Evidence of meeting #33 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 inspection.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Laureen Kinney  Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security, Department of Transport
Martin Eley  Director General, Civil Aviation, Department of Transport
Luc Bourdon  Director General, Rail Safety, Department of Transport

10:15 a.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security, Department of Transport

Laureen Kinney

Thirty-eight, is that...?

10:15 a.m.

Director General, Civil Aviation, Department of Transport

10:15 a.m.

Liberal

David McGuinty Liberal Ottawa South, ON

Do they all have mandatory SMS?

10:15 a.m.

Director General, Civil Aviation, Department of Transport

10:15 a.m.

Liberal

David McGuinty Liberal Ottawa South, ON

How many airlines, airports, maintenance organizations, manufacturers do not have required SMS?

10:15 a.m.

Director General, Civil Aviation, Department of Transport

Martin Eley

The airports are required to have SMS, as is the air navigation provider, which is primarily NAV Canada.

10:15 a.m.

Liberal

David McGuinty Liberal Ottawa South, ON

How many are not required to have an SMS?

10:15 a.m.

Director General, Civil Aviation, Department of Transport

Martin Eley

All of the airports are required to, the air navigation provider, the 705 operators. The 704, 703, 702 operators are the ones where there's not a requirement. Some have volunteered.

10:15 a.m.

Liberal

David McGuinty Liberal Ottawa South, ON

It's about 1,000 right?

10:15 a.m.

Director General, Civil Aviation, Department of Transport

Martin Eley

Of that order, yes.

10:15 a.m.

Liberal

David McGuinty Liberal Ottawa South, ON

Does Transport Canada have an HR plan, produce an annual plan and monthly performance reports, for example, SMS audits and program validation inspections?

10:15 a.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security, Department of Transport

Laureen Kinney

We treat those as two separate things. We have a program report that comes to a management committee in each mode with a report of what their inspections are for the month and for the year—

10:15 a.m.

Liberal

David McGuinty Liberal Ottawa South, ON

That would tell us very clearly the number of announced and unannounced inspections. Is that correct?

10:20 a.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security, Department of Transport

Laureen Kinney

That's a summary of the inspections carried out. The data does not include whether they were announced or unannounced, as I said previously.

10:20 a.m.

Liberal

David McGuinty Liberal Ottawa South, ON

Do we not know how many unannounced inspections there are per year?

10:20 a.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security, Department of Transport

Laureen Kinney

That would be something for which you'd have to go down and look at each inspection and see where it's there. We don't record that in our database.

10:20 a.m.

Liberal

David McGuinty Liberal Ottawa South, ON

Through you, Mr. Chair, can we ask the officials to produce that detail for us? We need to know. We're getting conflicting testimony here from different groups. We have the unions saying one thing. We have management saying another. We have airlines saying another.

On behalf of Canadians, Mr. Chair, can we ask to get this produced for us clearly so we all know what we're working from?

10:20 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Larry Miller

Your time has expired.

Ms. Kinney, could we get that information?

10:20 a.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security, Department of Transport

Laureen Kinney

Certainly. As I said, though, certainly in civil aviation we don't record whether they're unannounced or announced inspections. It's not a database element in the field, so it's not usually available.

10:20 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Larry Miller

So noted. Thank you.

Mr. Watson.

10:20 a.m.

Conservative

Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON

Chair, we certainly heard something different from the unions. I would say that the companies and Transport Canada are much more consistent in terms of the coherence of the information presented to the committee.

CASIMS, the civil aviation surveillance information management system, is the tool by which your inspectors would be recording a lot of the important data. In light of the questions around this table about announced versus unannounced inspections, would there be consideration that a field be created on a go-forward basis so that every inspector is recording whether their process inspection was in fact announced or unannounced?

10:20 a.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security, Department of Transport

Laureen Kinney

That's certainly something to consider.

10:20 a.m.

Conservative

Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON

Okay. I think it would be important for the committee that we are recording that information.

Going back to the SMS assessments, again, in terms of terminology, SMS assessments are done against SMS regulations. Program validation inspections, the systemic review that you talked about, are carried out and conducted in a team approach against the responsible activities under the CARs, civil aviation regulations. Is that correct?

10:20 a.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security, Department of Transport

Laureen Kinney

That's correct.

10:20 a.m.

Conservative

Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON

Process inspections, if we're looking at that time period of the order paper question, would relate to the question of traditional inspections. Is that fair? For process inspections, in terms of consistency of the terminology, would you find the PIs in that category?