Transport committee  No, sir. You're referring to the validity itself of the E.U. directive. I believe that IATA—and I'm not sure who else—challenged the validity of the directive per se. But there have been many cases brought to the courts by consumers who have asked, well, how do you define a delay?

Transport committee  I take your point.

Transport committee  Thank you for the question. As I tried to explain, we have filed the amendments to our tariffs, which are the contract of carriage with the passenger. It's not as the previous witness said: the tariff is fully enforceable when we don't respect our obligations under the tariff. Any consumer can go to the CTA--which, as you know, is quasi-judicial body--and complain that we have not respected it.

Transport committee  Extraordinary circumstances represent just one of the problems. It's one of the outs that's in the bill, but only in respect to cancellations. In the rest of the bill, there are ambiguous concepts such as “undue risk” that are supposed to define whether we're going to be liable for ramp delays.

Transport committee  Well, again, I couldn't finish the answer, sir.

Transport committee  Are we willing to fly to Europe?

Transport committee  Well, we fly to Europe. Air Canada and Air Transat fly to Europe.

Transport committee  Well, no, I would point out that the European legislation is not a carbon copy of what we've done here, either.

Transport committee  Mr. Maloway had to pick and choose a few things, and I would suggest that the ramp delay issue and that liability, which is a major one in this bill, is not existent in the European regulations. So right there we don't have to deal with that.

Transport committee  What we're going to say, sir, is that this bill is fundamentally flawed because it failed to take into account--

Transport committee  Thank you for your question. You give several examples. There was the NAV Canada decision concerning Air Canada flight 32. Furthermore, the work of the customs authorities has an impact on the passenger's experience. There is de-icing, which is very important. Snow removal from airport runways has a major impact on moving aircraft prior to takeoff.

Transport committee  May I answer the question?

Transport committee  Mr. Volpe, there is nothing wrong at all with it being said that—

Transport committee  No, sir, just a second. May I answer the question?

Transport committee  I accept, sir, that it is a defence in the bill. I don't accept that it's going to be an effective defence. I don't accept that it's going to be—