Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'll start on a positive note. Via has responded every time we've invited them, and every time the CEO has come. We do appreciate that as a committee. However, my questions won't be as easy.
It's like Groundhog Day. In my riding in Coburg, we had people stuck for I believe it was 48 hours or so on a train. We've had incidents in Quebec and Ontario where we've had people stranded, people without access to washrooms, people without food to eat, other than a couple of bits of trail mix, for hours on end. This is a very serious issue. I appreciate your coming here and taking accountability and responsibility, but you'll excuse my skepticism if I see these issues.
You're right. There are certain things that are not controllable, but you should be able to control certain things. One of them is that the government gave you over $1 billion to get new trains. You got these trains from Siemens. The industry standard is to have 90% fleet availability. My understanding from reports is that you have 50% availability.
What went wrong with the procurement, and how are you going to fix it?