Thank you, Mr. Chair.
To the discussion about adding the voice of passengers to this study, that absolutely makes sense. To the discussion of the wording, as a point of clarification, we should indicate “no less than two hours”, or some sort of measure of time, as is indicated for the other proposed witnesses.
I want to speak as well to the second half of the motion, about the ongoing issue of travel chaos in Canada.
In the three years I have been on the committee, we've seen this time and time again. Mr. Chair, it's kind of like the movie Groundhog Day. We had the travel chaos in December of 2022 and an emergency meeting in January 2023. In fact, in that emergency meeting, we heard from Via Rail, the then CEO and the then customer care person. We heard about lessons learned. We heard about water and food and all these things. However, these questions arise again. We had travel chaos and an emergency meeting in 2022 and 2023.
We also had an emergency meeting in the summer of 2022 about chaos at the airports. In this committee, we've had other discussions on the chaos at the airports. I recall reading the display board at Toronto Pearson Airport on a sunny day in April when it was 15° outside, and the first 14 flights of the day were all delayed. Obviously this is an ongoing issue that merits further discussion. The trains aren't running on time. The planes certainly aren't running on time. There's chaos at the airports. Canadians are paying the price, and Canadians deserve answers. I think this merits further discussion, so I fully support the second half of this motion.
Thank you.