Transport committee  Thank you all for the opportunity to speak here today. We must apologize if it seems we have little documentation to present, for we only recently found out that our request had been granted. What we offer you is our own experience and frustration in dealing with the present reg

Transport committee  Along the lines of what I presented in our letter, many people are afraid to come forward and speak about these kinds of things. I can't say for all of Canada that absolutely everybody agrees with us. I think the industry, even those that are a problem in our industry, would agre

Transport committee  My partner and I have worked all across Canada in various areas, and the people we are talking to are in areas all over Canada. We just happen to be speaking as operators in the Red Lake area. This is not a Red Lake problem. This is a Canada-wide problem in our system. Unfortunat

Transport committee  Yes, it is. Our difficulty with the present system is that if you go to Vancouver or Saint John, or if you go to Victoria or Red Lake, you should have an equal and fair interpretation of the regulations. Right now what's happening is that each little area and each inspector have

Transport committee  We've experienced reprisal in a small way all along since we started our company, in that, not having an arbitrator to take our concerns to when there was an issue over policy versus law, we were threatened. Initially we were told we would not be granted our certificate.

Transport committee  Well, when you have sunk all your money into purchasing and insuring and repairing an airplane in preparation for launch.... We were applying for certification for our company, and of course we were trying to follow procedures and the letter of the law in order to meet the standa

Transport committee  Let me just clarify a small point. When you shrink us down like that as “smaller operators”...our companies may be one- and two-airplane operators, but our size as an industry on the air taxi and the AMO side far outweighs the size of the airline industry and the commuters. We co

Transport committee  If you look at the division of the CARs and how it is structured, you will see that each and every section of the CARs is very different. The air taxi, the aerial work, the private operators, the airlines, and commuters are all very different, which is why they've been given thei

Transport committee  You could say that.

Transport committee  We're not suggesting anything on anybody else's behalf. As our own selves, as an air taxi operator, we can only offer you our own perspective. And as we've stated, we feel that SMS is a good business tool, but it's not something you can legislate into making an industry think saf

Transport committee  I can assure you that if there are any threats of reprisal, the whole world will know about it, and I appreciate your concern.

Transport committee  I'm sorry. Can you...?

Transport committee  We don't know of any other operators like ours that have that kind of system in place. A test project was done on a few operators not representative of the entire air taxi industry. With respect to the airlines, even though that's not within our purview, I would have to defer to

Transport committee  [Inaudible--Editor]...our business. So our fate rides on the hand of the government—

Transport committee  As I was saying, our right to operate, to earn an income, and to recoup some of our hefty investment in our company is in the hands of the government, and the government has the ultimate power to take it away or to modify it or to restrict our right to operate. Apparently, as we