Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
As you mentioned, my name is Brian Jenner. I am the president and chief executive officer of the Helicopter Association of Canada, and I'll start with just a few words about the association.
HAC was incorporated in 1994, with the mission of bringing the Canadian helicopter industry together. The association's principal goals are ensuring the viability of the Canadian helicopter industry; educating government and the public about the industry; promoting flight safety; developing expanded utilization of helicopters; and exchanging industry best practices. HAC's roles include identifying problems; searching for solutions; advocating for industry, representing individual operators with regard to those problems and those solutions; and organizing an annual convention and trade show to facilitate communications with and within the industry. That show is now Canada's biggest commercial aviation event.
The Association's membership now includes 70% of Canada's commercial helicopter operators, an astounding achievement for a voluntary membership organization. As a result of its success in attracting operator membership, the Association has also enrolled 90 helicopter industry suppliers as associate members.
The fifteen corporate sponsors providing considerable financial support are: ACROHELIPRO, Westland Helicopter, Bell Helicopter, Textron Canada, Benfield Corporate Risk, Eurocopter Canada, Helicopter's Magazine, Honeywell, Pratt and Whitney Canada, Marsh Canada, NAV Canada, Rolls-Royce, Standard Aero, Turbomeca and Willis Global Aviation Canada.
In addition to being by far Canada's most representative commercial aviation association, HAC nominates one of the members of the Nav Canada advisory committee; is a member of the International Federation of Helicopter Associations; and is on the International Helicopter Safety Team, whose goal is to eliminate helicopter accidents worldwide.
Within the context of IHST, the International Helicopter Safety Team, the association, in conjunction with Transport Canada Civil Aviation, the Canadian Transportation Safety Board, helicopter manufacturers, and the association membership, has taken on a leadership role in establishing the Canadian Joint Helicopter Safety Analysis Team—the JHSAT-CAN—and the Canadian Joint Helicopter Safety Implementation Team—the JHSIT-CAN.
The JHSAT-CAN is mandated to conduct in-depth causal analysis of Canadian helicopter accidents, evaluate potential interventions, develop recommendations for each accident category, propose intervention strategies, and establish evaluation matrices.
The JHSIT-CAN is mandated to develop implementation strategies and action plans for JHSAT recommendations, coordinate implementation strategies with responsible organizations, create performance measures, and much more.
HAC is, as you can see, is at the forefront of modern safety management and accident prevention.
We share the concerns of several other organizations regarding the proposed amendments to the Aerospace Act. However, as representatives of several small and medium-sized aviation companies, we are particularly concerned with what is not in the Act. Therefore, we will limit our comments to the missing link of C-6, which leaves SMEs at the mercy of the public service and with no effective recourse against the threat of destitution by suspension or cancellation of an operating certificate.
The Aeronautics Act provides for several reasons to cancel or suspend a civil aviation document, and the document that concerns air carriers most is their air carrier operations certificate.
Section 6.9 allows Transport Canada Civil Aviation to suspend or cancel that document as punishment for having contravened a regulation or some part of the act. Section 7 of the act allows Transport Canada to cancel or suspend forthwith in cases where there is an immediate threat to safety.
Section 7.1 is the one that is of interest to us. Section 7.1 allows Transport Canada Civil Aviation to cancel or suspend an air operator's certificate because the air operator no longer complies with the conditions of issuance; because the air operator no longer complies with the conditions of maintenance; or because, for some other reason, it is in the public interest to do so.
We're quite happy with that provision. We're quite happy with having people made to toe the line with regard to respecting the rules for getting an operating certificate and maintaining an operating certificate. The problem is that Transport Canada sometimes makes a mistake. As a matter of fact, in our experience, they make a mistake 25% of the time.
In those cases, the air operator finds himself without any practical recourse. In theory, he can go before the Civil Aviation Tribunal and can contest the decision of Transport Canada to cancel or suspend his air operator certificate.
And by the way, cancelling and suspending has lately become one of the primary tools for encouraging compliance with the law. Once again, we don't have a problem with that. We want to see our competitors toeing the line.
But when Transport Canada starts by telling us of the problem they have discovered and handing us a notice of suspension that is to take effect in thirty days, it's a problem if we do not have recourse, and we don't. Within those thirty days, we can apply for a review before the Civil Aviation Tribunal, but the Civil Aviation Tribunal typically takes up to six months to give you a hearing and up to a year to give a decision. So while we're waiting for the Civil Aviation Tribunal to tell us that Transport Canada was wrong and we were right, we're out of business. That should be corrected.
The correction is simple. In subsection 7.1(4), the tribunal is already empowered to stay the decision of the minister after they've heard the case. What we suggest is that the power of the tribunal to stay the decision of the minister be moved forward to the beginning of the process. Based on representation by the minister and the document holder, the tribunal should be allowed to stay the decision while the hearing process goes forward.