Evidence of meeting #129 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 pilots.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Marc Vanderaegen  Flight School Director, Southern Interior Flight Centre, Carson Air
Mike Hoff  Captain, External Affairs Committee, Air Canada Pilots Association
Caroline Farly  Chief Pilot and Chief Instructor, Aéro Loisirs
Stephen Fuhr  Kelowna—Lake Country, Lib.
Churence Rogers  Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, Lib.
Heather Bell  Board Chair, British Columbia Aviation Council
Joseph Armstrong  Vice-President and General Manager, CAE
Terri Super  Chief Executive Officer, Super T Aviation
Gary Ogden  Chief Executive Officer, Go Green Aviation

12:15 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro

Thank you very much.

We'll move to Mr. Armstrong from CAE.

February 7th, 2019 / 12:15 p.m.

Joseph Armstrong Vice-President and General Manager, CAE

Hello Madam Chair and committee members. It's an honour to be here today on behalf of CAE to provide our perspectives on pilot training in Canada and abroad.

I'll give a bit of a history lesson. In 1939, in conjunction with its allies, Canada established the British Commonwealth air training plan, or BCATP. Located in communities across Canada, the BCATP trained more that 130,000 crew men and women over a six-year period, which is considered today one of Canada's great contributions to allied victory. Today our nation's history in pilot training and our strong aerospace sector remain some of our greatest national assets. Successive governments have identified flight training as a key industrial capability.

Building on the BCATP heritage, CAE was founded in 1947 by Mr. Ken Patrick, an ex-Royal Canadian Air Force officer, who had a goal to create something Canadian and take advantage of a war-trained team that was extremely innovative and very technology intensive.

Fast forward to today. We're now the world leader in training for civil, defence and health care professionals. With over 65 training locations, we have the largest civil aviation training network in the world. Each year, we train more than 220,000 civil and defence crew members, including more than 135,000 pilots. Most people don't realize it, but wherever you're travelling, chances are the pilots were either trained at CAE in a simulator we built right here in Canada, or in a training centre located somewhere in the world.

Although the number of pilots we train annually is impressive, it is far from being sufficient to meet current and future needs. In 2018, we released a pilot demand outlook. According to our analysis, by 2028 the active combined airline and business jet pilot population will exceed half a million pilots, and 300,000 of those pilots will be new. Many military pilots are choosing a career in the commercial sector. Some of the driving factors are quality of life and better pay and opportunities. Military pilot attrition is also having a significant impact on professional air forces, reducing their ability to maintain a cadre of pilots to meet operational requirements, as well as their ability to produce qualified flight instructors to support their training pipelines. We see this impact today on the military training programs we deliver right here in Canada.

In this context, maximizing the available pool of potential talent is more important than ever. Today, women make up only 5% of professional pilots and cadets worldwide. Tackling gender diversity would address that imbalance, while giving the aviation community access to a talent pool nearly twice its current size.

In a recent survey that we conducted of aviation students and cadets in Canada and abroad, a number of issues were raised consistently, including the significant financial burden placed on students to enter into pilot training as well as the lack of certainty in career outcomes when they make that investment. Women specifically raised concerns about being able to fit in a male-dominated world and have an appropriate work-life balance. The fact that they have very few female role models in aviation does not help to mitigate their concerns.

Faced with such a shortage, our industry is looking for solutions to help develop more pilots faster. We'll do this by building new types of partnerships between fleet operators and training providers to provide better links between flight schools and the airlines that will ultimately receive these students. New training systems that make better use of real-time data and analytics are facilitating a move towards competency-based training. We are taking advantage of AI and big data analytics.

12:15 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro

I'm sorry to interrupt, but could you slow down a little. I realize you only have five minutes, but the translators have to—

12:15 p.m.

Vice-President and General Manager, CAE

Joseph Armstrong

Yes, no problem.

I'll slow down the fire hose. It's a lot of information.

12:15 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro

Thank you.

12:15 p.m.

Vice-President and General Manager, CAE

Joseph Armstrong

Last summer, in partnership with the governments of Canada and the province of Quebec, CAE announced a digital transformation project to develop the next generation of training solutions. We will be investing $1 billion over the next five years in innovation, which is one of the largest investments of its kind in the aviation training sector anywhere in the world.

