Transport Committee on March 3rd, 2009

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Do the adverse environmental conditions in Canada make it any worse, or more challenging, for you to deal with these situations?

[John Crichton]

It's more challenging, but I'm very proud to tell this committee.... I hope to be in a position next year to in fact share with you some documents that will be made public, but I can tell you now, without providing the names of the other ANS providers, that we come out on top. We're the best in the world--in spite of the challenges we have.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

In your presentation you were also talking about unmanned navigation sites. Are they less safe than those with personnel on duty? If not, why not?

[John Crichton]

I think you're referring to remote aerodrome advisory services as opposed to on-site services. They're less expensive, but for airports like that, with very low traffic volumes--you're talking about one, two, or three movements an hour--the exact same level of service can be provided from a remote site.

This has been provided for years in this country, at scores of different sites. There have been no safety issues attributed to that method of providing service.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

So you're telling me that at those 11 airports where you're removing RAAS, it will be safe to land there?

[John Crichton]

For those that are losing it altogether, I think you'll find that at those airports the average movements per hour are one or less. In many general aviation airports in this country, and indeed in other countries, you have far more activity than that without any air traffic services. The pilots use such things as UNICOMs, which work quite satisfactorily. There are well-established procedures for operating it on controlled airports that have been there for fifty years.

What you're really identifying here are airports where the level of traffic has fallen to literally one or less movements per hour.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you, Mr. Dhaliwal.

Ms. Brown.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Crichton, thank you very much for your presentation. I actually had the delightful opportunity to visit the Nav Canada school in Cornwall about five years ago. It's quite a facility. I would recommend that others take the opportunity to go and visit. It's quite remarkable.

I'm from York region. I know you've said that nothing is going to change in your plans as far as Buttonville is concerned, and I know there are other things going on there. But when you're making these assessments, what kinds of discussions do you have with the municipalities that surround? Buttonville, for instance, touches on four major municipalities. What kinds of discussions do you have with municipalities before you do your reassessments?

[John Crichton]

We publicize when it comes to specific proposals. We're at that stage now for 26 airports, but Buttonville is not one of them. These are publicized. We invite anyone who wants to provide comment to do so.

Typically, I think, depending on the amount of comment we get or the level of concern expressed, we will then, in some cases, hold public meetings and invite people to come and talk about their concerns. It partly depends on the nature of the change that's being proposed, but generally speaking, most of the people who are interested are customers or the airport itself.

We frequently get local municipalities concerned for economic development reasons, as some of the members expressed earlier. There is a bit of a problem for us there. We are not an economic development agency. We're not in the business of spending money to create jobs. We're in the business of running safe skies, and doing it in an efficient manner, but as safely as it is possible to do. That is somewhat incompatible with the understandable concern of a municipality about jobs.

I think the question of economic stimulus is best left to others. That's not part of what we do. We are very much focused on what our main job is, but we do listen to people in that regard and sometimes things come out that we didn't know about.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Kennedy, you have about three minutes.

[Gerard Kennedy, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

I wonder if you could sort of rehearse this for the committee. You have a mandate that allows you to go through this process. You've designated the communities that you have coming forward in terms of where you want to make changes. Is that correct? You have 18 that are not on the list and you have the ones that are going to face some changes in terms of the level of service, as we've been discussing.

[John Crichton]

Yes. I believe we gave you a copy of the notice. There are 26 different sites. The notice sets out the proposal, which will be subject to the consultation and the study that I indicated.

[Gerard Kennedy, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

In terms of the dynamics of the business, this particular safety service, which you've now turned into a business, what has changed materially at those sites? In other words, you picked up the service with those specifications: a certain amount of activity and a certain amount of dead zones, no doubt, some economically viable, some less economically viable.

There are other thresholds of viability you've talked about. Is there something common to those 26? Has the need for the service gone down? Has it plummeted? Has it changed quite a bit? Is that the dynamic that you're bringing through this process? Or is it a change in your assessment of what's needed in those places? Is it possible to characterize it?

[John Crichton]

It's a combination of, generally speaking, a reduction in traffic volumes and the availability of newer and better technology to provide the service in a more efficient way, in a different way. It's a combination of those things.

[Gerard Kennedy, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

On the bona fides of the new technology component--and I don't know what the weighting would be between the two in terms of the things you've done--who validates that? Obviously, you're an expert and you have a safety business. No one has questioned that. It's more than a clever slogan.

You wouldn't be in business if safety wasn't your business, but who outside of that can we rely on to tell us that these technological advancements exist and can be depended on? I'm sure Transport Canada does a certain amount of due diligence, but where we stand today, who has done that? What references exist for our feeling confident that those advancements have taken place?

[John Crichton]

There are really two outside entities. The first is the customers. If the customers don't agree with it, we won't do it.

A subset of that, in our case in particular, would be the pilots and sometimes even the pilots' unions, who attend our consultative sessions and take part in them. They get to see and sign on or disagree with our technology before we'll do it. So those people who are paying the freight--and indeed, in the case of the pilots, you could say they're betting their lives on it--have effectively, in our business, a veto.

Second is our safety regulator, Transport Canada. These things have to pass muster with them as well.

[Gerard Kennedy, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Just a very quick follow-up.

I don't have the expertise of some people at the table, such as Mr. Bevington and others have expressed, or a local community affected, but if it's a technical change I would have thought that rather than a marketplace condition--because you are the sole provider of service--if they're going to land there, they're going to use your services, such as they are. Who has the competence to evaluate those technological advancements so that we can believe this advancement can be relied on because you took up the business at a certain price, at a certain cost, and so on?

I think everybody wants to understand what's at work here, and if there are technological advancements that make things safe. If these changes are just transitions, we should understand and then approve or let Transport Canada approve. Who can tell us that technology does what you say it does, aside from the practice? I don't want to be crude about it, but you wouldn't want to learn in practice whether it works. It must be in place elsewhere; there must be bodies, international bodies perhaps, that validate this technology.

[John Crichton]

Yes, there are in certain cases. In order for me to answer your question accurately we would have to get into the specifics of which technologies or which combination of technologies, but I know what you're driving at. I can assure you there's hardly any business, other than maybe the medical field, where things are examined as closely and subject to as much scrutiny as ours is before they're actually put into practice. Perhaps we could find some time, and I'd be more than happy to show you or any other members of the committee just exactly how that process works, but it is very thorough.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you very much, and with that the hour is complete.

I thank our guests for being here today.

Just a heads-up for the committee. On Thursday we have witnesses appearing, and then we are looking at moving into clause-by-clause on Tuesday, March 10. So if you have amendments you're going to put forward, if we could get them to the clerk as late as Thursday evening, that gives us a chance to do the legal on the weekend.

All right. Everything's good. Thank you.

The meeting is adjourned.