Transport Committee on Dec. 11th, 2018

[Angelo Iacono, Liberal, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Would you like to add something to that, Ms. Hadfield?

[Robin Hadfield]

I would. On the idea of flight attendants, I personally know over 15 flight attendants who have become pilots and who are working their way up, but they've had to do it totally on their own. There is no incentive for an airline to do their own training.

Concerning the shortage of pilots, there's a misconception that people don't want to become pilots. In Springbank there are two flying schools with a waiting list of over 300 students. There were 78 air cadets who did not get their power licence this summer because of lack of instructors, and at the busiest flying school in the country, at Brampton, in October they put out a notice that they are not taking any more new students.

There is a waiting list of people in Canada who want to learn to fly. The seats are taken by international students. Then they leave the country, meaning we have a shortage of instructors, meaning we can't take that waiting list of students.

It's a cycle. The schools need money, so they take the international students, and that kicks the door shut for our students.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

I'm sorry, Mr. Iacono; your time is up.

Mr. Nantel is next.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms. Hadfield, as you quite rightly pointed out, there is no link between the education system in Canada and flight schools, although we have a real need for pilots. What also strikes me is when Ms. Cameron suggested that people in the north, where there is such a need for pilots, will not move to the south to take that training for any length of time. However, I am well aware of the situation in flight schools in Saint-Hubert, where there are major concerns. We have always bemoaned the fact that they are all concentrated in that location, right above the houses of ordinary folks.

However, as you explained, is quite sad to see that the schools are accepting a lot of foreign pilots who take places, not just from Canadian students, but also from Canadian pilots. That means that the pilots leave. Would you like the committee to recommend setting up a network? I am talking about the Aerospace Industries Association of Canada, the AIAC, which set up the Don't Let Go Canada program. We met Mr. Hadfield to talk about that.

Should we not have a concerted approach to establish a training program for young people, particularly young women, so that they can get started in the field?

[Robin Hadfield]

I think that if we can set up programs at the high school level, where students who are not that familiar with airports.... As urban areas have expanded, we've lost the small airports and general aviation. People don't see airplanes flying around, and our youth can't look up and say, “Oh, I want to do that.” They go into high schools and focus on STEM programs, but those don't include aviation.

I think it's about bringing it back into the high schools and also about having a loan and debt repayment program—making it affordable so they can go to school—to keep our own students in the flight schools. You're looking at half our population that is making under.... How is a family with a combined income of $80,000 going to afford putting their kid through these schools?

Also, the payback is slow. When our son was at a flying school, I said to him that he was going to have to go up north and be up there for years, that he was going to be pumping gas and cleaning puke out of airplanes for the pleasure of making $20,000 a year. Then, when you start making your way up there—you get married, you have kids—and you're making $100,000, you go to Air Canada and you drop to $40,000.

It's a cycle. For the flight schools, I think we have to make a definite loan repayment program. You can't stop them from accepting foreign students, but if we can have our students afford to get there.... Canada is very well known around the world for our aviation sector. That's why other countries are paying for their kids to come here.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Education is very clearly in provincial jurisdiction, which can complicate things a little. However, Mr. Gervais, I believe that you are aware of the current situation at Saint-Hubert. In my opinion, there is no doubt that one of the solutions would be to plan the distribution of flight schools better. Why not bring the CEGEPs in Quebec to chat with their local airports and see about installing a flight simulator and a few aircraft, thereby establishing a flight school?

Currently, in my constituency of Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, those schools are so thick on the ground that they have become a problem. I am the first to sing the praises of aerospace and to proclaim that Longueuil—Saint-Hubert is the birthplace of a number of wonderful technologies of which we are proud. However, when almost 25% or 30% of the places in the École nationale d'aérotechnique are vacant, I see it as a deplorable situation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Mr. Nantel, I'm sorry, but there's just not enough time for an answer right now. Possibly it could be intertwined it with some other answer.

We'll move on to Mr. Hardie.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thanks to all of you for being here.

It sounds as if the free market system has really imploded in all of this. On the one hand, you have higher load factors generally, at least on the flights I take, and fares are still pretty robust, especially in the north, yet you have pilots practically lining up at food banks, a phenomenon that we've seen in the States.

You tell me that on the one hand there are a lot of people who want to go to flight schools here, but the trainers make peanuts and the tuition is really expensive. I'm sorry, but where's the money going?

[Judy Cameron]

It's expensive to operate an airplane.