Beyond technology and improving training, the real challenge is attracting students and increasing diversity to broaden the civil aviation talent pool. As an example, through its recently launched CAE women in flight scholarship program, we will award up to five full scholarships to women who are passionate about becoming professional pilots and interested in becoming role models.

Incentives are required to stimulate pilot production in both the civil and military markets and to offset the significant costs associated with student fees, investments in infrastructure and the need to evolve technology to optimize training output. Focused investments are required, targeting areas such as scholarships and bursaries, which should be put in place to support financing of pilot training in Canada for students and cadets; infrastructure, to support increased pilot training capacity; committing to training and simulation as a key industrial capability; and AI and competency-based training.

We encourage Canada to increase funding and directly support pilot training as a unique part of our heritage that must be maintained as a key economic driver for growth within Canada and abroad, and as a key focus for young Canadians to become part of the global aviation community.

Thank you very much.

12:20 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro

Thank you, Mr. Armstrong.

We go now to Ms. Super from Super T Aviation.

12:20 p.m.

Terri Super Chief Executive Officer, Super T Aviation

Madam Chair, it is with great pleasure that I present to this committee the concerns and challenges facing Canadian flight schools. As the chief pilot of Super T Aviation based in Medicine Hat, Alberta, I have over 13,000 hours in medevac, training, and charter and scheduled flying experience. While I have provided the committee with a briefing document outlining our recommendations, I would like to highlight three categories for the committee to consider: student support, instructor attention and school support.

Pursuing a career as a professional pilot costs between $75,000 and $85,000 in training alone, not including living expenses. Lack of funds or their unavailability are often the reasons for student dropout or students' inability to consider a career in aviation. Therefore, we are calling for increased government-backed financial aid and assistance for flight training. This would allow students to obtain financing through the government and/or a commercial pathway and eliminate a major barrier facing Canadians interested in becoming pilots.

Amending the Canada-provincial job grant program to allow flight schools to obtain funds for employee training without the need for the training to be done by third party providers would remove another barrier facing pilots who want to improve flying qualifications. Most flight schools are the only training unit at an airport. To receive advanced training through this federal assistance program, these pilots would have to move to a new city and new airport to obtain training that could last anywhere from one to six months.

Retention of experienced flight instructors has become a major issue facing the flight school community. While flight schools would traditionally mentor an inexperienced flight instructor for one and a half to two years before they moved on to bigger, faster aircraft with a charter or small airline operator, these days the progression can be as little as a matter of months. This puts a tremendous strain on flight schools, which must constantly be training and hiring new students. This also adds a safety concern where inexperienced pilots are focused on moving on to their next job and end up flying more complex aircraft without sufficient experience.

In order to rectify this situation, I recommend that the government offer loan forgiveness for instructors similar to what is offered to medical...working in the remote and rural areas. I also recommend legislation similar to that of the United States, where pilots are required to obtain a minimum of 1,500 hours of flying experience before they are eligible to fly for the major airlines. Regulations such as these would not only aid flight schools but also small charter and medevac operations.

We need to provide help for flight schools. Flight schools are the backbone of the aviation industry and we cannot keep up with the demand, given the high cost of training which is partly due to government policy. It's a harsh reality that aircraft burn fossil fuels. The cost of fuel is one of the largest expenses for a flight school. This cost of course is passed on to the student as part of instructional fees.

To help keep the cost of training down for the student, we recommend that the federal government: one, exclude flight schools from the carbon tax, which has increased and/or will increase the cost of training for the student dramatically; two, reprise the federal excise tax for fuel on instructional aircraft; three, support the development of alternate biofuels for aircraft or electric aircraft; and four, financially support flight schools in their use of specialized equipment that is required for flight training, including flight training devices commonly known as simulators. These devices increase competency and experience in a controlled environment but come at a cost usually several times greater than the cost of a flight school's other capital assets.

In conclusion, this committee has been presented with statistics of the pilot shortage from various witnesses appearing before it. The numbers are real and the shortage is real. Flight schools are tasked with producing safe, dependable and professional pilots in ever-increasing numbers in order to sustain and in fact expand the growing aviation industry. This can only be accomplished by government and the aviation industry working together to provide students, instructors and flight schools with the resources and help they need.

Thank you very much for your time. I look forward to answering any of your questions.

12:25 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro

Thank you very much.

We go now to Go Green Aviation. Mr. Ogden, you have five minutes, please.

