Industry Committee on March 25th, 2021

[Rick Whittaker]

MP Poilievre, it's fantastic to see you today.

Absolutely. I have to say that I'm impressed with your memory and your description. I think we have to have you pitching for us in front of our customers more often.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

I'm sorry to interrupt but, Rick, it was hard to forget. It's not every day that someone walks into my office with a missile, and if they did, many who would be walking in with different plans from those you had.

Anyway, go on.

[Rick Whittaker]

One thing we've noticed is that because it's friendly, it can be deployed at an airport just as much as at a military forward operating base. The idea of an explosion...it just doesn't exist. We pop out a bunch of latex bands, trap the drone, and then down it comes.

Just as a quick update, we've gone a few steps further. I think one of my colleagues talked about big data. We now have the Sekor camera on the end of this. We're able to collect an awful lot of data on a lot of air traffic—and potentially space traffic, in the future—that can then be coordinated in real time. We're using fancy artificial intelligence machine learning techniques for this.

That, however, is expensive. Part of the talk today is: when we recover, what is needed? If you're doing anything in space, if you're doing anything in air traffic, it is very regulatory-intense and it's very long-term expensive—the two themes that we've hit today. This point applies equally as well to this 3D-printed friendly missile that we're talking about as to building landing gear, for example. Creating sandboxes in safe areas to fly drones or missiles where we don't have to worry about airspace concerns and regulations is a big deal.

Having long-term funding and certainty from the government is certainly something we could use. Our competitors, for example, in the U.S., are using the SBIR program to go from finding a government customer to now prototyping to now introducing it commercially to now scaling it up to $250 million worth of business. That is just not something we have here. This puts us at a bit of a competitive disadvantage.

We are not, in any way, shape or form, going to become an American company. We can't be the world's friendliest guided missile and be one of those, but our competitors could very well do so on us. That's where our concern comes from.

I definitely thank you for your question. Thank you so much for your description and memory of our company and product and your support of us.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

I have a question. I'm not interested in dream weaving about the future. In the present, are there any aircraft that are available on a large-scale, commercial, self-sustainable financial basis that do not use petroleum-based energy? Anybody can put up their hand.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Mr. Labbé, please give a short answer.

[Gilles Labbé]

The answer is no, but Airbus is was working on this and some others. Pratt and Whitney Canada has a project on that also.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Thank you, Monsieur Labbé.

If I can just conclude, Madam Chair, I find it very interesting that all the people who want to block our energy sector in Parliament are simultaneously seeking more subsidies for an industry that uses petroleum—exclusively petroleum—as its energy source.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Thank you very much, MP Poilievre.

Our next round of questions goes to MP Erskine-Smith.

You have the floor for five minutes.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thanks very much, Madam Chair.

I took, by the way, from my colleague's comments just now that he must mean that when we do potentially bail out the air sector we would put climate conditions as it relates to that bailout. I would agree with that, of course.

I have really a handful of constituents, I would say, who are passionate and they write letters to my local paper, they write letters to me, and they occasionally protest in really the friendliest way possible outside of MP offices here in the east end of Toronto. I don't agree with them all the time, but they are lovely human beings. They raise concerns about the $19-billion proposed acquisition of fighter jets to say this is not the best-placed investment, there are competing priorities, and this isn't going to assist with our national security fundamentally from a Canadian perspective.

I wonder if there's anyone here on the panel who would assist me in answering those constituents.

[Christyn Cianfarani]

I can answer that question.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

That would be great.

[Christyn Cianfarani]

The Canadian Armed Forces is part of Canada's national security. We have a massive country. We are a fundamental NORAD partner, so we have responsibilities with the Americans to look after what they consider to be their northern territory from any incursions coming out of anywhere from China or Russia over the North Pole. That is our fundamental responsibility with our American partners and to do that we need assets such as fighter aircraft.

While Canadians may not feel these kinds of threats happening because they do not happen to us on a daily basis, I think our armed forces would say that they are very real and that we have very real responsibilities with our partners to the south to make sure that our borders and, by extension, their borders are very well protected, not to mention our responsibilities with NATO and our other allied partners.

I think I would just leave it at that, that it is an asset. Fighter jets are assets that are critical to not only Canada's national security, but to the security of the United States via the northern territories that we are responsible for.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I appreciate that answer.

Just as a follow-up, when we look at increasing spending on defence—and $19 billion, to my knowledge, is the second largest procurement of the Canadian government in its history as it relates to defence—in your view is that the best place for a defence procurement of that size if we want to support Canadian strategic defence objectives? Is $19 billion toward fighter jets really the priority that the government has made it out to be?

