Transport Committee on April 4th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you.

Mr. Rayes.

[Alain Rayes, Conservative, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Madam Chair, out of respect for the witnesses who have taken the trouble to come here, I will be brief.

I cannot in any way support my colleague Mr. Iacono's motion. I think that what was put forward by Mr. Berthold would allow us, following our assessment, to quickly submit recommendations to the government, without impinging upon the work of this committee on aviation safety.

We could discuss this for a long time, but I think things are clear. People are intelligent enough to understand both motions and their respective intent. It will be my pleasure to support Mr. Berthold's motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you.

Mr. Aubin.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I feel obliged to respond. In his remarks, Mr. Iacono said the study on aviation safety was wide open, that we didn't have anything very specific and that things could go in all directions. However, Madam Chair, you asked me at our last meeting to specify the focus of the study. I did so using six points, which I'll reiterate for Mr. Iacono. We want to focus on the fatigue issue, pilot certification, flight attendant ratio, cosmic radiation, toxic vapours and inspector training. If that isn't specific—

In addition, based on these six points, we determined the number of hours to spend on our study. This shows that we're heading somewhere. The document prepared by the library's analysts refers to these six points, which shows the study is properly aligned with them.

That said, I'm not opposed to conducting another study on airport security. I recognize the importance of addressing this subject. I also recognize the importance of my colleague Mr. Berthold's proposal, which seems to be a compromise. This would enable us to address the two issues at the same time and to move on quickly to hearing from our witnesses, which is the goal of our meeting today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you.

Mr. Berthold.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Chair, in my motion, I'm ready to include all the elements in the motion moved here by the Liberals, such as the study on the other airports. That way, we can conduct a study along the same lines as the aviation safety study we've already started. That's fine with me. However, I thought that, given our agenda, we didn't really have much time to spend on aviation safety.

Mr. Iacono, I'm perfectly willing to combine our motions if we can address the airport security situation in a separate study. We could hold two or three other meetings, which would address your concerns and the concerns of Canadians regarding airport security.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

We still have to go back to Ms. Block and Mr. Aubin.

I wonder. We have many witnesses in the room. I think we all care very much about airport safety, and we're in a way all talking in the same terms. It's a question of how we do this, in consideration of the fact that we have adopted a motion to move forward on very similar issues.

Could I make a suggestion that we defer dealing with this motion to the last 15 minutes of the meeting to see whether we can think through a little further which way we go? That's just so that we don't hold up so many people today. We could defer any further discussion until the last 15 minutes of today's meeting. Would that be acceptable, so that we could at least get started on our meeting today?

In the last 15 minutes of our meeting today we would go back to Mr. Iacono's motion. Would that be acceptable to the committee?

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

Madam Chair, as long as Mr. Berthold doesn't move his motion—

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Right now I have one motion on the floor—

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

Thank you. I just want it to be clear on the record.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Could we find some way to have further discussions while we listen to our witnesses, to try to come to an understanding of our goals and objectives as to where we're trying to go?

If the committee is okay with that, the last 15 minutes of the meeting—

Mr. Berthold.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Iacono asked me not to move any motion in advance, which I can't guarantee. However, I already agreed that we could discuss his motion at the end of the meeting, in the last 15 minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

I don't believe anyone is asking you to do that.

[An hon. member]

He just did.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Can we please get on?

Our apologies to the witnesses, but these transportation issues are of real importance to all of our members.

To open it up, we have Kathleen Fox, chair of the Transportation Safety Board of Canada; Jean Laporte, chief operating officer; and Yanick Sarazin, manager, standards and quality assurance, air investigations—all so appropriate to be here for many reasons today.

Thank you very much for joining us.

I'll turn the floor over to Ms. Fox.

[Kathleen Fox, Chair, Transportation Safety Board of Canada]

Good morning, Madam Chair and honourable members.

Thank you for inviting the Transportation Safety Board of Canada to appear today as you begin your study into aviation safety.

Our mandate at the TSB, which is also our sole purpose, is to promote safety in the air, marine, rail and pipeline modes of transportation.

When something goes wrong, we investigate to find out not just what happened, but also why. And then we make public what we've learned, so those best placed to take action, regulators and the industry, can do so.

