Transport Committee on April 11th, 2017

[Laureen Kinney]

Throughout the entire period of restraint, in addressing our budget challenges, we have kept a priority on the mandatory training that is required for our oversight personnel to carry out their delegated duties. That has been a core element at the very top of our budget delegation decisions. I can assure you and the committee, Madam Chair, that this has been a priority for us and that we have carried it out in all of our safety modes in line with what I said before about core obligations.

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

As I'm a little short of time, I have a final question. Do you know of other countries that use flight simulators as a primary training tool?

[Denis Guindon]

Madam Chair, yes, absolutely. I think if you were looking at all of the other advanced countries of this world, they would keep their pilot training in the simulators. It's the same thing for the inspectors as well.

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

Thank you for your answers. I'll give it over to my colleague.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Mr. Badawey.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I have two quick questions so that you will have time to answer.

First, what campaigns does the department currently have under way in terms of safety and education?

Secondly, I think we all have watched the news in the last couple of days and recognized an incident that happened at United Airlines yesterday. How will the passenger bill of rights ensure passenger safety and customer satisfaction? I know Mr. Garneau is moving forward with that

[Laureen Kinney]

Perhaps I can answer the second question first. I'm not an expert on the passenger bill of rights. That's in our other side of the house, with our policy group. But I think from my personal perspective, the clarity of understanding how types of events will occur and what the rights and obligations of all parties are would obviously go a significant way to clarifying for everyone involved in a particular incident...and hopefully avoid many unhappy results for the traveller.

So I think that's a core issue, understanding what is expected, what the obligations are, and how it will work.

[Aaron McCrorie]

In terms of the safety and educational awareness campaigns that we currently have under way, we did a lot of work with operators to issue a Canadian aviation safety alert in response to a recommendation in a Transportation Safety Board report in 2014, I believe, that was tied to reducing the incidence of unstabilized approaches. We are continuing to follow up on that and have seen a lot of success in addressing an emerging safety issue through that campaign.

We're also using education and awareness campaigns to reduce the number of laser strikes that are happening and to build an understanding and awareness of what it means to operate an unmanned air vehicle or a drone safely. In the past, we've done safety campaigns around seaplane safety; and in the recent past, some of our regional colleagues, for example, in British Columbia, have done focused, region-specific campaigns for seaplane safety.

Laureen alluded to the fact that we're starting to look at having a more general aviation safety campaign, given some trends that we've seen. From a safety point of view, we think that working with the general aviation community in developing education products in co-operation with them, we can go a long way towards improving the safety in that particular sector, and move more quickly than we could if we were to regulate it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Aubin.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I would like to thank our witnesses for being here.

My questions are for the Transport Canada officials.

First, I would like to hear your take on some reasoning of mine. It came to me after I read a document entitled Staff Instruction (SI) SUR-001, the purpose of which is to instruct staff on how to conduct inspections.

So far, I haven't made a mistake. Page 5 refers to cancelled documents. The directive in the former Transport Canada inspection manual is cancelled. Page 8 indicates that the staff instruction pertaining to traditional inspections is cancelled. On page 7, surveillance is defined as all activities directly related to Transport Canada Civil Aviation evaluating an enterprise's compliance with applicable regulatory requirements including assessments, program validation inspections, and process inspections.

Transport Canada cancelled the staff instruction on traditional inspections and replaced it with only self-regulatory system surveillance. In light of that, would I be right to say, or think, that Transport Canada now relies almost solely on self-regulation and surveillance of self-regulatory systems when it comes to aviation oversight? That would line up with concerns expressed by Judge Moshansky, whom the committee heard from last week.

[Denis Guindon]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Aubin, for your question.

Transport Canada provides nearly 120,000 civil aviation activities per year. They range from reviewing pilot medical assessments, which can take a few minutes, to certifying the C Series aircraft, which took Transport Canada inspectors some 150,000 hours. As you can see, oversight encompasses numerous activities. Many have to do with quality, meaning system management, and many involve inspections referred to as “process inspections”.

The former mechanisms were indeed cancelled, but process inspections are still in place. For example, last year, we conducted more than 1,000 process inspections involving the country's top seven air carriers, including Air Transat, Air Canada, and WestJet. We conducted more than 300 maintenance inspections, ranging from on-ramp aircraft inspections and maintenance quality inspections to basic inspections throughout the country. With respect to flight operations, we conducted inspections of classrooms, simulators, and pilot training methods, as well as in-flight inspections. It is virtually the same for the cockpit.

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

Kindly wrap it up, as time is running out.

