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.
Executive Director, Northern Air Transport Association
The organization is based in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. I personally am here in Ottawa just because of the access to the regulatory world.
Conservative
Peter Braid Conservative Kitchener—Waterloo, ON
Very good.
In your opening presentation when you were talking about SMS and describing the various results or outcomes of safety management systems, you mentioned that, from your perspective, SMS improves safety. It reduces cost. It reduces risk, and results in a safer workplace.
Could you elaborate on those various results or consequences, and perhaps provide some examples?
Executive Director, Northern Air Transport Association
A lot of the real recognizable benefits of SMS tend to be, shall we say, almost more on the industrial side of the operation. We see tremendous improvements in things like cargo handling, maintenance, ramp activities, typically activities that are in themselves inherently perhaps a little more dangerous because of the environs you are working in. As I say, they are a little more industrial. What you find is that in the reporting processes that are used within SMS, the risk assessments that are used, you see real, identifiable reductions in accident rates, these types of things.
That's why I made the comment about whether crashes are prevented being much more difficult to quantify. However, when you take a look at the way SMS works, particularly on risk assessments, so that any change to your operation, any additional point on a route, a change of equipment, the risk analysis and other processes that are part of the SMS world really do focus the attention and help be proactive within an organization.
Conservative
Peter Braid Conservative Kitchener—Waterloo, ON
You represent I believe 107 small airlines that serve the northern parts of many of our provinces and our northern territories. From your perspective, could you outline three or four ways for how you think we could improve the safety of airline service in our northern and more remote regions?
Executive Director, Northern Air Transport Association
In our northern and remote regions, the biggest hurdle we face right now is infrastructure. The north continues to have a problem with aviation weather. A lot of the locations do not have 24-hour aviation weather, which is a problem. We are still, in many locations, dealing with gravel runways. Although this isn't necessarily a safety issue, as we continue to operate safely off them, it is very limiting in terms of what equipment can be used.
The last commercial airliner that could land on gravel, the Boeing 737-200, is now 30-plus years old—
Executive Director, Northern Air Transport Association
—and probably pushing 40 years old in many cases. We need more pavement or hard surfacing in order to allow the operators to upgrade their fleets to provide more economical and better service.
Many of the runways are still short. The design aircraft of the day was the DC-3, for crying out loud, for a lot of the runways in the Arctic. Things have changed.
Runway approaches, runway lighting, and fuel availability at times—again, all basic infrastructure—continue to be the challenges, more for the carriers.
Conservative
Peter Braid Conservative Kitchener—Waterloo, ON
Could you give us some insight into how Transport Canada safety audits and inspections are conducted with respect to the smaller airlines that service parts of our north? What's the experience? What's the frequency?
Executive Director, Northern Air Transport Association
If you had asked me a few years ago, I would have said that they're probably seeing someone very close to annually. However, in response to personnel issues, which we discussed earlier, Transport has moved to a very complicated matrix that evaluates the risk of a carrier and sets the frequency of the inspections at anywhere between one and five years. I would suggest that the average is more likely that a formal inspection would be every year or two, but that doesn't mean the carriers aren't visited in between. The principal maintenance instructors—
Conservative
Executive Director, Northern Air Transport Association
It's really difficult to get into a lot of these remote locations unannounced. You pretty much know when somebody is coming.
Executive Director, Northern Air Transport Association
But shall we say “unscheduled” ones? Yes.
NDP
The Vice-Chair NDP Hoang Mai
You have five seconds, Mr. Braid. No?
Thank you very much.
Five minutes for Mr. Sullivan, please.
Mike Sullivan NDP York South—Weston, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses.
One of the things we've heard in the testimony is that a key feature of SMS is a culture of safety in the employees and the company itself. One of the recommendations we've heard is that whistle-blower protection or the non-culpable reporting on safety is a key to ensuring that people feel comfortable, to making sure that they're not going to get in trouble if they report something they did or that one of their colleagues did. Would you agree with that generalization?
Executive Director, Northern Air Transport Association
Non-punitive reporting is absolutely essential. It's very unfortunate that the actual legislative protection for that has not made it through on a couple of occasions.
NDP
Mike Sullivan NDP York South—Weston, ON
So would that have assisted the two pilots at First Air who were 20 minutes late because they went slightly off course and were then fired?
Executive Director, Northern Air Transport Association
That's a good question. Actually to my knowledge, First Air has a very robust non-punitive policy in place.
NDP
Executive Director, Northern Air Transport Association
I don't believe that—
NDP
Mike Sullivan NDP York South—Weston, ON
It would send a chill through the whole industry if that were to be the case.
Executive Director, Northern Air Transport Association
I don't believe that actually qualifies in that case, as the circumstances were well known to the corporation before the pilots told them.
NDP
Mike Sullivan NDP York South—Weston, ON
I understand that. My point is that what seems to be a problem that needs correction instead results in the firing of the pilots. I know the airport folks can tell us that the GPS system was new, that the system for flight approaches using GPS has only been used, certainly in Toronto, in the last little while, and that it was being used on this particular flight as well.
Executive Director, Northern Air Transport Association
First Air has probably been using GPS systems, particularly en route, I would say for at least 10 to 15 years. The north has been a very early adopter of it. Satellite navigation and satellite systems just in general with everything from communications to navigation have been the single biggest advance in Arctic aviation.
NDP
Mike Sullivan NDP York South—Weston, ON
Regarding the issue of non-culpable reporting of incidents, I understand that the airline knew because they were 20 minutes late. I was actually on a First Air flight from Edmonton to Yellowknife, which was then going on to Rankin Inlet, and that same flight the week prior had accidentally flown to Resolute, which is a significant distance away from Rankin, and the passengers were all very surprised to learn that it had landed in Resolute. I don't believe anybody was fired over that.
My point is that it would send a chill through the entire organization if a 20-minute mistake ended up costing someone their job, and I'm not sure that is in keeping with the spirit of SMS.
Let me shift gears a little bit. You or your member companies have applied for exceptions to allow fewer flight attendants on flights, and you intend to implement these exceptions sometime in September. Is that correct?