Evidence of meeting #35 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 drones.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Director General, UAS Centre of Excellence
Yes.
I would like to finish my example. We must not think about drones as we see them today. Twenty or 30 years ago, who would have thought that we would have a computer, a telephone and a camera in our pockets? An entire infrastructure has developed around telephone use.
I believe in drones. I believe that drones will deliver pizzas too, but it won't happen tomorrow. That is why we are here to talk about it and to put regulations in place. It is a matter of time.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
This is fascinating. I've had a chance to chat with some of you. We've received a couple of suggestions that we don't lapse into techno panic, and I don't think there's any need for that.
I see some great opportunities, especially in the North, to serve the remote communities, to drop in needed supplies, etc. There are boundless opportunities here, and we have to have the regulatory framework that looks after that.
I also envisage the day when we see a drone handcuffed in the back of a police car because it has just delivered drugs to somebody.
Notwithstanding the fact that a lot of these things are going to be gifts at Christmas, my prediction is that within a year a lot of them are going to be sitting up on a shelf somewhere when the novelty has worn off, which leaves us with two sectors. One is commercial, and commercial has some very robust visions. The other is the hacker. When I was a kid, back when we were banging rocks together, we used to love to soup up our cars. Somebody had a brilliant idea. Why don't we create drag strips, so the kids can get out and safely demonstrate what they are doing? As we speak, there are hackers in basements building bigger and faster drones that can go higher.
I guess I'll look to you, Mr. Moher, and Mr. Moffatt, you can comment as well. Has there been any thought as to how to engage these hackers, bring them out, let them play in the sunshine, and let them innovate, instead of forcing them into the basement where they are going to be up to no good?
Vice-President, Business Development, Fresh Air Educators
That's an interesting topic, and you're right. There are some limitations on the drones that are available right now. If you asked a number of the manufacturers about the current regulations, one of the topics is a design requirement.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
You know as well as I do that there is going to be somebody who is going to modify that.
Vice-President, Business Development, Fresh Air Educators
Right, and I guess that design requirement would criminalize them for doing those types of things. They would have to sign off on not making some of these design requirements. It's a bit of a balance. You heard other witnesses earlier. Some of those modifications they are making make that, in fact, safer.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Yes, but Mr. Badawey was absolutely right on. Unfortunately, it's pretty easy once you really start thinking to black hat this a lot.
Mr. Moffatt, what do you think? Should we create the equivalent of a drag strip for the hackers who really want to have fun and innovate with these things, but to keep them from going to the dark side?
Director General, UAS Centre of Excellence
I don't know if I'd call them hackers, but there are a few companies in Canada that if you look at the system behind, there's no airworthiness confirmation behind it. These systems have been put together and we haven't really put them up to the rigorous testing we would do for an aircraft. I'll take the example of a laptop. You turn—
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Quickly, please, if you could, because I have some more questions.
Director General, UAS Centre of Excellence
You need to make sure when you put these things together that they are airworthy, that they are thoroughly tested. When we implement those rules, from the airworthiness aspect of systems, then we'll see some of these systems disappear, in my opinion.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
With respect, we need to factor in the people who will not play by the rules, who will not put identification on, who will not put a transponder on them. We need to engage these folks rather than, as I say, leave them to their own devices.
This brings me to the key question I have.
Public confidence—somebody mentioned it in the first panel—is going to be critical to the growth of this industry. It's going to happen anyway. I mean, that train has left the station and I think we all agree that the genie is out of the bottle on this thing. Further to what my colleague here was talking about earlier, if I'm writing recommendations, and I will be, I'm going to be suggesting that industry has to take a proactive lead in helping us manage this technology. It isn't going to be left up to the government, or an understaffed Transport Canada, to deal with it. You guys have to get out in front of this, if you're going to enjoy any kind of public confidence. Do you have any comments on that?
Paul Di Benedetto Chief Technology Officer, Drone Delivery Canada
Sure, absolutely. It's nice to meet everybody today, by the way.