I was just going to say, speaking to some earlier questions, that there are low-cost solutions too. Just being able to watch an airplane take off and land, there's no place in Toronto where you can do that. Vancouver has a great observation area. In Toronto you have to park on the side of the highway to see an aircraft.

There used to be a wonderful opportunity to have people in the flight deck. We can't do that anymore. It was one of the best selling tools. It probably cost a lot of parents a lot of money over the years if they had children watching us take off and land.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Yes, but the question is that the key people—the trainers and the students and the new pilots—all tend to.... Who would want that job if it costs you a lot of money to get trained and you end up making peanuts? Heck, I started off in radio, and it was exactly like that. Then again, we really wanted to do it.

I'm just wondering if we're dealing—millennials back home, don't listen for a second—with a millennial attitude here as well: “We want it all. We want it now.”

One of you is saying yes and the other says no.

[Judy Cameron]

I've heard that from some people who are training some of the newer pilots.

I can only attest to my own experience. I did do the northern experience. I flew up north for a year and I did pump gas on a DC-3. I did roll fuel drums. When Air Canada hired me, I went to my interview board, and they said, “Bring your log book and bring anything that you think might get you hired”, so I brought pictures of me—black and white—rolling fuel drums, wearing a flight suit and steel-toed boots. Maybe that helped me get the job.

The thing about flying is that unlike a lot of other occupations, it's really enjoyable. It's a lot of fun, and some people are just driven to pursue it no matter how difficult, but the costs are getting out of hand now.

I think the answer is to have forgivable loans, particularly if you're willing to work as a flight instructor or if you're willing to work in a northern community. I think there have to be some solutions.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Robin, do you want to comment on this as well?

[Robin Hadfield]

Yes. I think that what you see in the difference in generations is actually not a lack of motivation. I think people still want to fly, and the waiting lists for flying schools attest to that. What the airlines find is that the skill sets they come in with are a little bit different, and that could be more from the millennial side, where they don't have the same type of leadership skills.

However, this is also very rare within the industry. As Judy already said, the airline industry is up and down and up and down, and I've seen this through all the generations of our Air Canada pilots and with—

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

I have one quick question in the time I have, and I'm sorry to be so brief here.

Are we using military training to its fullest? Could the military basically make a little money on the side by training pilots?

[Robin Hadfield]

Yes, but I believe the military also has a shortage of pilots for exactly the same reason—instructors. They can't get them in fast enough.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

I might have a little extra time if you want to finish your other thought—

Oh, Mr. Gervais...?

[Bernard Gervais]

I want to add something.

I think MP Iacono also asked why they don't train. There's a highly regulated environment for training for a private pilot licence or for a commercial airline and everything around that, and it's been around for many years. It's because there's a safety issue on this. It can't be really “I'll train you.” You have to be an instructor to train people.

There's a protocol, and you'll see this in the Canadian aviation regulations. There's a protocol and a process that's tried and true, and it's really been there very long. Maybe that could be reviewed also to accelerate the process.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

We'll move to Mr. Graham.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Thank you.

One of the peculiarities about the industry that I found out when I myself started flying in 2005 was that it's the only industry in which the new pilots trained the newer pilots. There seems to be very little of the experienced pilots passing their knowledge on down.

At the same time, you can't have a 737 pilot training a 172 pilot, because it's a completely different skill set, so how do we get experienced pilots to pass their knowledge on to brand new pilots to augment the instructor base?

I open that generally to all of you.

[Robin Hadfield]

Financially, you have to give an incentive. If you have a retired airline pilot who is invited to come back to the airline to teach in simulators, they will make $70 an hour. We were talking about this earlier. If you offered to have them go into a flight school, they would make $30 an hour, so they're going to say “no way”—

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

That's if they're lucky—

[Robin Hadfield]

—but if you made that a tax-free income for them, they would all flood in. Pilots are the cheapest people you can meet in the world.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Robin Hadfield]

If you offered a pilot $30 an hour and it was tax-free, it would be the same as making $70, and you would probably have a huge percentage of retiring pilots going into these flight schools. They love working with the younger kids. They like seeing them fly. They love being in airplanes. Give them a tax incentive and they'll do it.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I have a lot of different questions, so I'll have to try to keep it brief.

We talked about the cost of flight training, as you just did, and also about mitigating the student loans for the students, but as I discussed a couple of weeks ago with respect to the Germanwings crash, we saw the risk if a student goes through their training and then loses their medical certificate. How would you mitigate this risk on loans so that you don't have people hiding illnesses and disabilities in order to pay off that loan?