Transport Committee on June 10th, 2014

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

It came from Transport Canada's own report on plans and priorities for 2014-15, and there's a website where it came from. So it's Transport Canada itself.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you.

Ms. Young, five minutes.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Thank you very much for being here, gentlemen.

I have some other questions, but on that point I think I do recall them saying this. Would you say there are substantially more flights in Canada than there were years ago?

[Capt Dan Adamus]

Yes.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

And so there is an error of margin, and therefore an error of accidents and incidents in safety. So would you say that that could be part of where that may come from?

[Capt Dan Adamus]

I'm not a statistician, but sure.

[John McKenna]

I would say that there are more flights, but the safety record is also improving. It would be useful to know in which segments of the air industry they get these numbers from, rather than just throwing out a number.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Yes, absolutely. We heard from the chair that we will track that down, because I'm very sure that this committee is interested in that. I fly every week because I'm from Vancouver, so of course air safety is a primary concern to me.

I was particularly interested in these agreements that you just spoke about. We understand that you've been very clear that you don't want to release these to the public because that detracts from your ability to have the safety culture. All right.

But having said that, what elements are in these agreements that could or should perhaps be part of some government regulations so that we can track these elements and perhaps even put them into regulation to ensure better SMS? Do you have any thoughts or ideas around that?

[Capt Dan Adamus]

Certainly in an act of Parliament we'd like to ensure that these reports remain confidential because that will help ensure that you get reports, because otherwise people are not going to self-report, even if there was a 1% chance that this could be used against them somehow.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

No. We've heard that. We understand that. We understand about the safety culture and the need to report in an open manner that is non-punitive, as you said.

The question that I'm asking is, obviously you have all said that this agreement that you have between Air Canada and the pilots, et cetera, is extremely important. You get an amazing amount of data from this. On the other hand, we are feeling very uncomfortable about the fact that it's not obviously public. The public is on a three-legged stool and does not have access to this very important information, as you've said.

So the question then is what parts of it or what elements of it can be made public or should be made public and/or that we can then add to SMS to ensure that SMS is increasingly safer?

[Capt Ed Bunoza]

I think 30 years ago we didn't have a system like this, and then someone came along and said, “Let's have a system where the pilots and the line people can come along and openly report, and it's not going to be held against them.” Now I'm hearing that people are suggesting, “We want to change it. We want everyone to know what's going on”. You're defeating the purpose of the confidentiality there and not having it known.

The carrier will get these reports, called air safety reports. When they come in and do their PVI, or performance validation inspection, they look at how that carrier handles those reports.

I get the air safety reports sent to me every day, so I'm part of that three-legged stool. If I'm not happy with how the carrier's handling those reports, I go to them with the stats and ask, “What are we doing with these?” There are other mechanisms we can use to carry them on further.

Now when Transport does their audit on Air Canada or whoever they are doing it on, they have these reports and they ask what do we do with them? “Well, we took this report. We mitigated the risk”. The HFACS classify them. So they put a level of—I won't say a level of blame—but they say, “Well, maybe it's not the pilot flying the airplane. Maybe it's further up the ladder there”.

So, the system is taking care of itself. What are you going to glean from my writing a report saying that I took off; I had a hydraulic failure; I landed. Why do you want that?

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Wouldn't you say that's part of SMS? Isn't that why we're here?

[Capt Ed Bunoza]

What are you going to do with that, though?

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

We're here to ascertain whether the system can be safer. You're saying to me that there are these private agreements between the corporation and the air pilots, and then you self-monitor, you self-regulate, and you fix those things.

[Capt Ed Bunoza]

[Inaudible—Editor]

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

We're asking whether there isn't a government role to then monitor or oversee that. It's kind of an odd thing, where this has been going on; it should be part of SMS, it is part of SMS perhaps. But are you saying that that should not be part of it?

[Capt Dan Adamus]

I will quickly give you an example of where SMS works.

A pilot is flying along, and he's given a clearance to climb from flight level 340 up to flight level 350. He reads back “360”, and he climbs up to flight level 360. The next thing you know, he realizes that he's at the wrong altitude, and now what does he do?

In the old days, you would never say anything because you would be fined by Transport Canada. You would be punished for that. So, he writes up in an SMS report that “I thought I read back 350. The controller didn't say anything, so I assumed it was right.”

The company gets his report. Over the span of a month, they get four and five reports of the same thing, so they say, “There's something wrong here.”

It turns out, in this particular instance—I think it was in northern Manitoba—that the repeater for the VHF communication was in a poor spot. It wasn't very clear. They were always having trouble hearing each other. They put in a new tower and now communication is a lot clearer. We don't have those problems anymore.

After the fact, I suppose we could de-identify all this information and say that there was a bad transmitter somewhere, now it's fixed, so the system works. But I don't think it does any good—let's say it was me—for the media to find out that “Hey, Dan climbed to the wrong altitude.” What does that do?

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

It's good for the public to know that it was fixed.

[Capt Dan Adamus]

As long as it's de-identified, and that it's not specific to an airline, you could certainly think about that.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Are there elements around this, that you could tease out, that we can therefore use to increase safety?

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

You're out of time, Ms. Young.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Sorry. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

If you want to respond very quickly, you can.

[Capt Ed Bunoza]

Again, on that scenario, if I mis-set my altitude and I climbed to flight level 360, you're going to know about it. You're going to know it in a daily CADORS report. The system takes care of that. That's where you're going to hear about it. The air safety reports are just another added layer of safety. So you have the layers, and the safety reports are just another layer.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you.

Mr. Toet, go ahead, for five minutes.