Hon. Omar Alghabra, P.C., M.P., Minister of Transport: Senator, as you know, the CTA is an independent quasi-judicial body. They have received, to your point, an unprecedented number of complaints borne out of the situation this past summer.

The situation right now, clearly, is that CTA needs help. I have met with the chair of the CTA just recently, first, wanting to get briefed by her on the situation, the volume of complaints and the resources that are needed. Our government is now working with the CTA on making sure they have the resources they need.

This has been unprecedented, senator. The pandemic is a once‑in-a-century thing that happened, and we can see that the rest of the world continues to be grappling with it. Our government, while we need to understand the root causes of what happened, we’re not shirking our responsibilities in addressing this issue and on working with partners, because it is important to us that Canadians are serviced well.

Let me just take a moment to say that no Conservative government in the past has put anything in place to protect passenger rights. While there is more work that is needed, it was our government that stepped up to offer this protection.

I welcome your input on how we can strengthen these regulations, but I’m also proud of the work that we’ve done.