Thank you and good afternoon.
CFPA members work as Transport Canada's most highly skilled aviation inspectors. I am here to add their front-line perspective to this very important study.
Our message is sobering. We are witnessing the dismantling of aviation safety oversight in Canada and the progressive weakening of Transport Canada's inspectorate. This state of affairs has been years in the making. Piece by piece, the checks and balances that have delivered one of the safest aviation systems in the world are falling victim to cost-cutting and misguided management. Meanwhile, the perishable skills and competencies of inspectors are deliberately being allowed to wither.
All the while, Transport Canada officials reassure you that all is well. But consider this: a dangerous culture of non-compliance and secrecy has set in over the years. Transport Canada has come to regard safety regulations and international safety requirements as little more than inconveniences that can be ignored to satisfy budget limitations or industry pressure, without regard to public safety. I say “dangerous” because this culture affects aviation in Canada at large.
In a recent example, last August, without consultation and in secret, Transport Canada completely withdrew or reduced safety oversight from significant portions of aviation, including all airports in the country, business aircraft like those in which Jim Prentice and Jean Lapierre died, urban heliports, and aircraft that do dangerous work like fire bombing.
While reassuring you that inspection is robust, Transport Canada watered down its inspection process in order to boost its 2016 performance metrics. These and other decisions have been taken without notice to Parliament, MPs, or the public, through a bureaucratic tool called an internal process bulletin, a practice the department is using with increasing regularity.
Transport Canada is quietly planning to roll back oversight even further by completely washing its hands of monitoring the proficiency of pilots, delegating professional pilot exams to industry, and allowing airlines to set their own operational safety standards without checking. With the cancellation of the inspection and audit manual, Transport Canada gave up its ability to ensure compliance with the safety regulations. The singular reliance on SMS puts Canada offside with ICAO, which requires member states to establish and maintain safety through direct operational oversight. In fact, Canada fails to meet more than half of ICAO's mandatory minimum safety requirements. That's right: Transport Canada is offside with eight out of 13 of ICAO's mandatory minimums. These are requirements, not suggestions. Our assessment of Canada's performance in this regard can be found at tab four of our handout.
In keeping with its default towards secrecy, Transport Canada hasn't notified ICAO of these deficiencies, as member states are required to do.
You may be wondering how it is possible for my remarks to be so different from the story you heard earlier from Transport Canada. I was struck by the misleading nature of the testimony you heard from officials. It deserves a reality check, which we have produced for your information. This can be found at tab five.
We should be able to provide the minister with a signed written statement that the inspected airline is fully compliant with all safety regulations. Right now, an inspector is not able to do that. That is why I urge your committee to recommend that the government reinstate compliance audits to determine whether or not an airline is in compliance with safety requirements.
On behalf of the public, the minister needs to know if the airlines are meeting safety requirements, not whether or not they have a good SMS. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, the public is expecting the minister to trust the airlines to act in their own self-interest but also to verify that safety standards and requirements are being met. Without this change, an aviation disaster on the scale of Lac-Mégantic is very likely.
Transport Canada must be put on a tighter leash. There should be no more sweeping decisions to dismantle oversight made in secret. Transport Canada should be required to justify in a public forum, such as this committee, why less oversight means more safety.
It has been more than a decade since ICAO last audited Transport Canada's safety oversight system; this happened in 2005. Your committee should recommend that Transport Canada invite ICAO to complete a full assessment of Canada's compliance with minimum international safety requirements.
Finally, we concur with Justice Virgil Moshansky's recommendation for a commission of inquiry into aviation safety oversight. We agree that it's long overdue.
Thank you.