You have to understand that a pilot who has just finished school is not a pilot I can hire tomorrow, because he doesn't have the required flight hours. For example, Sunwing has received 600 applications, but none of these people have the required flight hours or experience to fly. Perhaps that's why it ended up with only 150 pilots.
Our human resources department has received about 200 resumes, but we can't hire these pilots because they don't have enough hours in the commercial planes we use. If the government created a program that didn't cost $70,000 or $90,000 for a pilot to get his or her licence, a lot more people would choose this profession. Especially in the current context, given inflation, few parents will encourage their children to enrol in a flight school. It takes a different approach. Studying at CEGEP to become a mechanic doesn't cost anything; why isn't it the same for pilots?