Transport Committee on June 10th, 2014

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

A safety management system that actually is properly implemented and works—

[Capt Dan Adamus]

It does. We have great—

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

—not only identifies a safety hazard, but also conducts a risk assessment and actually does something to mitigate the risk that's identified. That's what safety management systems are meant to do.

[Capt Dan Adamus]

Yes. Look at it as being proactive. Why wait until an accident happens to correct an action? Let's be proactive so we prevent that accident.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Of course, when I look at the Canadian aviation regulations, section 107.03(b) states that “A safety management system shall include...a process for setting goals for the improvement of aviation safety and for measuring the attainment of these goals.”Not only do you assess if there's a risk and then mitigate it, but it's an ongoing process for setting goals for improvement and for measuring the attainment of these goals.

A properly implemented safety management system would have a process, would have goals, and would measure whether they're achieved or not. Wouldn't that, in essence, almost be superior to simply having an inspection to see if the regulation is met?

[Capt Dan Adamus]

Absolutely.

[Capt Craig Blandford]

I would agree.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

And so again, it's a question of properly implementing that. I noticed you say in your deck that Transport Canada does not require identification of any specific safety performance targets. Yet, by virtue of CARs, they say that you must identify risks and you must set targets and you must try to achieve those. Isn't that contrary to what I've just said?

[Capt Craig Blandford]

This is my fault, and I apologize that you took so much focus on those particular points. I guess I'm just trying to point out that some of the ICAO standards that we're trying to meet have not necessarily been met by Transport Canada, even though I'm not suggesting that our system is broken, sir. I'm saying that Transport Canada doesn't say what the goals are; they say “air operators: set some goals”. I'm telling you that it works if you have the third leg of that stool, and the third leg of that stool are the employees or the pilots saying, yes, we think these are reasonable goals and we can evaluate and we'll operate safely and we'll fix the problems that exist. We don't need to have constant inspections for that to occur.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much.

Your time has expired, Mr. Komarnicki.

I'm moving to Ms. Morin for five minutes.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

There are two things I would like to talk about.

Mr. Adamus, you said that lithium batteries were a problem for you. In your recommendations, you stated that knowing that there were lithium batteries present could influence a pilot's decision-making process.

Mr. Blandford or Mr. McKenna, could you tell us what would make you act differently if you knew there were lithium batteries on the plane? How would that change your behaviour?

[Capt Craig Blandford]

As a pilot, we just make sure that we have documentation that tells us how these things should be packaged, protected, how many, what—

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

How would the fact of knowing that there are lithium batteries on board the plane change your actions as pilot?

[Capt Craig Blandford]

Nothing changes. As long as it's packaged properly and it's in the airplane properly, if we have any kind of incident, we just make sure that the fire marshals are aware that they're on board. Otherwise, it makes no difference to our job.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Mr. McKenna could answer.

We could then ask Mr. Adamus to tell us what he thinks about that.

[John McKenna]

Well, quite simply, an operator must make sure that those batteries are well-anchored and are perhaps located at a certain distance from certain sensitive equipment.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Fine.

[Mark Rogers]

Thank you. Certainly, if you have a fire on board the aircraft, you're going to want to land the aircraft as quickly as possible. Having said that, when you actually make a decision on where to land, different factors can influence that. Something that we practise all the time in the simulator is landing as quickly as possible, but you will have a choice of an airport that is very close but perhaps has a very short runway, or poor weather, or a bad instrument approach procedure, and choosing that airport over an airport that's farther away but has better facilities. That's the job that we do as pilots.

If I have an aircraft and I know I have a fire on board, and I know that this fire cannot be put out by any of the extinguishing measures I have on the aircraft, and if I knew I had, say, 90,000 lithium batteries on board, I may make a decision to land at a closer airport that doesn't have as good a facility or possibly even to ditch the aircraft in the water. The Asiana accident that happened, they attempted to do that.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

And what is preventing people from disclosing that to pilots at this time?

Moreover, your fifth recommendation concerns the fact that no dangerous goods labels are required for some lithium batteries. What is preventing us from doing that currently? What is the rationale behind that?

[Mark Rogers]

Certainly the batteries, initially, became part of the dangerous goods system through other chemistries of batteries that, prior to the 1990s, were not nearly as dangerous in transportation. When lithium batteries came on the scene, they were added to these provisions. The difficulty becomes that if you regulate the batteries, then any time somebody ships a spare battery for a cellphone or a computer, they become a dangerous goods shipper. That presents a lot of difficulties in transportation.

Having said that, the way the dangerous goods regulations are structured, it looks at the individual battery and says a consumer-sized battery is therefore exempted from the regulations to allow that person to ship a battery. But once that battery is accepted, there is nothing in the regulations that prevents consolidations of those shipments, so we have thousands and thousands of batteries that individually do not represent a great risk to the aircraft, but when taken together, they do. Unless we regulate those batteries, there's no way for the operator to know.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

You say that no dangerous goods labels are required for some lithium batteries. What do you recommend be done about that?

Do you think that everyone on board the plane should be informed if a lithium battery is present? Do you think the pilot is the only one who should be informed? What do you want exactly?

[Mark Rogers]

Certainly, the way that we inform pilots of dangerous goods shipments is through an established process. For all kinds of dangerous goods we have a pilot notification form.

The point I'm making here is that if you have a five-gallon drum of paint, or even dry ice, the pilot is notified of that dangerous good, but if that's next to a pallet of thousands of lithium batteries, the pilot would be unaware that those batteries were on board. So yes, because they represent a risk to the aircraft, we do want batteries to be included in the established dangerous goods system and have the appropriate labels and notification.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Thank you.

I have another question on another topic.

Mr. McKenna, you mentioned that according to the category of carrier, there can be changes to the way SMS are drawn up. You said it was slightly more difficult for categories 703 and 704.

Could you give us some concrete examples of what could be done in a terminal to improve the safety management system? What prevents the small companies from having one?

[John McKenna]

Did you refer to terminals? I did not understand the question.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

You told us that...