Mr. Speaker, I would like to put a question to my colleague, the member for Beauport-Montmorency-Orléans, regarding his very eloquent remarks.
Furthermore, I am 100 per cent in agreement with his thoughts on defence. Why should small carriers, who are struggling, have to foot the bill, when the Armed Forces, with their huge budgets, their hours of F-18 training sometimes estimated as costing $20,000 an hour, and I am not exaggerating, would not even be asked to pay for the air navigation services they use.
I think my colleague raised a very good point here. Before asking my question, I would like to go back briefly over the earlier debate regarding ATAC. Earlier, we heard that small carriers were going to be very well represented on Nav Canada's board, because of the fact that ATAC represented Air Canada as well as the small carrier in my riding.
The unfortunate fact of the matter is that we know that what drives the world nowadays is money. I would point out that ATAC, the Air Transport Association of Canada, gets approximately 80 per cent of its funding from large carriers. So if you think that the small carrier in my riding, when he wants to have his say, will ask the president of ATAC if he would mind lowering user charges, or keeping the DME or VOR service in his sector, or whatever, I am sceptical. The president of ATAC will wonder what his contribution to funding is. He will not say it out loud, of course, but he will think it. There is every reason to be worried.
The other point that was also mentioned earlier was ATAC's interest in preserving the use of French. I could tell you that when people spoke to us about ATAC's use of French, all that was bilingual was the letterhead. That was all. Apart from that, all its articles of incorporation were in English.
So I think we have good reason to have certain doubts about the quality of French or about bilingualism in this area.
I would like to put a question to my colleague, with whom I was discussing this issue a few moments ago, about his concerns regarding French in aviation.
I have over 1,000 hours flown as a professional pilot. When we talk about navigation assistance services, assistance is really the key word. When it is nice and sunny on a Sunday afternoon, it is not so bad because there is no problem. But when the ceiling gets low and weather conditions become difficult, when you start to worry and find yourself in trouble, that is when you really need navigation assistance. I can tell you that it is serious. That is where this issue becomes relevant. When you start to get nervous in the cockpit and you have to speak English on top of that, it becomes dangerous.
I would like my colleague to talk about his concerns regarding the use of French in aviation in Quebec and in the Ottawa area.