Transport Committee on April 4th, 2019

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Are we all in favour of holding off further discussion and putting in a 15-minute block at the end of our Tuesday meeting, if Mr. Kmiec can come and speak to it? We'll all try to put our heads around it and see if there is a way to make that work.

Would that be all right? Would everybody be in agreement with that? Okay.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Just to confirm, that will be in public.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Of course.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

That's wonderful, thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

We'll go back to Mr. Benedetto.

We have four minutes. Does anybody have any questions for Mr. Benedetto?

Mr. Kmiec, you have 44 seconds left.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Since I used up so much time, I'll give it to my colleagues on the government caucus side.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Everybody at transportation works really well.

Gagan, do you have a question?

[Gagan Sikand, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

I sure do.

Thanks for returning to our committee. I was at Nav Canada, at their facility at Pearson. My riding is right next to it. They were showing me how Aireon is going to work, because I guess they have a share in Aireon. It's pretty exciting stuff. Can drones be fitted with the technology that Aireon uses?

[Tony Di Benedetto]

We've spent the past several years developing technology. For us, it was all about getting regulatory approvals to do this. Our system is called Flyte. I'm not 100% sure what Aireon has built, but ours has been tested. It's been proven that it works.

[Gagan Sikand, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

What is it called, sir?

[Tony Di Benedetto]

It's called Flyte. We flew in active flight paths.

[Gagan Sikand, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Okay. You mentioned the word “dimension”, which I find pretty interesting. After seeing how the screens work in tracking the planes, I wonder, wouldn't those screens get overwhelmed, because drones are small and there are hundreds of them? How would you monitor them?

[Tony Di Benedetto]

An air traffic control system is what we built. It's happening around the world. Canada is not unique. The reality is that Canada is actually leading in this space today.

It's a matter of risk mitigation. We work on predefined flight paths versus having a drone fly rogue. It's a railway in the sky. Think of putting tracks in the air and you're flying to and from, back and forth, all day long. There's a lot of technology that has been incorporated to mitigate the risk.

[Gagan Sikand, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

All right.

Thank you all very much.

Mr. Jeneroux, we have one minute left.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Just before you adjourn the meeting, can I confirm that we have the minister confirmed for April 11?

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

April 11 is Minister Champagne for 90 minutes, and at a later date we have Minister Garneau. We have both of them.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

That's the second time you've asked that question. You'd better have a whole slew of different questions.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

I'm going to keep asking it until he shows up.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

April 11 is the date.

Thank you very much. I'm sorry for the interruption. I'm glad you had a chance to come back. If committee members have any additional questions, they can reach you directly.

[Tony Di Benedetto]

Thanks for having me.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

The meeting is adjourned.