Transport Committee on May 4th, 2017

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Luc Berthold]

I will give you three minutes at the end of the meeting to put forward your motion, Mr. Aubin.

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

Thank you everyone.

My first question is for Mr. Donald.

During your presentation, you spoke at length about a shortage that is plaguing your industry at all levels, if I'm not mistaken. You said the skills shortage had a direct impact on safety, and that caught my attention.

Would you mind telling us what you were thinking when you said that?

[Robert Donald]

In short, I will borrow from Mr. Deluce's comments and the example he gave that when there are not enough pilots, they are forced to hire pilots with less experience for training or operations.

The same applies to everyone in the industry, including the maintenance people who are keeping our airplanes in the air and those who are doing the turnarounds. The worldwide shortage applies not only to pilots but also to maintenance staff globally. If we don't have people with experience, we have missed a generation in terms of our hiring, and if we don't have enough people with the right skills keeping the planes in the air, I believe that safety is impacted for that reason as well.

Is that sufficiently clear, Mr. Aubin?

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

Thank you.

My next question is for Mr. Deluce.

I'm going to try to be as mindful as possible here, but I still want to know your opinion. You made it very clear that you don't support an overarching policy that applies to all airlines in Canada.

When Transport Canada issues a measure publicly, everyone, including travellers, is aware of it. Without going into detail, we do know that your company initiated legal challenges to prevent the release of a safety audit focusing on Porter Airlines.

I realize that private interests are at stake, and I don't necessarily want to pursue this, but I simply have a question. How can your customers know what the safety procedures are if the audit isn't available?

[Robert Deluce]

I think you have to go back to SMS and how it was designed, and the requirement to have a completely transparent system internally so that individuals could feel absolutely in a good position to report and flag any and all things that needed to be considered from a safety perspective.

I think there are some occasions where we have opposed the release of some information that would have gone against the intent of the SMS system when it was put in place in the first place. It's not that we have anything to hide with respect to the audits. In due course, all of the material ultimately does come out, and we feel that we are one of the airlines that is now in a more mature stage of SMS development. We were the first 705 carrier in Canada to be fully compliant with it. It just happened that in 2006 we were the courier that was sort of the test vehicle.

It has been a learning process for everyone, including Transport Canada, in understanding that system and making it more effective. For our part, we're happy to be a part of that. We're fully supportive of SMS, and we're doing our part to ensure that as an airline we run things as safely as possible. We're being as transparent as we can, as well.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Donald, I'd like to give you the remaining 45 seconds to go one step further and tell us what the government could do to support training.

[Robert Donald]

We used to have a national labour strategy in this country. We no longer do. As I noted, we work very closely with ESDC on initiatives. We have projects pending with government as we speak to develop the labour market, either to develop new standards or outreach to youth or work-integrated learning programs, etc. So we work most closely with ESDC, and closely with Transport Canada, to try to support them with various initiatives where we do things and they do things. We're trying to eliminate duplication, and they respect the work that we do. We are trying to assist them by eliminating duplication where they can rely on the work we have done to assist them with some of their analysis. As I say, we are approached by ICAO and others around the world. We have a unique system of standards and certification in this country that is not as well known as it should be. It's been developed—

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Luc Berthold]

Sorry, Mr. Donald, but I have to stop you there.

At least you were able to give a longer answer this time.

[Robert Donald]

My apologies. I went over the 45 seconds.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Luc Berthold]

That's fine.

Mr. Hardie, it is your turn for six minutes.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Canada has a history of doing some wonderfully innovative things. I'm old enough to remember the Avro Arrow and how those awful Conservatives—not those Conservatives, but the Conservatives of the day—killed that program.

Mr. Beauregard, what is the state of innovation in the aerospace industry? Put your crystal ball in front of you and tell us what's coming.

[Mark Beauregard]

It's obviously not an easy thing to predict exactly how both civil and military aircraft will evolve over time, but it's safe to say that if one wants to continue in the market-leading position or even just to stay in business in aerospace manufacturing and service, one must innovate. That's why, when you look at the aerospace industry, you'll find that the R and D intensity is about five times greater than all other manufacturing sectors in Canada. So we must innovate to stay competitive globally, and we do that in spades.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

And you're going to need the backup of the certification standards branch if things are going to happen.

[Mark Beauregard]

Yes, of course. If one cannot certify the product in a timely way with modern standards, then, first of all, you cannot even operate the product in Canada and will have great difficulty exporting it to other jurisdictions—and 80% of our goods and services are exported.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

This may be a difficult question for somebody like Mr. Deluce to answer, simply because you're already a player in the game.

Of course, we've seen the advent of the changes in ownership rules that have allowed the introduction of the so-called low-cost airlines into the mix to serve Canada. On the one hand, you have the opportunity to serve more markets more frequently perhaps, but I'm just wondering at what point does cutthroat, price-driven competition start to bring us to the line on safety?

[Robert Deluce]

I think that's a difficult question to answer. I don't think there's an airline out there that doesn't embrace safety, and certainly at Porter it is the number-one consideration in anything and everything we do. As far as the ownership thing and the—

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

I'm not so much concerned about that.

[Robert Deluce]

I won't go back to that, but how far do we go on it before that becomes a factor? I think—

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

What do we look for? What will the flags be? If you don't have an answer right now, if you have a chance to give it some thought, all three of you, then please send us something on it.

Alternatively, what are the triggers that suggest you really have to start being careful? Again, if you don't have a good answer right now, getting something after the fact would be really useful.

[Robert Deluce]

I think I'll reserve on that then and maybe think about that from my perspective, but I think it is self-policing in every way. I'll give more thought to that and give you an answer.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

I don't know who said, about free enterprise, that the awfullest of people for the awfullest of intentions end up doing the right thing for everybody.

Mr. Badawey, do you want to speak?

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Hardie.

And thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Donald mentioned moving forward with a labour strategy. Quite frankly, I have to agree, in the bigger picture. I know that in my former life, we often became more and more concerned about the demographic shift and therefore the human resource crunch that we're going to find ourselves in overall in industry, whether it be engineers, doctors, or lawyers. The list goes on.

My question is more broad with respect to your thoughts on how we then embark on that. How do we empower the people who know best, yourselves, in terms of a process? That's what I'm looking for, to be pragmatic. Again, I'd like to get all three of your thoughts on how we then move forward and be more pragmatic in coming to some recommendations to overall attach to a labour strategy.

[Robert Donald]

We have started, I'm pleased to say. Last November, we had the first ever national labour market strategy day in Canada here in Ottawa. We had industry, governments, and educators in the room to start addressing the issue. Everybody spoke about the issues. We said, “Good; now we need a working group and sub-working groups to try to take these issues on.” We are moving forward with it.

Bluntly, the question is how it is funded. We have no money. We're not-for-profit. We hope that ESDC will find a way to assist us with that. It has provided some assistance to us. Companies devoting the resources to it are already strained. What we need is industry, educators, and government all in the room. When I say “industry”, I mean AIAC, ATAC, HAC, CBAA, and all of the groups.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

I'm sure we can work within some of the resources we already have available to us, whether it be through education, secondary or post-secondary, or whether it be through different institutions or organizations such as yourselves or the existing government agencies that are currently working.

Do you find as well that within that process of—

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Luc Berthold]

You'll have to wait until your next question, Mr. Badawey.