Evidence of meeting #34 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 airports.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Director of Operations, Greater Moncton International Airport Authority, Canadian Airports Council
I would say yes, but keep in mind, as you've heard before, it's a cultural change. When we have that cultural change, then it's going to be an effective system.
NDP
Isabelle Morin NDP Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
To continue in the same vein, what we hope to achieve with the SMS is a decrease in the number of accidents. That is the ultimate objective of all that.
Before me I have the Transport Canada objectives for the number of accidents per 10,000 flight hours. I can see that for 2010-2011, the target rate was 6.5 accidents, for 2012-2013 it was 6.5 and for 2013-2014 it is 6.7. So there is an increase. Transport Canada's targets for accident rates are established by flight hour. Even if there are more flights now than there were before, the objectives are calculated in flight hours.
Unfortunately, the majority of accidents occur in the Canadian North.
Mr. Nourse and Mr. Gooch, I would like to know what you think about that. Do you think it is reasonable that Transport Canada has accident rate objectives that are on the rise? That doesn't make sense to me if we have safety management systems that work.
Mr. Gooch, earlier you spoke about the safety management system and its advantages. However, concretely, there are more and more accidents per flight hour.
Do you have any comments to make on that? What do you think of that? Do you think it makes sense that accident rate objectives are increasing?
Executive Director, Northern Air Transport Association
I guess I have a bit of a concern with broad statistics. I certainly have a concern with the statement that most accidents happen in the north. I truly do with that statement. However, without a little more detail on the statistics as to the classes of carriers that we're talking about and whether those carriers are actually SMS system carriers or not, I'm at a bit of a loss to comment on accident rates.
NDP
Isabelle Morin NDP Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC
Unfortunately, I don't have the information. These are overall objectives set by Transport Canada. I can't tell you any more than that. They were given to us by the Canadian Federal Pilots Association when their representatives came to testify before this committee a week ago, June 5.
Mr. Gooch, do you have any comments to make?
President, Canadian Airports Council
I'm not sure that we could comment on numbers that are without context. Certainly, I'll ask my colleagues on the phone if they have anything to add to that.
Gentlemen...?
Executive Director, Northern Air Transport Association
Certainly we just finished our annual general meeting in April, and we had a presentation by the Transportation Safety Board, right up to date including 2013 statistics. It showed us we were actually on a continued decrease in accident rates. I'm at a little bit of a loss to—
NDP
Isabelle Morin NDP Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC
Would it be possible to send these documents to the committee?
Executive Director, Northern Air Transport Association
Certainly, I can obtain that.
NDP
Isabelle Morin NDP Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC
Thank you.
Could one of your colleagues on the telephone tell us more about this?
President, Canadian Airports Council
Gord or Chris, do you have anything to add on this subject?
Director of Operations, Greater Moncton International Airport Authority, Canadian Airports Council
It's Chris Farmer in Moncton.
I can only say what's been said earlier. It's very difficult to comment on that without any sort of context. Even if you look at it from an individual airport perspective, it would be the same sort of answer. I'm sorry.
NDP
Isabelle Morin NDP Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC
When the Canadian Federal Pilots Association came to meet us, they mentioned inspections that take place at five-year intervals. The pilot we were speaking with said that it was a way of extending the resources allocated to inspections. He wondered how that would impact the safety of passengers. When he said that the inspections were done every one to five years, he wondered if this would have an impact on passenger safety.
Could you give us your thoughts on that situation quickly, please? I don't have much time left.
Executive Director, Northern Air Transport Association
If you ask Transport Canada, they'll tell you that it's had no effect on safety. If you ask the airlines, I don't think they feel it's had any significant impact on safety either.
NDP
The Vice-Chair NDP Hoang Mai
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Ms. Morin.
Mr. Komarnicki, please, you have five minutes.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
Thank you.
Mr. Nourse, you said initially in your evidence that you have 107 members, 37 carriers, and everything from jet operators to small mom-and-pop operations, and that if you imposed the same SMS system on all of them, the requirements would cripple the small operators. Obviously in some of the small mom-and-pop operations the management and the employees are maybe at times hard to distinguish, but they're there for sure. You also said that it would need to be “appropriately tailored” and scaled to size of operation, and that it would need to be “sensitive to the nature of these small operations” and be “achievable”.
Yet we want to be sure that safety is still optimized. When you're looking at those smaller operations and at a great number of operations and the issues you have with infrastructure and everything else that's included, it makes safety a pretty significant issue. So you have to be careful when you're making that adaptation.
I would like to maybe have you give more examples of what you mean by that, actual examples of how you think it may happen. I think you mentioned one of them, the person who might bring something on board unintentionally. You were saying that for small operators in a remote northern area, it's not likely that anyone will try to smuggle stuff on board knowing that it's maybe harmful, particularly if they're on there as well.
That's one example of how you may simply need to ask the person or remind them or educate them and not go through a complex operation, or add in an additional burden that's not necessary. Can you give me more examples of what you mean by that? I would like some concrete examples, if you could.
Executive Director, Northern Air Transport Association
If you take a look at a larger organization, one of the real benefits of an SMS system is data. The more data you acquire on your operation, the more data you can mine on incidents—incidents that are captured before they become accidents so that you can proactively deal with them. These are invaluable.
In terms of the larger organizations, virtually all of them end up with sophisticated computer tracking programs and analysis systems to handle all of this data. If that's the expected norm, the cost of the actual programs and the administrative burden to run them can both be very high. However, if that data collection in a small operation can simply be handled by a written log, and that's the expectation of the inspector, then life is good. It satisfies the purpose and gives the small operation that ability to focus on these items without a huge burden. But if the expectation is that you'll have a sophisticated data system, computerized, and somebody to look after it and run monthly reports, it's a problem.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
So you're suggesting, then, that one should sit down with the small operator and say, in terms of the size of the operation, “Here's what we want to achieve, so let's figure out how we can do it economically and within your capacity.”
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
On the issue of the number of operators, small operators, even under the circumstance of where you've made it scalable, where you've made it appropriate, would that perhaps also require increased inspection, when you might not need to do that in the situation of larger carriers?
Executive Director, Northern Air Transport Association
Part of the problem from the very beginning has been that Transport Canada will not tell you how to do SMS. They will tell you what their expectations are, but they will not tell you how to do it. That has spawned a whole industry out there of people, with the ATAC product, or the CCAA product, or from DTI, who will come in and do that for you, because Transport won't tell you.
Transport won't even tell you what your problem is. If they come in during a validation inspection, they'll say “No, that's not acceptable”, and then you have to go back and figure out what's not acceptable and how to fix it.
NDP
The Vice-Chair NDP Hoang Mai
Mr. Komarnicki, your time is up unfortunately.
The next round is Mr. Toet, so maybe he'll be able to share or ask your question.
Mr. Toet, you have five minutes.
Conservative
