Transport Committee on April 4th, 2017

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Mr. Belenky, I was referring to process, trying to establish in partnership with those who are doing the job, not only on the floor with respect to the work being on the stock, the planes themselves, but the protocols that can be established, the performance measures based on the objectives established to be ongoing, so proactive versus reactive, as well as ensuring that we have those clusters, those centres of excellence that can be doing a lot of this work.

I wanted to get your thoughts on that.

[Prof. Gregory Belenky]

You make excellent points, and I agree with them. This is a process. Mr. Histon referred to emerging properties, these need to be continually maintained, refreshed, and so on, but we do have this co-operative relationship between union, management, and regulator, and we all meet together and we all hash these things out. We built the fatigue risk management system, FRMS, process with input from international bodies but the part of it we built ourselves came from this co-operative engine.

I've probably exceeded my time.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

I'm trying to get you more time, but they won't let me.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

We were all listening with such intent here, but I'm sorry, yes, I have to go on to Mr. Aubin.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Since we're talking about time, I'd like to make a brief comment, which is meant to be constructive. I think that, when such high-quality witnesses are here, the number of witnesses should be limited to two or three per hour. When there are four witnesses, we lose part of the expertise provided.

That said, I'll immediately ask my first questions, which are for Mr. DaCosta.

You spoke in your opening remarks about an issue with the regularity of inspections. My question is twofold.

Should Transport Canada conduct inspections more often?

At this time, are inspections random or planned?

Are the inspectors competent enough to do their job, given that technology never stops changing?

[Carlos DaCosta]

Unfortunately, there are one or two of those questions I won't be able to answer, namely as to whether the Transport Canada inspectors are competent or not.

My understanding is that it is done randomly, and many times it is done at the request of one of the parties, who asks for Transport Canada to intervene. This was the case in Alberta, where they were having many issues with the SMS process. That's why we recommended that perhaps they should take a more hands-on approach, start finding out which areas are problematic, and go from there.

If anyone from Transport Canada or any of the committee members wish to contact me afterwards, I can provide specific information from the research section in our union as to which cities and which companies are having problems, and they can zero in on those areas.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

I was taken aback by your remarks about whistleblowers. If these people don't feel protected within the company, they'll obviously stay silent and a potential issue won't be disclosed.

Do you have anything to propose to protect whistleblowers?

[Carlos DaCosta]

That's a tough one, because even when we were talking about the area where we found a lot of this feedback, these technicians were not willing to come forward and identify themselves to us. They identified themselves to our local reps, but they didn't want to notify themselves and have their names known to the headquarters of the union.

That's why we suggested that perhaps confidential surveys would go a long way. I don't know how you would do this, but there has to be something done whereby members feel comfortable using the system and there's no apparent threat of either their career growth being stunted or repercussions afterward in the workplace. That's what these members are saying. They're afraid. They've been coerced somehow by one or two people who operate in the SMS department, and they're very reluctant.

My concern is: what is going on unreported? Hopefully, somebody beside them is reporting the incident, bypassing the person who feels threatened.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you.

I now have questions for Professor Belenky.

You spoke about the importance of taking into account the physiological factor in the regulations. Your recommendations included avoiding takeoffs and landings between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m. In terms of a 10-, 13- or 16-hour flight, is that the local time at departure or arrival?

How is the time difference taken into account on a physiological level?

[Prof. Gregory Belenky]

Well, these are long flights. Our experience has been that the longer flights are equipped with bunk facilities, so any two pilots can be sleeping while the other two are flying the aircraft. These flights are, if anything, safer, because the pilots have sleep opportunities. They take advantage of them and they sleep more on these longer flights.

It may be that the longer flights are actually, from a sleep perspective, better than shorter flights, because one has more opportunity and one generally takes it.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

After how many flying hours should the mandatory number of pilots be changed?

[Prof. Gregory Belenky]

For takeoff and landing we usually like the crews to be the ones who had the most recent nap, but really, beyond that, avoiding the window of circadian low, if possible, before takeoff and landing is a good idea.

If you look at pilots over the long haul—three days prior to an international flight, during the flight, on the layover, on the return, and then back at home again for three days, so a nine- or ten-day period of time—what you see is that there is really only one night typically out of those nine or 10 nights where there is significant sleep loss.