[Christyn Cianfarani]

The truth of the matter is I can't make that assessment as to where the priority for the Canadian Forces is. They need to look at all the requests that are being made of them from our strategic partners, from our close allies in the United States, and our own national security aspirations. Then they need to assess what kind of budget they need, as well as what kinds of assets they need to support our ambitions.

Is it the right amount? I'm not the individual to be able to make that call. It is indeed the Canadian Forces, and then that has to be done obviously in the context of what the country can afford.

I do think we have to be mindful of the fact that Canada has not recapitalized its armed forces since the 1950s, so our equipment.... And you can tell your constituents, they certainly don't like it when our Snowbirds fall out of the sky and our people die. That is the reality of not recapitalizing over a very long period of time, which is that our equipment gets old, our equipment needs to be refurbished, and it needs to be made coherent with the kinds of conflicts, wars and defence that we need today as a nation and that our allies are also providing around the world as we participate in these coalition contributions.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I think the latter point is a really good one insofar as when we see such a significant proposal on the table for a federal expenditure that it be consistent with federal objectives, be consistent with our actual defence and security needs as far as it goes.

I think I'm out of time, but if anyone wants to weigh in later, it would be useful to know how that proposal, as it relates to procurement, would potentially support the aerospace sector in a broader way.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Unfortunately, you're out of time. Hopefully we'll get back to that.

Mr. Lemire, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My question is for Mr. Best from the Canadian Air Traffic Control Association.

Mr. Best, in terms of your concerns, what do you think of the responses provided by NAV CANADA?

[Doug Best]

Madam Chair, I don't know what to say. I haven't really heard very many responses with regard to our issues with the safety.

Never in a million years did I ever think I'd be here not with Nav Canada, but more or less opposing what's happening. I thought we'd be here together lobbying for money, but obviously we have diametrically opposed views on many things, and safety happens to be one of them in what's happening around the company.

Unfortunately, I have to report as well that we've had to set up a safety occurrence reporting form, mainly because last week our members received word from the company that they're no longer going to be..., or essentially dismissing legitimate and genuine safety concerns, because they called it a “letter writing campaign” when we asked our members to contact management.

As I said, I try not to bash, but unfortunately, safety is paramount, and the economic recovery. I won't say where it's going to be. It all depends on where we are with staffing at the end of this.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you.

I would like you to elaborate on the five-year moratorium. We're talking about an in-depth study, a governance model, administrative costs, sequencing of objectives, obligations to the industry and user safety.

In your opinion, is the moratorium necessary to maintain aviation safety and a highly skilled workforce, critical issues that you emphasized?

Can you elaborate on this moratorium?

[Ray Bohn]

I'm assuming that was directed at me. I didn't hear the front end of it.

Certainly we believe the process we have in place is the appropriate one to review these issues. We will continue with that, engage with stakeholders and make the right decisions, because safety is our business. It is extremely important to all of us.

Our safety record is irrefutable, one of the best in the world, and we are doing nothing to compromise that. I think it's extremely important that everyone on this panel knows that as we work through these decisions, to look at right-sizing the business given the realities of the pandemic, safety is first and foremost.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Thank you very much.

Our next round of questions goes to MP Garrison.

You have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I do want to say, just to begin with, that obviously other members of the committee have missed the first commercial electric flight that took place over a year ago by Harbour Air in a refitted De Havilland, and they seem to have missed the fact that Harbour Air is well on its way to becoming a fully electric commercial scheduled airline within the next two years. It has been set back a bit by the pandemic. Thus, there are things happening in terms of technological change.

The reason I wanted to come back into committee today is to talk about air traffic control. My father was an air traffic controller, even though it was many years ago, and I know the high stresses of the job. I know the concerns of air traffic controllers for the safety of the public, and I know they're always in demand.

My question for Mr. Best is this. Given the current uncertainties being created by NavCan, both over safety and over staffing, do you think we'll be able to actually ramp back up to full service, or have these uncertainties meant that people will leave the profession or leave for other employment?

[Doug Best]

It's very good question.

The answer is no, not at this time. The only way that we did it pre-pandemic was with overtime, and as I mentioned in my opening remarks, Nav Canada's overtime bill for the previous year was close to $100 million, certainly not all for us, but I would say that the vast majority of that was for air traffic controllers.

The system was running on empty. That's probably the easy way to say it. Now, as we embark on a recovery, we're 18% short, potentially over 20% depending on layoffs or if Nav Canada follows through. I think those numbers pretty much speak for themselves.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Do you feel that your members have been adequately consulted on ways to tackle this problem of reopening and recovering, or have you really been left out of that process?

[Doug Best]

I would say at this point that we've been left out of most processes. We haven't gone public with anything since probably the early 2000s. Now we feel like we're a whistle-blower, and it's quite a position to be in. It's certainly not enviable—I can tell you that; and no, we don't....