Public Accounts Committee on June 5th, 2008

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

You're building a base for training right now, and there's training going on with the knowledge that you currently have?

[Merlin Preuss]

Yes, absolutely.

Everybody has the basic training. It's updated as we find new requirements. And at the end of the day, we will be formalizing the recurrent training.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

The next point is on training as well.

Again, to the casual reader, it would appear there's a contradiction here. The Auditor General stated, in paragraph 3.47:

We noted that about 15 percent of inspectors and engineers had not completed the required recurrent training.

It goes on to say that the real problem is that it's not documented. It's documented regionally but not nationally, so there's no way of tracking it. In your response to her recommendation, you say training requirements are well documented.

Has that changed now? Is there a human resource file clearly stating what the training has been for the people who are involved in SMS and that inspections can be accessed nationally?

[Merlin Preuss]

If I were to put some interpretation on what the audit report says, it would say there is no centralized repository and quality assurance on the training, categorically. The responsibility rests with the accountable managers in the regions. As I mentioned before, the policy is quite clear. If you're not trained, you're not assigned or you're assigned through some sort of on-the-job-training mechanism. In the regions, I think a lot of that would be found properly documented. There is no centralized oversight, and I believe that's the gist of what was being pointed out to us.

Again, this comes under quality assurance, which is something we have to improve.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

ICAO demands that one of the requirements be that an executive is identified. In our case, who is that?

[Merlin Preuss]

It is an executive for what, exactly?

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

It is for oversight of the SMS. Did I get that wrong? Is it not the case that one executive has to be...?

[Merlin Preuss]

The accountable executive has to do with the industry. Inside, what we do find right now, is one-to-one accountability. The deputy is also the accountable executive for our operations.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Okay, I just wanted to confirm that.

[Louis Ranger]

I'm the accountable executive for what we operate ourselves, including a number of aircraft.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Sweet.

Monsieur Plamondon, quatre minutes.

[Louis Plamondon, Bloc, Bas-Richelieu—Nicolet—Bécancour, QC]

I have a brief question and then I will be handing over the floor to Mr. Lussier.

Canada chose to pass regulations and to implement the management system. Apparently, in Australia and the United Kingdom, the management system was implemented but without adopting regulations.

What have your learnt from that? Have you compared the two methods?

[Merlin Preuss]

Yes, we've been working especially with our Australian confreres for many years and with our New Zealand confreres as well. What we learned from the Australians early on, and it applies more generally to almost any regulatory framework, is that if you choose to take the voluntary approach, which the Australians did, in the hopes that you're going to get full compliance, then what you probably get, and that was their experience, is a situation in which the 80% of the industry that thought this was a good idea and could benefit from it put it in place. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the regulator is responsible for 100% of the industry. So if you don't have the tools in place to deal with the 20% who aren't wanting to buy into the new contract and the new approach, you'd better be able to deal with them.

I've just met with the manager in charge in Australia, and they are promoting as rapidly as they possibly can the regulatory framework to put the SMS in place there. Right now it's voluntary. Where it's working, it's working extremely well. And then there are some issues, I guess, with those who are outside, who aren't wanting to buy into the process.

So yes, we learned that early on, and that's why we took the approach we did.

[Marcel Lussier, Bloc, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

My question is either for Mr. Ranger or Mr. Grégoire.

The issue of accidents has been very well covered. We are also aware of all measures taken to guarantee passenger safety.

I would now like to turn to employees, especially because of what was discovered at Pierre Elliott Trudeau airport regarding Cara employees. The incident must certainly be under investigation by the RCMP, which discovered there were drug traffickers there.

Do you have access to these RCMP reports, to find out about the employees' connections and how they went about obtaining passes to access restricted areas?

[Louis Ranger]

You are referring more to a security issue rather than a safety issue.

[Marcel Lussier, Bloc, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Does that fall within your purview?

