Transport Committee on June 10th, 2014

[Lawrence Toet, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses. It's very insightful.

I want to quickly touch on this because it's been talked about a lot, and I don't want to go too far into this.

On the SR reporting, I understand 100% where you're coming from with the need for that not to be used as a disciplinary action, so I get that, and I understand that.

How do we separate that out in a practical way, though, from a situation where you do have a pilot—seeing as we have pilots at the table here—showing a pattern of a certain behaviour that is a danger, that is not safe management of his aircraft?

If the airlines are not allowed to use that data, how are they able to deal with that individual? Do you have a solution or an answer for that particular dilemma? If they are not allowed to look at that and say that there's a real danger and a situation of safety here, then how do we deal with that?

[Capt Dan Adamus]

That's in place right now. When the report gets filed, if the receiver of it looks at it and says, “No, that's not within the boundaries here”, it will be taken care of in a different avenue.

[Capt Craig Blandford]

There are always two pilots. They're in the simulator every eight months. There are all kinds of monitoring and feedback systems other than the safety system when it comes to an individual pilot.

What we're most concerned about are trends among all of the pilots.

[Lawrence Toet, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

I know, and I get that. I understand that's what you're talking about. I understand about the trends among the pilots.

I'm just asking if this would show a trend for an individual pilot.

I understand where you're coming from and that you don't want it to be used in a court of law. You want to have a robust report so you don't want them to thin it down so that it's next to nothing. But there needs to be a parallel system—and a fairly robust parallel system—and I'd love to hear from you—and maybe you could even table it rather than taking the time here—how that robust reporting on the individual basis would work, because both those mechanisms have to be in place.

I just don't want somebody to be able to hide behind the ASR. That's my concern, that somebody can say, “There is no way you can deal with me, because the ASR protects me”.

[Capt Dan Adamus]

We don't want that either. We're absolutely vehemently against that.

As I said, there are checks and balances. Pilots are very proud individuals, and we have programs set up so if a pilot is flying with you and you think they're not doing too well, there is a system in place in which you can talk about that. We want to weed those individuals out. They're not good for anybody.

[Capt Craig Blandford]

We have gatekeepers, honest brokers who look at things and say, uh-oh, I need to tell somebody, without specifics, that they need to look into something. I gave the air force example. There is a duty, an obligation as well, and it's part of our ethical makeup to do that.

[Capt Ed Bunoza]

I have just one more point. You can't hide behind an air safety report. I can have a hard landing in Hong Kong and submit an air safety report that I had a hard landing. The fleet side, the operational side, of the airline also gets that, and they're going to look at that, and they're going to call you in and look at your file and look at what you've been doing. So you can't hide behind these reports.

If I could take just one more second, Ms. Young, I've been thinking about your question about the ASRs and everything. The Americans have a great system. It's called their ASAP system. The pilot submits their ASR. The carrier processes that ASR and then de-identifies it and puts it in a national database.

I'm glad you asked that question.

[Lawrence Toet, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

I want to just go on quickly to something very different.

Captain Blandford, in your non-compliance examples you said that,

ICAO requires state authority to set acceptable levels of safety

and

TC allows air operators to determine own acceptable levels of safety.

Are you really saying that air operators can decide for themselves what level of safety is acceptable and that there is really no oversight, nobody saying, “Hold on a minute—that's not acceptable”? Transport Canada has just said, “Well, whatever you guys think is acceptable is fine with us”?

[Capt Craig Blandford]

I wouldn't go so far—and I know, sir, that you don't mean to be that casual about it—as that. I don't think anybody does that.

I'm saying that ICAO says that the state is supposed to set specific safety standards or guidelines to meet. All I'm saying is that here it's left to the operator to do that, but it works with us.

[Lawrence Toet, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Would Transport Canada not look at the levels you say are acceptable and say, “Yes, those would fall within the parameters we say are acceptable”?

[Capt Craig Blandford]

I would argue that, yes, they absolutely would.

[Lawrence Toet, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

I think it's very important to have on the record that it's not just left up to any operator to decide that they have their safety levels which are fine with them, and that even if there is another guy up there, that's what works for them.

[Capt Craig Blandford]

I do not want to imply in any way, shape, or form that we don't have a good relationship with Transport Canada or that they're not doing what I think is their job on a day-to-day basis.

I'm trying to point out, however, that there are some improvements we can make to the SMS system, and that the oversight regulator can do some additional things in accordance with the ICAO standards to help us improve. We have a good relationship, and it works.

[Lawrence Toet, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

I have just one last question, actually, if I can get to it.

We can come back to you, Captain Adamus, if there is a chance.

I'd like a quick yes or no answer from each of you. All of you talked about safety management systems in your introductions. Has Canada's aviation safety regime been improved through the introduction of SMS systems?

[Capt Dan Adamus]

Yes, absolutely.

[Capt Craig Blandford]

Yes.

[Lawrence Toet, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Good, thank you. I see a nodding head from Mr. McKenna also, so thank you.

[Capt Dan Adamus]

Could I go back to your original...?

[Lawrence Toet, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Absolutely.

[Capt Dan Adamus]

Transport Canada sets the regulations, and everybody must adhere to that level of safety. They absolutely have to.

But you can't regulate for every single scenario, and it's those scenarios that are sort of in the middle that SMS will help catch if there is an issue that's not quite going the way you want. You don't want to get into saying, “Well, on paper we're compliant”. If you've identified some risks—and that's what SMS does—then you can fix them, going forward.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

You are out of time.

We're getting down to the end of our meeting. We have time for some four-minute rounds.

Mr. Mai.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

My question is for ALPA. You represent 51,000 professional pilots. You represent 32 airlines, but you also represent First Air. Can you talk to us about the Flight 6560 crash? What I'd like to know is what happens on the ground with reporting. We know that the TSB actually came out with a report. They looked at the fact that there were issues with SMS. Basically it fell because of lack of reporting.

Can you talk to us about it?

[Capt Dan Adamus]

I'm not familiar with the details of that. I do know they did identify some areas. Some of it was equipment, and lack of equipment on the aircraft as well, and there have been some recommendations. It's unfortunate that it's taken an accident to get some recommendations for change, because, in our view, with safety management systems we try to identify those hazards before an accident so that we can make changes so that it won't happen again.

Unfortunately, I'm not familiar in detail with the report.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Okay.

Also there have been some issues with respect to maintenance. For instance, with Aveos in Montreal we know that everything has been transferred elsewhere, and also we know about some of the wet leasing issues. Can you talk about the impact of that on SMS?

Basically, we have maintenance being done elsewhere and reporting, and so are they compliant with the SMS system here? How does it work?

Mr. Adamus, and Mr. Bunoza.

[Capt Ed Bunoza]

Our association, our MEC, asked me to produce a report about a year and a half ago when Aveos was being transferred and everything. We looked at the MROs. They were conducting the maintenance for our carrier, and they were all world-class operations, using Lufthansa techniques. The one that does the work in the U.S. does it for DND, UPS, FedEx. They are not second-string operators, so on that aspect, no, the MROs are top notch.