Thank you. Good morning.
I will quickly tell you a little about COPA, the Canadian Owners and Pilots Association, which was founded in 1952.
It's the largest aviation organization in Canada and is based in Ottawa. We have 16,000 members across the country, mostly private pilots and commercial pilots, with some airline pilots, and Commander Hadfield is our spokesperson. We're the second-largest of about 80 members of the International Council of Aircraft Owner and Pilot Associations, with representation at ICAO. Our mission is to advance, promote and preserve the Canadian freedom to fly.
We represent general aviation in the country. General aviation is pretty much everything that is not scheduled flights and military flying; it's pilot training, agricultural flying, bush-flying operations and many others. As I said, it's anything but scheduled flights and military flying. On the civil air registry right now, out of about 36,000 aircraft, over 32,000 are general aviation aircraft. Almost 90% of the aircraft in the civil air registry are general aviation aircraft.
The impact of GA on the economy is $9.3 billion. Why am I bringing this up? It's because GA plays a niche role in pilot training.
Most flight training aircraft are also constituents of the GA fleet. The first step in any pilot's career is walking through the front door of a flight training unit, and that's most likely a general aviation flight training unit. This training takes place in smaller GA-type airports and aerodromes more suited to the training environment and the type of aircraft operations that we see in these smaller GA airports all around the country.
Also, with COPA being GA, over the last five years COPA has taken more than 18,000 youngsters aged eight to 17 up for an aircraft ride in a program called “COPA For Kids”, so right there, in the last five years, we could have solved the whole pilot shortage problem with the COPA For Kids program.
What challenges do new pilots face? First they have to get into a PPL program—“PPL” being a private pilot licence—and get through that. There is no financial aid for this available anywhere in the country, except for scholarships. It's up to them, their parents or anyone else to get that money to put up front just to walk through this first step of a PPL. Anything above that is the commercial pilot licence.
Most flight training costs are not eligible for student loans unless done as part of a college program, in which case it would only be the classroom portion. Flight training units are only available in certain areas, usually the most densely populated. There's only one flight school in Yukon and none in the Northwest Territories or Nunavut.
In terms of the availability of instructors, applications from students are actually being turned down due to lack of instructors, or there's a long waiting list and they're told to come back in a year when there may be room for them in a flight training unit. Especially if the students just want to go for a private pilot licence, this recreational and private pilot licence thing is put on the back burner. The idea is to get some foreign students, but also, if you're in the airline training program, they're looking for airline pilots. The ones who will become instructors, the ones we will need, are left out.
Challenges for the flight training units include the availability of qualified instructors. With a few exceptions, most instructors need to be employed by an FTU, a flight training unit, to use their instructor rating. Other challenges include using older aircraft.
As well, another challenge faced by the flight training units is the fact that flight training units are at aerodromes that are quite old, and there are also capacity issues because of airport size, air traffic control capabilities, and the need to balance—as was presented earlier—flight training capacity with responsible aerodrome operation, especially in certain high-density areas, such as Saint-Hubert in Longueuil.
Also, for the FTUs and these airports, the only federal funding that can help these airports to develop, sustain and look at other ways is ACAP funding, but these funds are only for airports that have passenger service, and most of the GA airports do not have that.
As I said earlier, most people see aviation in Canada as airliners and very few smaller aircraft, when actually it's the other way around: 90% to 95% of all aircraft in the country are general aviation. Some people also see aviation in the country as the 26 big airports of the national airport system, but there are over 1,500 airports.
In conclusion, to ensure that the supply chain for pilots stays healthy, the front door of the general aviation world has to stay open. It means protecting community airports so that the flight schools have places to live and grow, ensuring that adequate talent and experience is retained at the instructor level. It means preserving the flying clubs and social networks associated with airports, including community, in terms of what goes on at their local airport so that they are connected and realize the important role that this asset is playing locally and in the big picture.