Thank you.
I will cut my introduction a little short. My name is Carlos DaCosta, responsible for transportation across Canada. The IAM is the largest union in the air transport sector in both Canada and North America. We represent over 50,000 members in Canada, 20,000 of whom work in the aviation, aerospace, and air transport sector. We represent over 500,000 members in North America.
In the airport security sector, we represent the majority of the pre-board screening officers in Canada, including those in the Pacific region and in both airports in Toronto, who provide safety and security screening to the travelling public on behalf of CATSA and Transport Canada as well as other security services in the perimeter of the airport. In the ground handling sector, we represent workers across Canada at such companies as Air Canada, Air Transat, and Air Labrador, just to name a few. We represent a lot of members in this industry.
We welcome the opportunity to appear before the TRAN committee to express some of our recent concerns. This represents the view of IAM members who have been surveyed across the country. There are two areas that we will be raising. The first one will be the safety management systems, or SMS, under the control of Transport Canada. The second one will be concerns regarding airport pre-boarding screening under the control of CATSA and Transport Canada.
On the first one, I was going to get into a brief bit about SMS. Basically, according to Transport Canada regulations, the industry is required to put a safety management system in place as an extra layer of protection to help save lives. When this was first implemented, we were very critical of the program, and we had some serious concerns about how it would turn out.
Moving fast-forward to today, we looked at the SMS process and broke it down into four different areas. There's the reporting stage, where a technician comes forward and reports an incident. The second stage would be the investigation carried out by the company. The third one would be the resolution process to try to address the issue raised. The last one would be the communications stage, whereby all parties to the complaint are notified as to what took place.
Unfortunately, there are too many problems. We found that in certain companies in certain areas of the country—not all of them—too many problems are occurring during this process. For some of them we're getting reports that there does not appear to be efficient tracking of SMS items submitted, and they're not being followed up properly and reported. A lot of times we find that the process seems to disappear or go silent at the second step of the process.
The other complaint we're getting is that there appears to be a lack of resolutions and communications implemented by the companies in certain areas. That's what the mechanics who report these incidents are finding. They're not getting the proper follow-up. As a recommendation, we're asking that Transport Canada conduct more inspections on a more regular basis. Perhaps they can start to uncover some of these situations and put corrections in place.
The second item is the whistle-blower protection under the SMS process, which we find is a bit on the weak side. We found it very alarming to be told by many of our members that they do not feel confident with the process. It's not in every company and in every province, but we're finding that in British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec there seems to be a higher rate of concern where members do not trust the system. We're getting various reasons. They're concerned for their well-being in the company and so on.
However, in Alberta there were some issues in the past where members finally had enough in one company in one location. They approached Transport Canada inspectors. The inspectors went into the workplace. We're told that as of today, everything seems to be running smoothly. Here's one example of where Transport Canada did intervene. They brought both sides together, the company and the workers. Whatever they did there seemed to work, because they have no complaints whatsoever. We're recommending that Transport Canada address this issue by creating a better atmosphere for workers to report safety hazards.
We're also asking if perhaps Transport Canada should be looking at a confidential survey to see what kind of atmosphere exists out there and if indeed there is a large problem where many technicians are not reporting situations.