12:25 p.m.

Gary Ogden Chief Executive Officer, Go Green Aviation

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, members of the committee, and thank you to my fellow witness colleagues.

My name is Gary Ogden—Gary Douglas Ogden, if my mom's watching—and I'd like to speak to a higher level. My colleague Mike Rocha, who is an executive from our flight school, will be speaking to this committee on the 19th. I'd like to touch on some of the elements of our business and offer analysis of a possible root cause showing why we're in the situation we're in right now.

My background aligns itself with airports, airlines and ground service providers in the aviation industry. I rode my bike to the airport in 1979 and haven't been home since. I started as a security guard and I became a CEO. The business and the industry holds much for us all, and it offers opportunity.

I'm concerned with the fact that I have five major clients, all of whom—including Aura Airlink, which will be doing business as Central North Flying Club—are struggling to find and keep people. We face the enemy of attrition and turnover in aviation.

I have worked overseas at airports in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, in the States, and pretty much everywhere. I choose to work in Canada because I'm proud of our aviation, and as my colleague points out, we have a vast history of training. We are world-renowned for the training we offer. Part of the reason I wanted to be involved with Aura and CNFC in a flying school in Canada is that we have this reputation and should be able to attract domestic students, and we should be very successful at attracting international students as well.

We do this business for two reasons, one a holistic reason. These do still exist. I listened to my colleagues here speak about this earlier. There are holistic reasons for doing this work. We see a shortage and we want to fill it. We want to accommodate the view stated by ICAO, IATA and ATAC, and all of the industry pundits who say that there is growth in their business. We want to accommodate that growth. We want to facilitate regional access. We don't want to lose regional access by having no air service. We want also to serve our remote communities and our indigenous people to the level to which they deserve to be served. We want to build bridges and we want to fly over obstacles. We want to do so holistically, but then the economic reality sets in: The math doesn't work. Airlines and the industry itself are burdened with a number of challenges. The price of a ticket today is probably as low as or maybe less than it was in 1980, yet our costs are a lot higher.

Central North Flying Club plans to start up in Sudbury. A regional airport has to struggle to get the attention of government. I salute Mr. Fuhr and the efforts of the current sitting and previous governments as we work towards alleviating some of this problem. The problem with general aviation, GA, at regional airports is that they don't generate revenue. They generally don't pay for themselves. At best, they are revenue neutral. We don't have duty free. We don't have parking. We don't have non-aeronautical revenues to support the airport.

Kelly, who I believe is gone for now, brought up the ACAP. We need to do more for regional airports at which flying schools are located to ensure that the flying school is not burdened with the infrastructure of that airport. We have to see the flight schools, the medevac, the charters, and the public flying and learning as critical, as providing a benefit in the pipeline of our aviation industry.

In a hockey sense, think of it as your farm team. If you don't have a farm team, if you don't reproduce for the future, you are doomed not to successfully live it. We must support the farm team, must support flying schools, and must support regional aviation to the best of our abilities.

I thank all of you, because there are a number of initiatives with loans, student work programs and LMIAs. We have a number of initiatives. As for what I would like to see—I was talking to my friend MP Sikand about this—maybe we have to get our information out there better. Maybe there are programs, but maybe they're not consolidated and maybe they're not accessible, so for somebody who struggles...and God bless our friend who started a flight school after it looked like it was closing.

Maybe access to information is something that we can do, perhaps even as low-hanging fruit. Give people access to the information that they can use in order to access those funds that you have there. As well, let's grow the funding, and let's grow the initiatives to further those funds.

12:30 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro

Thank you very much, Mr. Ogden.

We'll start the questioning from our members.

Mr. Falk, you have five minutes.

12:30 p.m.

Conservative

Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all of our witnesses at committee today. Your testimony has been very interesting.

Ms. Super, I'd like to ask you a few questions.

I took my pilot's licence about 20 years ago. I have my private pilot's licence, with just over 800 hours.

At the time, I thought the cost was expensive. I was really frustrated that I couldn't write it off as a furthering education expense. It wasn't tax deductible for me at all. I talked to our local flight school operator, Harv's Air, where I took my training.

My instructor, by the way, was a woman about 20 years my junior. I had no problems with that and she had no problems with training me. She did a great job. Her name is Dana Chepil, if I can give her a little shout-out. I think she is an examiner today.

