Transport committee  First of all, Mr. Chair, I'm not sure what's meant by “pipeline investigation”. We don't—

Transport committee  I can certainly speak to marine safety. I'm still perplexed by “pipeline investigation” because we don't do any pipeline investigation at Transport that I'm aware of.

Transport committee  Certainly, with respect to marine safety, yes, there was a $4.1 million reduction in the main estimates for this coming year. That is largely due to the deficit reduction action plan, and that's carried out in a number of areas. When we did deficit reduction, we had a principle that we adopted in the department.

Transport committee  Certainly we're aware of wet leasing going on, but with respect to the certification of pilots, the pilots being used would be certified either by us as Transport Canada or by the foreign entity that is responsible for the registration of the aircraft. So they would be certified individuals.

Transport committee  I'm not sure that.... Certainly we do not provide any funding for any rivers, no matter what their designation. With respect to the Humber River, as I indicated earlier, if the province indicated it would like to have it covered under the Navigable Waters Protection Act, it can make an application to do so.

Transport committee  I think we faced the same conundrum that the committee did. We knew we wanted to change the scope of the act, and the question was what was the best way to do it? Trying to come up with a definition to limit the scope of the act proved very difficult. In the end, we thought the best way was to establish criteria, to identify those bodies of water where commercial navigation was indeed a high priority, and to try to come up with a list of appropriate waterways to which the act could apply.

Transport committee  I guess there are two aspects to opting in. One is bringing another water into the act, and that would be at the request of a province if they thought a particular waterway was to be in the act. They would make a request to the minister, the minister would consider it, and then there would be a Governor in Council approval to change the schedule of the act.

Transport committee  That's correct. Each work would require a permit.

Transport committee  Yes. Certainly for many of those works while the majority of constructors try to live within the law, we strongly suspect there are many who go out and construct these works without living within the actual law as it now exists. That being said, the changing of the act will allow us to redirect our resources to those areas where navigation is most important.

Transport committee  Essentially, the intent of a safety management system is to ensure that the carriers that are operating in our civil aviation environment have a system in place to regularly assess that they are following the required regulations we have in the civil aviation regime. Many people incorrectly try to say that this is self-regulation.

Transport committee  I used a very plain example before, and I'll use it again. We'll take a taxi company, for instance; we don't regulate taxis, but it's a good example. We might have a regulation that says your brake pads have to be five millimetres. So we come in once a year as the regulator and we take off the tire and we look at that tire to see whether or not the brake pad was less than five millimetres.

Transport committee  I should note that stakeholders are very supportive of the use of safety management systems. It's a way for them to systematically manage their safety environments, and it's something they take very seriously as well. Canada has been a leader in the introduction of safety management systems.

Transport committee  To the question with respect to the knowledge level of our senior management, I can assure the committee that all of the senior people in the civil aviation area generally come from one of three professions. They are either pilots, aircraft maintenance engineers, or other types of mechanical engineers, for a large part.

Public Accounts committee  We could commit to June 2013 to have that plan available for you. We have to use the data from this year's surveillance plan to be able to work that in—

Public Accounts committee  I think one of the challenges is that most of the issues the Auditor General has cited are recommendations that come out of the Transportation Safety Board, which, following aviation incidents or transportation incidents, makes recommendations to the Minister of Transport on how to improve safety in the systems.