To set the stage for your study, we would first like to table a preliminary version of the TSB's 2016 statistics on aviation safety for the use of the committee. Overall, Canada's aviation industry has a very good safety record, showing a significant downward trend over the last 10 years in the accident rate for Canadian registered aircraft, expressed as accidents per 100,000 flying hours. The incident rate paralleled the reduction in accident rate up to 2014 when the TSB enacted new regulations that made more incidents reportable.

However, there is always room for further improvement, particularly when known risks persist in the aviation system. Which brings me to the TSB watch-list that we updated at the end of October 2016 and have previously sent to your committee for information. This list identifies key safety issues that need to be addressed to make Canada's transportation system even safer. Currently, there are three aviation specific issues on the watch-list: unstable approaches, runway overruns, and the risk of collisions on runways.

In the interests of time I will only briefly describe each issue.

Continuing an unstable approach—for example, one in which the aircraft is too high and too fast on approach—constitutes a frequent contributory factor to serious landing accidents.

One type of accident includes a runway overrun, when the aircraft is unable to stop before the end of the runway.

The TSB has investigated numerous landing accidents related to these two issues. One dramatic example of this occurred in 2005 at Toronto's Pearson Airport when Air France ran off the end of runway 24L into a ravine where the aircraft caught fire. Fortunately, no one was killed, but over two dozen people were injured.

Since 2007, the TSB has recommended that Transport Canada implement a variety of measures to address these issues, including enhanced training in pilot decision-making and crew resource management, improved guidance to pilots for landing when thunderstorms are present, enhanced use of airline flight data monitoring programs, and requiring major airports to implement 300-metre runway and safety areas or other engineered material arresting systems to meet international recommended practices.

With respect to the third aviation-specific issue, airports are busy places, with multiple aircraft and vehicles traversing runways and taxiways, in addition to aircraft landing and taking off all the time.

This can sometimes lead to conflicts known as runway incursions, which occur about once a day somewhere in Canada. The board is particularly concerned by the number of serious runway incursions in which a collision was narrowly avoided or there was a significant potential for collision. More needs to be done to provide technological defences to alert flight crews and vehicle operators directly in time to prevent a collision.

There are also two watch-list issues that affect not just aviation safety, but also marine and rail transportation.

The first of these multimodal issues is safety management and regulatory oversight. Put simply, some transportation companies are not managing their safety risks effectively and the majority of air operators in Canada are not yet required to implement safety management systems. Furthermore, Transport Canada's oversight and intervention has not always been effective at changing companies' unsafe operating practices. The board is encouraged that Transport Canada is taking action to address the issues identified with regulatory oversight, and we look forward to the results of the department's review of its aviation oversight program, expected at the end of 2017.

The other multimodal watch-list issue is the slow progress made by Transport Canada in addressing numerous TSB recommendations. While the responses to about three-quarters of all of the TSB recommendations in all modes issued since our creation in 1990 have received our highest rating of fully satisfactory, there are currently 52 recommendations directed to Transport Canada that have been active for more than 10 years, and 39 of these have been active for over 20 years, of which 32 are in aviation. Implementation of these recommendations could go a long way to reducing known preventable risks that continue to play a role in aviation accidents.

However, the regulatory issue is not just a Transport Canada issue. We would respectfully suggest that you consider the need to adopt an expedited process for taking action on safety-related recommendations, similar to what you recommended as part of the rail study.

One issue that is not on our watch-list, but is a current topic of discussion between Transport Canada and the aviation industry, is pilot fatigue. The TSB recognizes that fatigue is a hazard in any mode of transportation that operates 24-7. We always look for fatigue in our investigations, whether it was present or not, and, if it was, whether or not it contributed to an occurrence. Over the years, we have made findings with respect to the role that fatigue has played in aviation occurrences. We included fatigue as a specific issue in railway freight crews on our 2016 watch-list, but we did not have sufficiently compelling data to support elevating fatigue in aviation to the watch-list. However, that should not be construed to imply that fatigue isn't an issue in aviation or that it does not warrant further attention.

Finally, if we look at specific sectors of the commercial aviation industry, the TSB is particularly concerned about air taxi operations, which typically involve smaller airplanes and helicopters carrying up to nine passengers to smaller communities. In Canada, these operations have by far the largest number of accidents and fatalities in commercial aviation, which is why the TSB launched a broad safety study on air taxi operations in 2015 looking at air taxi occurrences during the period 2000-2014. This study will identify and examine the hazards and risk factors associated with air taxi operations in Canada, how these are being managed, and what additional measures are needed to improve safety in this aviation sector. We expect to issue our final report in early 2018.