[Laureen Kinney]

I have a quick point on the concept of whether entities have become self regulating. I want to assure you, Madam Chair, and committee members, that is the farthest from the case in our system now. We have more than 10,000 types of activities going on that touch the companies.

The safety management system, for example, requires that they follow prescriptive and additional regulations on safety management systems. We also carry on oversight. We carry on planned oversight, and reactive oversight, where we see there's a problem, and we do follow-up oversight wherever we see there's any problem with any member of the industry. We have the evidence over the last year or two, particularly in cases where we have suspended certificates, of all categories of organizations.

I wanted to reassure everyone on the committee of that.

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

Thank you for explaining that.

Last week, I asked the Minister of Transport a question, and he answered that his department had conducted 10,000 inspections last year. However, Mr. Guindon's oversight results document indicates that, in total, an estimated 6,000 inspections were conducted in 2016-17.

How do you explain the discrepancy between the figure the minister gave—10,000 inspections—and your number—6,000 inspections—other than to say that the two figures are somewhat similar? I wouldn't want to assume that the minister misled us, but there is, nevertheless, a significant difference between the two figures.

[Denis Guindon]

We carry out approximately 10,000 a month and nearly 120,000 a year. That includes activities involving certification, pilot licence verification, simulator verification, medical records, and so forth. A huge number of services are delivered every year, roughly equivalent to 10,000 a month.

[Laureen Kinney]

If I may, Madam Chair, I think part of the complexity is a function of the types of inspections. In general, as I was mentioning, there are two major inspection categories; planned inspections, and the set of total inspections that includes the reactive, the follow-up, and so on, oversight.

Sometimes those numbers get used differently, but I would suggest that's the core of the challenge with your understanding of the minister's numbers. He was correct, but there are other ways you can frame the numbers.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

Sorry, Mr. Aubin.

Mr. Iacono.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My question is for the Transport Canada officials.

When Transportation Safety Board of Canada representatives appeared before the committee, their main concern was how long it was taking to implement the board's recommendations, more than 10 years in some cases. Can you explain why 10 years have gone by and you have still not implemented aviation safety recommendations issued by the board?

[Laureen Kinney]

The Transportation Safety Board has raised a number of issues in the last few years, and has drawn more attention to those with their watch-list. That has been very helpful to Transport Canada, in helping us to focus on some of the highest safety priorities.

We have looked at all of the outstanding recommendations. We've been working closely with them to go back through the set of recommendations that exist.

I can give you reasons, which are probably not entirely satisfactory unless you look at each individual recommendation. There are instances where, in our view, the technology has superseded the recommendation, so in some cases, we would not necessarily be moving forward with a particular approach to a recommendation.

There are situations where the recommendation in principle is a good recommendation, but when you look at the practicality of implementing it....

I'll use the three point shoulder belt recommendation for older aircraft. When we looked at the complexity of doing that and worked on that, we found that the structure of these older aircraft would simply not support that particular recommendation.

One of the things that we've been doing with the Transportation Safety Board is working with them to clearer in defining where we see some of those challenges. Sometimes we've been too slow, and so we agree that we have to move more quickly.

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

Thank you. We heard from witnesses that fatigue management rules should vary according to the flight circumstances, for example, long international flights versus multiple short flights involving many takeoffs and landings.

Would such a case-by-case approach be possible?

[Laureen Kinney]

That's a very good question, Madam Chair.

We can go into more detail if you would like, but in general, the bottom line is that the science doesn't change. Fatigue is fatigue, and if you're working, science doesn't change. The fatigue doesn't change.

The department has incorporated advice from different industry members on how you can manage the variance between a set of prescriptive regulations that set work hours and the different ways you can manage fatigue more flexibly. We are looking at a dual system, in effect, where you set a minimum mandatory requirement for rest, and then you set a requirement to develop a fatigue management system that will allow the company to say, “This is exactly how, because of our particular unique operations, we will manage fatigue,” in a way that meets the science and not just the operational interest. That is the approach.

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

Thank you.

Since the implementation of safety management systems, has the number of Transport Canada inspections gone up, dropped, or stayed the same?

[Laureen Kinney]

That's a good question.

I think we've had safety management systems in place, Madam Chair, since the 2005-07 timeframe.

I would have to go back and look at the specific numbers. I wouldn't want to mislead the committee, but in general, certainly for the last number of years that I've been watching the numbers, there has not been a significant change other than some increases where we have improved our—

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

Could I make a suggestion, Madam Chair? Could she provide us with this information? She could forward an email to us.

I have another question for Nav Canada.

Why would you say we have a good track record?

[Larry Lachance]

Do you mean a good track record in aviation?