall number of cases of passenger mistreatment do the cases I just read represent?