Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for your invitation to appear today.
My presentation will be from a regional perspective, more down-to-earth and less strategic than the other witness presentations.
I worked for 26 years in management at the Civil Aviation Directorate of Transport Canada. Since 2010, I have been providing training on aviation safety in different institutions.
We are in a period of continuous aviation safety improvement, and we must make the necessary efforts to ensure that this situation continues. Nine years after the implementation of the Transport Canada Civil Aviation Oversight Program, its relevance and effectiveness are still being questioned.
My presentation covers three areas. First, the oversight of Transport Canada, in effect since 2008. The simultaneous implementation of the new surveillance procedures, including increased surveillance, program validation inspections or PVIs, SMS assessments, and the civil aviation internal organization, have had a significant impact on the industry oversight. At first, PVIs revealed that operations managers lacked operational control, which could have been avoided if they had the necessary tools, like quality assurance, to exercise that control. Thus, the SMS airlines' implementation undertaken in 2005, should be completed by the addition of the quality assurance element. For enterprises that do not have an SMS, the implementation could be done over a longer period, starting with quality assurance.
Secondly, I'd like to speak to the training of civil aviation personnel. In the Quebec region, training gaps were identified in 2013. Corrective actions require a regional investment and appropriate headquarters support.
My third topic is training within the industry. Since December 2014, the public no longer has access to all Transport Canada documentation, and this has made the preparation of training courses far more difficult. We are missing a lot of information. I provide further details in the brief I prepared for you.
I will do my best to answer your questions to the best of my abilities.
Thank you.