One of the things that we took a look at when we started this endeavour was exactly that type of rogue mentality. You look at our UAVs that we plan on putting into the skies. These are larger than the ones that you see behind us, because we are going to be moving merchandise to remote communities, and so forth, and down the road to a home, a driveway, a rooftop somewhere. The imperative thing that needs to be looked at in all these UAV manufacturers, and all the people who look at these systems that these UAVs come out of, is an ability to ground stop these vehicles. Our embedded systems, that we made sure are built up with that philosophy from the ground up, if there's a ground stop, or Transport Canada or NAV Canada needs to say that you cannot fly, those UAVs shouldn't be taking off at all. If there's a way to enact legislation, a law that forces the manufacturers of these chip sets, like companies such as Intel, AMD, and other manufacturers—
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
I get where you're going here, but back to you guys. You actually have to help us come up with this.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
I've run out of time. My advice to you is to get ahead of us on this, because you don't want draconian regs that slow you down and put us further behind.
NDP
Robert Aubin NDP Trois-Rivières, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I would like to go back to the subject of education, which seems critical to me. It seems to me that the industry will make greater strides in the area of professional use. That is actually already more regulated than the recreational side, even though the recreational side takes up more space at the moment.
I am fine with your drones flying over our forests and pipelines and in the far north. But when the neighbour's drone flies over my backyard, I have a problem, not with identity theft in this case, but with the shattering of my privacy.
How do you deal with the right to privacy with something as new as the drone industry?
Let us start with Mr. Moher.
Vice-President, Business Development, Fresh Air Educators
All of our courses have a very strong ethical component to them. In building out that curriculum, if these are key issues, of course there's legal ramifications, and any operator needs to know what the regulatory requirements are. That has to be in the training, of course, but then there's that grey area. That's where the training can come in. A big component of a lot of our courses deals with scenario-based training. We put them through different scenarios and allow them to have some thought-provoking opportunities to consider what they may or may not do in certain situations.
NDP
Robert Aubin NDP Trois-Rivières, QC
Since you mention a grey area, for me, it is that current privacy regulations are not sufficiently precise for you to deal with the entire problem in your training sessions.
Vice-President, Business Development, Fresh Air Educators
Certainly, if those are going to be the legal requirements, and if that's what we want the course to cover, it can cover whatever the curriculum would mandate. I would argue that it wouldn't just be the rules and regulations. Sometimes you need to go beyond that into some areas where they need to be a bit more thought provoking. We talked about the idea of stewards here.
Most drone operators are the most ethical you can imagine. I don't have a cynical view of my neighbours. I didn't have it before drones were around, and I won't have it moving forward. That doesn't change my perception of things. Certainly, if these are concerns, then let's ensure that's part of the training.
NDP
Robert Aubin NDP Trois-Rivières, QC
Do either of the other witnesses want to add anything, or make any suggestions, about the ethical aspects of the drone industry?
Director General, UAS Centre of Excellence
I can talk about awareness. I can give another example of what one company has done.
The little system we saw, the one from DJI, comes in quite a small box. The company has put on a large and very visible sticker on the side of the box, informing the purchaser to go to the Transport Canada website to get information about privacy, given the problems involved.
In this case, the distributor took the initiative. It was not done because of any Transport Canada regulations. There are a number of similar examples that could be used.
Chief Technology Officer, Drone Delivery Canada
Leaving a lot of this up to the operator is the area of problem here, especially in the recreational world. The philosophy is there have to be technologies built into these UAVs at any level, recreational and commercial, that force these UAVs not to do specific things, be it not flying at a particular height, be it not exceeding a certain geofence that's around Parliament or around certain schools. These are technologies that need to be embedded that cannot be altered, not by a consumer. There are always going to be hackers that will try to do things to it, but this is technology that we need to bring, activate, and propose to the manufacturers.
We have close relationships with the manufacturers we use. That's the driver for us on what we do for safety. The last thing you want is for someone to take control of a UAV that's in the sky doing something. On the recreational side, you look at these smaller drones, and we see them as toys. In reality, they're not toys. They're toys to us, but they can be malicious to other people.
The manufacturers need to take up some responsibility. We, as designers and operators, have a very vested interest in this to protect the security of not only ourselves and our clients but the populace in general. I think it's something that needs to be addressed with the manufacturers who put out this technology, saying that this has to be in there, and it has to be at the base, ground level of the technology.
