Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Minister, for being here today.
In your opening remarks you spoke about the need to keep people moving. Obviously, this summer we saw chaos at our airports, which was, I would say, made worse by COVID-19. As has been described to us here at the committee, we were the first to impose COVID-19 restrictions and the last to relieve them. The airlines certainly saw that with their employees. That uncertainty caused many folks to seek other lines of work.
We saw $54 million spent on the ArriveCAN app, which just caused more delays in our customs halls. The sum of $411 million was spent on COVID-19 airport testing in the last year, while other countries had removed that requirement. Not only was it inefficient, it was also expensive, layering on costs to Canadian taxpayers to create airport chaos. We've seen Pearson airport in Toronto ranked as the fifth worst airport in the world in terms of customer experience.
I note that you have brought together the industries, airports and airlines, etc., to talk about it. At those meetings, did you talk about how you are going to improve the things that are under the control of the federal government, like security lineups and customs hall lineups?
Every airport that was evaluated under this review dealt with those same things. Why did our airports fare so poorly, and what are you doing, without blaming it on the airlines or global factors, to ensure that the things that are under the control of the Government of Canada are not a fiasco again this winter as they were in the summer? I want to hear about CATSA and CBSA.