Transport committee  Yes, and let me be clear that our suggestion here on performance-based versus prescriptive regulation is not to be interpreted in a negative way towards Transport Canada. Transport Canada is very familiar with the concepts and the differences between the two of them. We have a ve

Transport committee  Oh, yes. I'm not here to complain about anything like that.

Transport committee  It's very interesting. Some countries are very, very prescriptive, and I think this is where Canada can have a real advantage. We run into this frequently. We have to go through some hoops to demonstrate to other regulators in some other countries why our systems work. One of th

Transport committee  We do about $1.2 billion a year in sales. I've forgotten exactly what it was last year, but it was within $10 million of breakeven, or something like that.

Transport committee  We already have and we're prepared to continue to do that. It's just that we can't justify the amount that would be required to do the whole thing. Because you have to remember that when we make an investment in a particular area, where the revenue cannot pay for it, then we're a

Transport committee  No, and we do invest and have invested heavily in the north. But I think to introduce a new technology of this type, a little government assistance would help because it does bring a lot more benefit than just to people flying airplanes.

Transport committee  There are essentially two types of technology in our business. There is what we call CNS—communication, navigation, surveillance—which is typically hardware. We don't develop those. There is a large market of suppliers and a very competitive, very good marketplace. We just compet

Transport committee  Being in charge of our own destiny and having to, if I can use the vernacular, “produce or else” has unleashed the innovation and the ability of the people to rise to great heights. Nav Canada is now seen, without question, as the world's leading air navigation service provider,

Transport committee  That's not just my opinion. Anybody who knows this business around the world will tell you the same thing. And there are many people who have noticed it; other countries are now looking and asking whether they should go there.

Transport committee  The only difference between us and an ordinary business corporation is that we don't have any shareholders. You need to look at us as being more or less like a customer cooperative, if you will. To the extent that we make money, we do one of three things with it: we either pay do

Transport committee  Oh, yes, we're a public company in the sense that we're a public issuer. So we're just like any company that trades on the stock exchange. We're subject to the same disclosure rules. You can get all of our corporate documentation on SEDAR. So we're just like any other public comp

Transport committee  We've done well. We've been holding our own and—

Transport committee  We don't try to make a huge profit. How we ultimately judge how we're doing financially is whether or not we had to raise our charges to our customers. I can sit here today and tell you that we have not done that for eight years. In fact, over the last eight years we've reduced t

Transport committee  The only thing we're asking from government in terms of AWOS is capital assistance to initially put it in in the north, and by that I mean the three northern territories and northern Quebec. The reason for that is simply the very high site construction costs in these areas. I thi

Transport committee  There's no question that what we're doing both in terms of AWOS and satellite navigation—and there are other things I haven't talked about in this regard—are all things that I think enhance Canadian sovereignty. We work closely with the military and the coast guard and so on, so