Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
First off, I want to say thank you to all of you for being here today. There's no doubt that it's going to add to the testimony, which we'll then add to the final report and, of course, the response from the minister.
I had the opportunity to go to the GTA and tour the airport last Thursday and to discuss with them their accessibility action plan 2023-26: their processes, the internal action plans, the communications and their long-term goals, as well as the overall experience and environment they're trying to provide for the customer and, quite frankly, for their employees.
I'm going to dive right into it and ask Ms. Hogan about this.
First off, many of the recommendations were directed directly to the sectors. However, they were not granularly directly directed to the airlines. You do mention Via Rail a few times, but ultimately, for the airlines, you basically tend to recommend based on sector.
My question for you, Ms. Hogan, is, from your discussions, what recommendations would you actually make—being a bit more granular—to the airlines, etc., within those sectors, any regulatory actions, whether it be government or whether it be the CTA or others?
I would only assume, for example, that you had discussions with the CTA with regard to applicable accessibility-related legislation—and I'll underline this statement—to encourage being proactive versus reactive, which the CTA often is, with a whole-of-sector approach, including the airlines. Hopefully, once we have that discussion and those recommendations, those with a disability won't need the CTA because we're being more proactive than reactive. That's question number one.
Question number two is, how important is it for the airlines to be required to release their disability-related complaint data ASAP so that we recognize the scope of their problem? Therefore, as well, the CTA can be involved, if need be, to react to those complaints. To add to that question, will Bill C-52 be an enabler to this?
My last question sort of goes outside the scope of today, but it's something that I often have to deal with in my riding. Do you think there is a need to expand the study to include the effects of airline and rail operations—underlining “operations”—on disabled people?