In closing, we very much appreciate your focus on aviation safety and we're pleased to have been invited here today to speak with you about it.

We hope that our presence will help inform your study, and we are now ready to answer any questions you may have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Block.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I'd like to thank you for being here today as we launch on this study on aviation safety.

My first question would be in reference to the TSB's 2016 watch-list of safety concerns that was released on October 31, 2016.

In that report, you stated that for the first time the TSB would be reaching out directly to aviation industry stakeholders to address safety problems arising from your crash investigation reports. I'm wondering if you would explain that a little more fully for us.

[Kathleen Fox]

The TSB initiated our first watch-list back in 2010, representing those issues that we believed, based on our data, posed the greatest risk to Canada's transportation system. We explained those issues to the industry, to the regulators, to the public, and the media, and then waited to see what action would be taken.

What we found is that over the course of the last six or seven years, a number of steps have been taken. We were able to take some issues off the watch-list, but we've added new ones. However, some issues, and in particular in this latest watch-list eight issues, have been carried over from the 2014 version.

What we've done differently with the 2016 edition is to be more explicit about the type of action we would like to see taken. We are also actively going out, speaking to the regulator, the departments, to industry, stakeholders, operators, to engage them and make our case for the changes that need to take place to make the transportation system safer.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Thank you. I'm interested in those numbers.

It's my understanding that your 2016 watch-list also cited Transport Canada's failure to address more than 50 TSB safety recommendations that are now more than 10 years old, and over three dozen that are more than two decades old.

In fact, I think to quote, you stated, “There is no reasonable excuse for taking that long—especially in cases where [Transport Canada] agrees that action is needed.” And you said, “Good intentions aren't enough.”

What has happened to those safety recommendations that are over 10 years old and those that are over two decades old?

[Kathleen Fox]

When the TSB issues a recommendation, under our act the minister is required to respond as to how the department will address that recommendation. That response has to be given to us within 90 days. We then assess the response and then reassess the response, typically annually, until the matter is resolved.

What we were finding a few years ago is that on a number of recommendations that we had made to Transport, the department had laid out a plan of action with a timetable, and while the plan of action seemed reasonable in terms of addressing the safety deficiency, the timetable was being continually shifted to the right, continually delayed. A few years ago, we said that instead of giving our rating of satisfactory intent, meaning that Transport Canada's plan was reasonable, we would no longer accept protracted delays. We would start assessing some of these recommendations as unsatisfactory. Even though the plan was reasonable, the timetable was not. After several years of that, when we did our latest watch-list, we realized that even on some of those recommendations, there still wasn't action being taken on a timely basis. There were still delays, and that's why we escalated this particular issue to our watch-list.

Since we issued the watch-list in October 2016, we have just gone through the reassessment cycle that we do annually on outstanding recommendations. We have not seen much movement on many of those recommendations, however, recognizing that Transport's response to us would have come within a month or two after issuing the latest watch-list.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

I'm guessing that if I asked you whether in your opinion, when it comes to aviation safety, Transport Canada should be part of the solution, you would say, yes, absolutely, however, it would appear that there are a number of issues within Transport Canada that actually make it part of the problem in terms of the timeliness of addressing some of the recommendations.

You've also talked about the fact that some transportation companies are not managing their safety risks effectively, and that the majority of air operators in Canada are not yet required to implement safety management systems. I am wondering if you can speak to that issue just in the brief time that I have left in terms of safety management systems and how is it that they are not yet required to implement one as an air operator.

[Kathleen Fox]

If I may just comment on the first part of your question, notwithstanding that we would like to see Transport Canada enact more regulations to establish a common baseline for safety, industry can also take action. They don't have to wait for regulation in order to make changes that can reduce risk. Also, Transport Canada has often responded to our recommendations saying they have to undertake studies, they have to do consultation, or they may want to harmonize with other international bodies. I think the rule-making or the regulation-making process itself, which involves more than just the department, has to be examined in terms of the role it plays.

With respect to safety management, TSB believes that when properly implemented, safety management systems can help any commercial operator in any mode of transportation better manage its safety risk.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much, Ms. Fox. We're tight on time.

Mr. Sikand.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair. I will be splitting my time with my colleague.

I understand that in 2012 Transport Canada made a decision to remove small business aircraft from the SMS surveillance programs and I was wondering if you could speak to that and provide your opinion of that decision.