Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
As Marc-André mentioned, it's not only a privilege but a good opportunity for us to appear today and help inform the dialogue around the topic.
As mentioned, I'm David Deveau. I'm the vice president of safety, quality and environment for Jazz. I also have the privilege of being the chair of the safety subcommittee for NACC with these dedicated and respected folks who are at the table here. I'll mention that I'm also the chair of the safety council of a U.S.-based regional airline association. I mention that because it provides perhaps a unique perspective of SMS from outside of our nation and how it's seen by other countries as well.
One of the things you'll find about aviation safety professionals is that they're very passionate about the topic, and I hope that we can provide some value here.
In terms of a few comments, just to open up, I'd like to be quite blunt, if I could, with respect to SMS and how it's viewed, I think, by many colleagues in this realm. It's very much a set of basic principles and concepts that are not new, in fact, and are based on quality management and organizational management sciences. In terms of its effectiveness, I must respectfully but bluntly say that questioning the value of an enterprise system like SMS is really not a rational argument by those who are informed about what SMS actually is. If I can draw a parallel akin to a financial management system or a human resources management system, it's a sophisticated, structured program based on very sound principles. Really, there's no other way to view its impact on aviation but as an evolution of what was already a very strong safety basis certainly in Canada.
As I mentioned, with respect to the perspective that others may have on SMS, I have to be very clear that when I talk to colleagues in the United States in particular, and even overseas, Canada's aviation safety system is considered to be the best and safest system on the planet, frankly. Indeed, I know that they collaborate and discuss SMS and what's happening in Canada both with operators and with Transport Canada.
For us, and speaking for Jazz, what SMS has done is it has provided a framework to increase the sophistication of what we have always done in aviation with additional tools and has created a much more integrated way of managing risk within the organization. There are many focus areas that SMS has brought for airlines, including a very important focus on organizational culture, a shared culture of safety, so that it's every single person in the organization who shares the accountability to ensure that risk is identified and managed properly.
It also focuses very carefully on organizational factors. If you were to step back in time, you would find that the focus on safety, in general terms, including aviation at a certain point, was very much about the individual and perhaps what the individual didn't do or whether there was error involved. SMS creates a need for us to examine what the organization is doing: systemic issues, root causes. Again, I've used the word “sophistication”, but it really has brought a new layer of sophistication to what we do. It really has done this. Again, speaking for Jazz in my case, it's provided a road map for us to improve on, again, a very strong basis of safety.
With respect to our interaction with the regulator, it has also changed that in a very positive way as well. Although we continue to see the direct surveillance and inspection activity, our interactions and our work with the regulator is frankly much more meaningful than it has been in the past. There is a much greater expectation on airlines under an SMS program that we must demonstrate to the regulator. Certainly if the committee is interested in hearing some more examples on that, I'm happy to expand on that.
I did want to just open up with those initial comments to offer the perspective of one airline.