Evidence of meeting #31 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 41st Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was aviation.
A recording is available from Parliament.
National Chair, Canadian Federal Pilots Association
They're finding it difficult to enforce, and in fact I don't see much enforcement action happening.
Conservative
Wai Young Conservative Vancouver South, BC
Thank you.
Ms. Collins, I'll give you an opportunity to answer that question.
National President, Union of Canadian Transportation Employees
Thank you.
The answer is yes, both inspections and audits are necessary functions. We believe they should be separate functions.
Conservative
Wai Young Conservative Vancouver South, BC
Obviously there should be reporting to separate bodies. You made that very clear.
I'm kind of shocked by what I've heard today, that there has not been an unannounced, on-the-ground full-plane inspection done since 2004 that you are aware of.
National President, Union of Canadian Transportation Employees
I understand from our members that it was in 2004 that it changed from unannounced direct inspections to the audit function.
Conservative
Wai Young Conservative Vancouver South, BC
So that's a whole 10 years, yet aviation safety, as we all know, has gone up during that 10 years. In fact, there's been an increase in the number of flights and all of that. Can you explain how that might have happened?
National President, Union of Canadian Transportation Employees
I would say there has been a great change in technology. There is new and safer aircraft. In many instances, changes have been put in place in reaction to an accident, quite often based on the Transportation Safety Board's recommendations. Overall there are a lot more ways of addressing safety.
Conservative
Wai Young Conservative Vancouver South, BC
In other words, you're saying that over the last 10 years, because of new technology, new planes, etc., they are safer.
Would you say then that SMS as a system has evolved as planes have gotten safer so that if safety inspections are required or necessary...but, given that they're safer, they will not duplicate inspecting things that they no longer have to inspect?
Conservative
National Chair, Canadian Federal Pilots Association
The technology has improved. The pilots' skills are improving, yet we're still seeing accidents occur. We're still seeing accidents that we used to see 30 years ago. For example, controlled flight into terrain is something that technology has gone a long way to reduce.
The latest one we experienced was First Air, which was lacking particular equipment that is now on almost every other airplane in Canada to prevent you from flying into high ground. So that technology has greatly improved the accident rate. It doesn't necessarily mean there are no latent problems. The idea that we can step away and reduce our inspection and change the mode to safety management systems from a desk, rather than inside, is not adequate at all. We need to be able to see what's going on because things develop and things creep into operations. For example—
National Chair, Canadian Federal Pilots Association
—crew resource management was an issue as well with First Air. That's not related to technology at all. That's a function of.... We're supposed to look at that.
Conservative
Mike Sullivan NDP York South—Weston, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank the witnesses for being so blunt and so shockingly critical, I guess, of the safety systems—I won't call them safety management systems—and critical of the whole safety approach by the Government of Canada to the airline industry. I am completely blown away by what we're reading.
With regard to what Ms. Young said, that air travel in Canada is getting safer, your own documentation from the Canadian Federal Pilots Association includes a reference to Transport Canada's accident rate target per 100,000 flight hours. So this has nothing to do with there being more planes in the air. It is per number of hours flown. It is stated in there that they are projecting an increase—
National Chair, Canadian Federal Pilots Association
I believe it's a percentile.
NDP
Mike Sullivan NDP York South—Weston, ON
Right. But they also report the actual accident rate on this same document from 2010 to 2013 and the number of accidents went up per 100,000 hours.
NDP
National Chair, Canadian Federal Pilots Association
And they are planning for it.
NDP
Mike Sullivan NDP York South—Weston, ON
They are planning for it to get less safe still. It's unbelievable that we would have a government and a department that says let's plan to make the air less safe. That's just so unfathomable. I'm completely blown away.
Mr. Chalmers, you wanted to get in on one of the questions and I want to thank you for your comments at the very beginning of your statement that “SMS is a social engineering experiment on a huge scale, with the Canadian aviation industry safety”. That is essentially what I'm now understanding.
Perhaps ICAO has suggested safety management systems are a good thing but I'm given to understand that Canada's experiment at being the first out of the gate with it is that there has been a wholesale replacement of an existing regulatory inspection framework with an entirely different system, and losing the regulatory inspection framework and replacing it with SMS rather than SMS being a layer on top of the existing system. So as the culture and employees of companies are taught that safety is as important as profit.... We think it's more important than profit. The companies don't, obviously, and I understand your comment about it being a conflict of interest.
It has been stated many times that it's a conflict of interest in all the industries to be responsible themselves for safety.
Mr. Chalmers, can you remember what it is you wanted to say about the chair's question?
President, Pacific Airworthiness Consulting Inc.
I can't remember what the question was. There have been so many things.
NDP
Mike Sullivan NDP York South—Weston, ON
All right, never mind.
I want to turn to the pilots now to see if they have an opinion on this. One of the things that we have seen in the changed regulated system is pressure from the airlines themselves to acquire exemptions. So they are looking for an exemption to allow them to fly with fewer flight attendants. Transport Canada admits that it's not safer, although the airlines claim it's just as safe to have four flight attendants instead of five or three instead of four. But also we have seen from the airlines themselves the use of temporary foreign workers as pilots and wet leasing with foreign pilots as part of the normal stable of how this industry runs.
Do you have a comment on that?