I thought at the time that the cost was prohibitive. In talking to my flight school in the last couple of weeks, they said that retaining instructors is a huge challenge. You've mentioned a few things, but what do you think would really be the number one thing or the two things that you could do to retain instructors? You talked about increasing the hours to 1,500 before they can fly commercially. That's probably not a bad idea, because most of them are instructing just to log hours to get onto a carrier somewhere. Is that right?

12:30 p.m.

Chief Executive Officer, Super T Aviation

Terri Super

Yes, that's true. Flight schools have traditionally been the bottom-feeders. Instructors do not usually stay with instructing. It would be great if we could get some of the airline captains to come back. We're currently in talks with WestJet, one of the carriers, to see if we can work out something where they lend us one of their pilots for even one or two days a month, which would be a really good start.

I don't think you're ever going to cure that problem. You can throw more money at the instructors—higher salaries—but they're looking for the “big iron”, because most of them are young people and they want to fly larger aircraft, so you can only capture them for a short period of time.

That's where I think if there were some sort of loan forgiveness it might be an incentive, because the loans are significant for these students. That may be an incentive for them to stay in the flight instructional area longer and get more experience before they go out to their other jobs.

12:30 p.m.

Conservative

Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB

I don't know what your experience is with the pilots or the potential pilots that you're attracting, whether they're domestic or international. I know that Harv's Air in Steinbach attracts a lot of international students, but domestic ones not quite so much.

I talk to young people all the time about getting into aviation and getting their pilot's licence. The number one reason they cite is not that they're not interested and not that it's not exciting—it's the cost. One of the things that adds significantly to the cost, and I know it from operating an aircraft—my Mooney doesn't fly on fumes—is the cost of fuel.

You talked a bit about the carbon tax and what it is and will be. Just last week, the National Airlines Council of Canada released a statement saying that they had done two studies in 2018 showing the negative impacts a carbon tax would have for aviation, both on the cost of passenger travel and also on the cost for flight school operators, without really any measurable effect on reducing emissions. Could you comment on that?

12:35 p.m.

Chief Executive Officer, Super T Aviation

Terri Super

The carbon tax that we have already in Alberta, and it is significant, does increase the costs.

We need the infrastructure. We need airlines. Everyone wants to fly. You guys all fly on an airline to get home on the weekends. We have to provide that.

The idea that the carbon tax will help people to reduce use of fossil fuels is just not going to be true for a flight school. The more students we put out, the more fuel we're going to use.

The one thing I see that has great potential is the use of simulation. At our school, we have an integrated course that we give to students. We have two simulators. They're flight training devices. They don't move, but they simulate flight very well, but we can't use all of that training for their licence.

12:35 p.m.

Conservative

Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB

Also, we heard previous testimony that the cost of simulators is very expensive, and you need to recover that cost somehow, as well. Perhaps there are some assistance programs you could have that would help you explore that avenue.

12:35 p.m.

Chief Executive Officer, Super T Aviation

Terri Super

Some sort of government matching for these costs—

12:35 p.m.

Conservative

Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB

I'm out of time in eight seconds, but if you have the opportunity to talk a little bit about infrastructure needs either at municipal airports or private airports, I'd appreciate that.

12:35 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro

Please be very brief.

12:35 p.m.

Chief Executive Officer, Super T Aviation

Terri Super

I'm afraid I'm not really qualified to talk about the infrastructure at airports.

12:35 p.m.

Conservative

Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB

That's fine. Thank you.

12:35 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro

Mr. Graham.

12:35 p.m.

Liberal

David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC

Ms. Super, when the transition between the panels was taking place, you met Ms. Farly from my riding. It was nice to learn about the other female airport owner. I just wanted to make that point; you hadn't mentioned that particular bit in your opening statement.

Are there other comments from the previous panel that you want to address? You indicated interest in doing so at the beginning and that in our early conversations there were things that were animating you.

12:35 p.m.

Chief Executive Officer, Super T Aviation

Terri Super

Yes. Now if I can think of them.... I'm getting a little older, so it takes me a little longer to—

12:35 p.m.

Liberal

David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC

That's okay. Some flight planning is required.

I'll go to Mr. Ogden for a second. You mentioned the costs of the infrastructure burden on flight schools. Can you go more into detail on what those costs are and what the actual numbers are?