Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to all three of our guests for being here today.
I've listened with great interest to Mr. Gradek's commentary today on many of the questions that were asked. I'm not sure where I want to go with this, but there are a couple of questions I'd like to put to you.
Of course, we know about the shutdown of the industry, the opening up again, and the nightly news items about long lines at airports and lost baggage pileups in airports—not only in Canada, but around the world. It was quite a mess.
I have to get on the record, though, that our government provided some tremendous support to the airline industry, to the tune of a billion dollars in different forms through CERB, wage subsidies, bailouts to airlines and so on. Let's not have a misconception about that.
On the regional airports, I fly into one in Gander, Newfoundland. We're pretty pleased with our government and how they responded to the concerns and issues of trying to survive. There were a lot of good stories, but there were a lot of problems. There still are some problems, quite frankly.
I must say, you characterized it very well. I share many of the views that you've presented here today.
With all the mass of problems with travel and the long lines and all these things, there's been a lot of finger-pointing all around. There are conspiracy theories about why the problems occurred.
My question for you is this: Was the federal government deliberately being targeted by PR campaigns as being the main cause of these delays so other players in the system could avoid responsibility? If so, how much do we know about these PR strategies?