Transport Committee on June 17th, 2014

[Stephen Nourse]

That goes back to more of the early implementation of SMS. In our opinion—and bear in mind that is opinion only—Transport Canada did not do a very good job of explaining SMS to a lot of their front-line inspectors initially. There was certainly a perception among them that this was moving to carrier self-regulation, that the inspectors would not have a role in oversight, and that the big bad carriers were going to get away with murder and not carry out everything satisfactorily, and it's just simply not the case.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

How does your association, with your 107 members, see the role today of inspectors?

[Stephen Nourse]

On the role of the inspector, interestingly enough, we find anecdotally that the inspectors actually prefer to audit, visit, and deal with SMS carriers because they find that the systems in place allow them to more easily monitor the carrier. The carrier is doing self-audit and is doing a lot of their own checks and balances. The difference is that inspectors have access to all that information. Because they're able to review all of this documentation, they actually get a much better feel for the inner working of the companies than they would just coming in and doing an oversight or a normal audit.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

How does that square with the testimony we heard from, for example, Captain Daniel Slunder, a 40-year veteran pilot, 23 years instructing on jets, who heads up 382 licensed pilots who work as inspectors at Transport Canada? That's not the testimony he gave us at all. In fact he told us the complete opposite. How do we square that?

You're telling us that inspectors prefer to work in a system where, for example, no-notice inspections, which have been commonplace in the last five or six years, reign. You're telling us—or maybe you're not telling us—there's a sufficiency of inspector capacity at Transport Canada.

I'm not sure if you've seen the testimony, but as committee members we have to reconcile what you're saying with what they're saying, and they're not saying what you just alluded to. We haven't heard any inspector representative or inspector on the front line saying that all is well and they prefer to deal with the SMS system as it's presently construed and constructed.

Are we missing something?

[Stephen Nourse]

Certainly the under...and it's not just SMS aspects that have changed it. With cutbacks at Transport Canada, the flight inspectors in particular do not have the same opportunity to interact with carriers that they did before.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Is that a problem?

[Stephen Nourse]

It is for the inspectors, it appears.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Is that a problem for your member companies?

[Stephen Nourse]

We actually have problems in getting levels of service in a lot of areas.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Which ones?

[Stephen Nourse]

Everything from manual amendments to sometimes inspector check rides on aircraft to importing airplanes—all of the normal business activities that have to be undertaken, we're finding increasingly difficult to move through Transport. It's not uncommon for new aircraft, or aircraft new to the company, to end up sitting on the ground for months.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

So that's a capacity problem at Transport Canada? Are there not enough people, qualified personnel, inspectors; what is it?

[Stephen Nourse]

Certainly not enough personnel would be part of it. We also think there's a tremendous amount of legacy work, shall we say, that's not really value added to safety that they get caught up in.

Let's pick the MMEL, the master minimum equipment list. These are items that you can dispatch an aircraft with, under certain circumstances, if they're not functioning—because of redundant systems, weather at the time, all of these types of things. All of the requirements are put out by the manufacturers to do this.

Transport goes to great effort to analyze them and put them in master lists, but the carrier, any time they change the manual to one of these approved items by both Transport Canada and the manufacturer, still has to send it in and somebody still has to approve it—yet again, one other time—which adds nothing to the safety.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

So you're telling us that there's a capacity problem at Transport Canada.

[Stephen Nourse]

Yes.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

That's what Daniel Slunder told us. He told us there were 50 fewer inspectors now than there were in 2009 when he appeared before this same committee. He told us that the question of Transport Canada's rosy forecast is “based on a simple sleight of hand. Inspections, once required annually, can now be as infrequent as once every five years.” There's a whole litany of evidence put forward by the front-line people. I'm not going to cast aspersions on people whose jobs it is to keep us safe. I don't think that's reasonable. You're not doing that either. But I think we should be heeding some of the warnings being put forward by the front-line inspectors.

Thank you very much.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Hoang Mai]

Thank you, Mr. McGuinty.

Mr. Watson, you have seven minutes.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses.

Mr. Nourse, I want to pick up on that line of questioning for a moment. You suggested it's a capacity issue. If that were the case, and if there were simply more Transport Canada people to perform these value-added items, it sounds to me like you're complaining that those shouldn't be done anyway. Is it really a capacity issue or is it that these items shouldn't be done? Which opinion is it?

[Stephen Nourse]

I think it's a little of both.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

How?

[Stephen Nourse]

Certainly I think Transport Canada, particularly under the last few budgets, has suffered. I also think there are issues with the retirement wave moving through. Even if the numbers are maintained, the experience level is down in some areas and that tends to slow things up. However, I would also suggest that some things are not particularly value-added on the safety side of things and that effort would be best spent in some other areas rather than some of this routine work.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Okay.

Mr. Gooch, with respect to airports, what was the regulatory regime like prior to SMS being implemented? How is it different now as opposed to what it was before?

[Daniel-Robert Gooch]

That predates my time at the organization. I will defer to my colleague.

Gord, can you make a comment on that?

[Gordon Duke]

Actually, Daniel, it predates both Mike Rantala and my tenure at airports. Prior to being at airports I was with airlines, so I'm not aware of the regulatory regime that was in place prior to SMS.

Perhaps Chris can answer.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Okay.

Fair enough.