Evidence of meeting #123 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was actually.
A recording is available from Parliament.
10:30 a.m.
Liberal
10:30 a.m.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
What's the demographic of your students? Is it all Canadians looking to become commercial pilots and instructors, or are there a lot of foreign students coming in, who get trained and then leave for other markets?
10:30 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Ottawa Aviation Services
Fifty per cent of the population at OAS is actually international students, which is about the average of what we find for schools in Canada. Fifty per cent of our CPLs are actually international passport holders.
10:30 a.m.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Of that 50%, how many are contributing to the growth of Canada's own aviation industry after they leave?
10:30 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Ottawa Aviation Services
Some of them stay in Canada, because we have this articulation that they can work in Canada, so they go and work for airlines or for flight schools as instructors, but I would say this is maybe 50% of the 50%.
10:30 a.m.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
All right.
What's the dropout rate? As you talked about, we know it's $85,000 to get there. Of those who start, what percentage complete their training to the right seat?
10:30 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Ottawa Aviation Services
Eighty-five per cent complete their training, and 90% of the failure rate is due to financials.
10:30 a.m.
Liberal
10:30 a.m.
Conservative
Jim Eglinski Conservative Yellowhead, AB
Thank you.
I think I'll just follow suit with this.
I think you reported in your written document to us that you pay a 13% excise tax on your fuel, and soon your school alone will be close to $2 million in annual excise tax. Of course, then we have the carbon tax thrown on top of that, which will add to your costs.
There are those types of costs, but there's also the cost for you to bring that instructor from class 4 through to class 1. I wonder if you could just explain what it would cost your flight school to take a person who just finished his commercial pilot's licence, whether it be a retired military person or just a young student coming in.... What is the cost to the aviation school that you must recuperate?
10:35 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Ottawa Aviation Services
It costs us $10,000 to train someone who has a commercial licence to become an instructor.
10:35 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Ottawa Aviation Services
That's class 4. After that, we basically bury the cost of the upgrade from class 3 to class 1 into the day-to-day training. The one that costs us the most is actually the $10,000.
I'll come back to the carbon tax. One thing that is interesting for me when I see a committee like this—and this is my first time.... It's very interesting to see that we have solutions in our pocket today that we can implement to solve the noise issue, to solve the carbon tax issue and to solve the training issue, but we cannot use them because we are either constrained by the regulatory constraints or constrained financially because of the nature of what we can actually get from our students; $85,000 is pretty much the maximum we will get from our students today.
Just by tweaking things around, we'll actually be able to solve Saint-Hubert's issue, and we'll be able to solve our pilot shortage and use those technologies. By using those aspects, such as the electric aircraft that I mentioned in my brief, which make less noise, the carbon footprint is gone.
If the Canadian government gives us the tools to actually implement that, then that works and we can actually find a solution there. However, if you corner us to a point where we can't move, then that's where we're going to need to ask to be removed from the tax or as an exemption on the tax issue for fuel, because we can't move and we can't train anymore. We have no way to play the financial game that we're playing.
10:35 a.m.
Conservative
Jim Eglinski Conservative Yellowhead, AB
What you're saying to us is that we have an aviation industry that is ready to modernize, but we cannot modernize, because we have a very old and archaic set of regulation rules governing how you can go about your duties. Maybe you can just dwell on this a little more.
10:35 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Ottawa Aviation Services
The answer is that Transport Canada's regulations, the CARs, are really good. Now, we need to put modern elements on top of it that will answer the generation Z people we are training today. It will answer the noise issue. It will answer the pilot shortage and ensure that we have the competency-based training that the airlines are asking us to do. We have the ability to do this. We have the infrastructure to do this. We have the technology to do this. We just need the support to do it, and today, it's not there.
10:35 a.m.
Liberal
10:35 a.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
I'll be splitting my time with Mr. Badawey.
Looking at an article that Michael Moore, the filmmaker, wrote in 2010 talking about pilots on food stamps.... Has that situation improved?
10:35 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Ottawa Aviation Services
Yes, it has improved in the U.S. This was a very U.S.-centric report.
10:35 a.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Okay. Very good. Yes, it's pretty shocking.
Is it an issue that you have a lot of candidates wanting to go through the school but there's either no space for them or the cost is prohibitive, or is it simply hard finding candidates who want to be pilots?
10:35 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Ottawa Aviation Services
In the past year, we now have candidates who want to be pilots. The press has made very good advertising for us, realizing that there is a pilot shortage. So that helps. The issue is for us to actually find enough instructors and enough airplanes and do it safely so that we can actually train those 55. Because one of the issues—
10:35 a.m.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
I'll leave it at that, if I could.
The other piece that we've heard in past studies is that the capabilities within Transport Canada to recertify pilots, etc.... The number of people who actually have the competency to do that kind of work has also gone down. If we were able to lift that capability within Transport Canada, could those people not also be available as trainers?
10:35 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Ottawa Aviation Services
I think the issue you're talking about is related to the certification of airline pilots when they stay within the airline. That is true, but it's not going to impact what we're doing at the grassroots, the initial training when they start. This is purely an issue for us of getting our class 1 and class 2 instructors, and class 4 instructors, enough of them that we can actually train the demand.
