Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Minister, for accepting our invitation to be here today.
We're all here because Canadians are frustrated. They're angry, they're dismayed and they feel betrayed. In the travel period of last summer and the most recent holiday travel period, we saw the big airlines walk all over any semblance of passenger rights in this country. We now have a backlog of 33,000 complaints before the CTA, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. We know that only a small fraction of passengers managed to jump through all the hoops you've created for them to get to their complaint process. The big airlines are acting this way because they can get away with it—because you let them.
My first question for you is this: Why have you not stood up to the airlines on behalf of air passengers?