Official Languages committee  Mr. Chairman, again, ultimately I made the decision to attend and speak at that event and present the speech in English.

Official Languages committee  Mr. Chairman, our interests are aligned. We do take our responsibility to promote bilingualism and to adhere to the Official Languages Act very seriously. I believe we have a very rigorous system to ensure that we continue to improve. Enhancements have been made, as I just mentioned, over the last couple of weeks.

Official Languages committee  Mr. Chairman, we do consider French to be a core asset when we promote and when we hire, no matter where it is in the company—customer-facing or otherwise. Although it may not be specifically in the 2020-23 plan, it is an objective of Air Canada to hire as many people as possible who are bilingual.

Official Languages committee  Mr. Chairman, currently we have approximately 30,000 employees across the world, the majority of whom are in Canada, and almost 10,000 of whom are in Quebec, principally Montreal. We have approximately 40% who are fluently bilingual. These people have been tested—

Official Languages committee  Mr. Chairman, with respect to the first part of the question, we will provide the exact numbers on francophones. I don't have them right now. We'll provide a breakdown whichever way you would like it as soon as possible. To the second part of the question regarding what we're doing about it, again, we have a very sophisticated and aggressive plan to train our employees in the second language and to hire as many bilingual personnel as we possibly can.

Official Languages committee  Mr. Chairman, again I'll defer that detailed question to David Rheault, but certainly, from my perspective, I have no issue with providing that level of information to the committee.

Official Languages committee  Mr. Chair, ultimately I made the decision to attend and speak at the event. My intentions were absolutely sincere. It's a very challenging time for Air Canada. I wanted to update the business community and our many partners in Montreal about our plans for the future. We are an integral part of the community in Montreal.

Official Languages committee  Mr. Chair, we believe in a culture of continuous improvement and not penalties. We are a heavily regulated industry, with one of the primaries being safety, and so our focus would be more on continuous improvement. If I can, I would like to defer that question to David Rheault, who is much closer to Bill C-13.

Official Languages committee  Mr. Chairman, complaints may be slightly higher in 2019 versus previous years because our traffic levels more than doubled over that period of time. The service that we provide on our routes to all of the destinations we fly to around the world has increased, so it's just a matter of larger numbers of people we're serving.

Official Languages committee  Mr. Chairman, I'm well aware that French is the official language of Quebec. Air Canada works very, very hard—

Official Languages committee  Mr. Chairman, we're still reviewing the draft act, but there are certain areas that we take note of. Certainly the government's commitment to improve immigration and education is key to us. Our biggest challenge is finding enough people, enough bilingual people outside the province of Quebec to hire.

Official Languages committee  We filed the 2020-23 comprehensive plan built on three pillars: governance, service delivery and people. However, in November, I tasked two of our executive vice-presidents—one of whom was the official languages sponsor, our champion for Air Canada—to speak to our employees about what else we could do.

Official Languages committee  We get feedback from customers and from the commissioner's office. The number of complaints dropping would be a key indicator for our going forward. We also do our own audits and tests. We have bilingual ambassadors at each of our major airports to reinforce the—

Official Languages committee  I'll save you some time and I'll defer that question to David, as well, because he has a better understanding of the details on the frequency. Go ahead, David.

Official Languages committee  Mr. Chairman, for an anglophone to learn French in 13 hours would be very difficult. Again, I think the math has to be explained by David Rheault.