Most people—

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much. I've tried to stretch it here again.

Mr. Iacono.

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

Professor Belenky, you raised my attention before when you talked about napping in the cockpit, and you said that the U.S. is one of the only countries in the world that is not adopting this. Can you clarify what that is all about? What are the benefits and disadvantages?

[Prof. Gregory Belenky]

The cockpit napping studies were done by NASA approximately 20 or 25 years ago. They showed really incontrovertible evidence that a 40-minute nap yields approximately 22 minutes of sleep and that this improves performance at top of descent.

There was an advisory circular all prepared. We were ready to launch, and then somebody raised the Jay Leno test, and I can only say that the issue was whether it would be made fun of on late-night TV, and that really killed it for the U.S. You saw similar things recently when the Secretary of Transportation said that we're not paying air traffic controllers to sleep.

Sleep is good. Sleep restores performance. Sleep sustains performance and, if you get seven or eight hours in every 24, you are going to be performing well.

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

Thank you.

What recommendation would you make to the Canadian government with respect to fatigue? What is the most important recommendation you'd make?

[Prof. Gregory Belenky]

The most important recommendation is adequate sleep because sleep isn't just a mitigation, it's the fundamental thing upon which all this rests. I recommend looking at sleep opportunity, encouraging people to take the opportunity when they have it, and placing the opportunity at sleep-propitious times, which would be in the wee hours of the morning, the exact time when one should not be landing the plane, if one has the choice.

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

Thank you, Professor.

I'll be sharing my time with Ken, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Mr. Hardie.

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

In the fisheries and oceans committee, we're talking a lot about a new approach by the regulator where DFO inspectors would be seen more as collaborators, or they would be brought in to have discussions and provide advice rather than being the heavy hand with a ticket-book in tow.

I wonder if the same sort of approach might be thought of on the air side by treating those transport inspectors like a resource. Bring them in, sit down, have a coffee, and discuss what's going on, not so much to blow the whistle, but just simply to trade ideas and up the game collaboratively.

Is that possible, Mr. DaCosta?

[Carlos DaCosta]

I would think anything that is tried by Transport Canada would help, would go a long way in making sure that the system is perfected even further. To just stand back and maybe audit the paperwork isn't doing any justice to the system.

You need to get to the bottom and you need to get the players, those who do the hands-on work and those who are handling the SMS complaints, to work together and understand the theory of SMS and what we're trying to achieve. We're trying to reduce air accidents to begin with, and we're trying to put in a culture whereby, if I make a mistake, I report it, and we come up with a solution so that someone else doesn't make the same mistake tomorrow. That needs to come back to the table, and everybody needs to understand the initial concepts.

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

I don't know if this necessarily applies to flying a plane or a helicopter, but there are certain activities that are described as long periods of boredom interspersed with moments of abject terror.

Mr. Belenky, we talk about flight time, but I'm wondering what actually goes on while the pilot is awake, especially on the long-haul flights. Everything seems to be automated. Are they just sitting there twiddling their thumbs? I've never spent any time on a flight deck, but could there be long periods of mental inactivity, if you like, that really take the edge off just as much as sleep?

[Prof. Gregory Belenky]

It doesn't work that way.

The real problem is lack of sleep. If you get adequate sleep, you will retain your ability to be attentive and to process information.

The whole attentional network, which is in the brain, shrinks and dims when you're fatigued or sleep deprived, and expands out to its full glory when you're well rested. You all know the difference. When you wake up after a good night's sleep, often simple solutions to problems that have been plaguing you reveal themselves.

Sleep is the essence. It's not rest. It's not time off. It's sleep. If you get seven or eight hours of sleep, you can work most of the rest of the time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

I want to thank all of you for the valuable information you've given us today. It is possible we may be calling you back, but if you have any additional information that you think would be helpful for the committee as we move forward, we would very much appreciate you submitting it to the clerk for distribution to all our members.

I'm going to suspend momentarily so that the witnesses can leave the table and we can go on to our additional business.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

We're reconvening our meeting.

We're still in public session. We are not going into private session unless the members request that.

Mr. Aubin introduced the idea of this study. Moving forward, somehow you must have known that there was going to be some additional interest.

At the moment, what I have before me is a motion by Mr. Iacono. Would you like to speak to this or withdraw it? What would you like to do?