[Louis Ranger]

Yes, certainly, Mr. Grégoire is responsible for the safety and security of Canadian transportation. Of course, we are aware of yesterday's incident, which is currently under investigation. We will try to determine what happened, who held restricted access cards, etc.

[Marc Grégoire]

There are over 100,000 people working in airports, and a very large number working in ports. Each staff member must get security clearance from CSIS and the RCMP. Transport Canada, CSIS and the RCMP assess the individual. If he or she seems fine, a security clearance is issued. This clearance allows the employee to obtain a biometric airport pass containing an iris scan and fingerprints. Once an employee receives an airport access card he or she may access restricted areas.

Of course, it may occur that, over the five-year period, certain people who seemed not to pose any threat at the time of their assessment could go over the wrong side. In this case their security clearance would have to be revoked or suspended. If an investigation is underway, the security clearance is suspended and their access cards are suspended by the airport. The airport issues the access card and we grant the security clearance. In this case, the individuals concerned no longer have access cards.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Merci, beaucoup, monsieur Lussier.

Mr. Lake, four minutes.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I just want to turn my attention to the Auditor General's comments in paragraphs 6 and 7 of her opening statement, where she talks about human resources. Contrary to what we hear from time to time in the House, I think the biggest problem we're facing in this country—and it's going to get worse—is labour shortages, especially of skilled labour. It seems to me that there's potentially a real challenge here for your organization, which I'm not sure, from what I'm reading here, is being addressed as seriously as it needs to be addressed.

I note here that the Auditor General says that “Transport Canada has not identified how many inspectors and engineers it needs both during and after the transition, and what competencies they should have”. Then in paragraph 7, she mentions that “Transport Canada has indicated that its development of a national human resources plan will depend on the Department's revised Program Activity Architecture, scheduled to begin in 2009-10.” And she recommends more immediate action. I would concur with that. It seems almost as if you have a plan to plan, when it comes to human resources. I think if you wait, you're not going to be able to get the staff you need, based on what we're seeing in the labour market right now.

I notice that in your own statement—the paragraph at the end that you seem, in a sense, to have tacked on—you say, “Human resource planning is now more tightly focused on recruitment and retention issues. We need to identify the skills and resources required to deliver the future program.” But there's nothing concrete there; it's just a statement that we need to do this. It doesn't say when or anything like that.

Is there some more concrete information available within your department in terms of how you're going to staff the needs you have? I understand that you may not yet know what those exact needs are, but surely you can identify that you're going to need more staff than you have right now, and surely you can begin to start to address that potential in a preliminary way.

[Louis Ranger]

Just to repeat what we said earlier, fortunately we're a bit ahead of schedule compared with what we thought we could do when we actually responded to the report. The PAA is now much more advanced and is about to be approved. So we are well advanced now and are being much more precise with the kinds of competencies we require.

Merlin, why don't you elaborate on that just a little bit.

[Merlin Preuss]

Okay, just to make sure the committee understands what my response to Monsieur Bélanger was, because of the advancement of the PAA, we're ready to do an awful lot more a lot sooner. I don't expect the full implementation of the plan will see much light of day before the fall of 2009, but by this fall of 2008, we should have a pretty good idea of some of the details, which are being fleshed out even as we speak.

We do know already or have already identified—and this, of course, is based on the fact that we're leaders in this, as no other regulatory authority has taken this approach to the extent, and down the timeline, that we have—that we're going to need a lot more inspectors with a human factors background, with an organizational factors background, and with analytical background. What we've seen is an increase of 500% to 600% in the number of reports out there. That's an amazing amount of data compared with what's there today. And it's that data that we must get at, as we must understand how the operators are dealing with it. To do that we're going to need to add those types of competencies to our inspectorate.

As far as recruitment and retention go, those are problems that go well beyond civil aviation, and of course we're doing our part the best we can to deal with them.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

You've identified, though, that you know you're going to need a lot more?

[Merlin Preuss]

No, we're going to need different competencies.