Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon, committee members, fellow witnesses and guests.
I would like to thank you for allowing us to present today to members of the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities for your study on the impact of COVID-19 on the aviation sector.
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, IBEW, represents 70,000 members here in Canada, and over 775,000 across North America in a variety of sectors. For today's discussion, we'll be focusing on our members who work for Nav Canada.
Joining me here today is Paul Cameron, business manager of IBEW Local Union 2228, which represents just over 2,000 members across the country, including all 600 members at Nav Canada who work as electronics technologists.
Nav Canada is a private non-profit corporation that provides air traffic control, airport advisory services, weather briefings and aeronautical information services for more than 18 million square kilometres of Canadian domestic and oceanic airspace. It is Canada's sole air navigation services provider and, prior to privatization, was once part of Transport Canada.
Nav Canada's safety record is undeniably one of the best in the world amongst air navigation services providers, thanks in large part to the expertise of IBEW members and those who belong to the seven other unions that represent the over 4,000 highly skilled Nav Canada employees nationwide.
We often describe Nav Canada as an essential utility, much like our electricity system. Many people take electricity for granted until the day the power lines are down and they cannot be reached. Nav Canada is a utility that is used by international and domestic airlines, and it cannot simply be reduced in capacity and returned to a full level of functioning by the flip of a switch.
Nav Canada's customers include airlines, air cargo operators, air charter operators, medevacs, air taxis, helicopter operators and business and general aviation.
Nav Canada operates under the Civil Air Navigation Services Commercialization Act and recovers its operating expenses through service charges from its customers on a break-even basis, and herein lies the major issue for Nav Canada. It is restricted to operating on that break-even basis.
With air traffic down 86.8% year over year according to Stats Canada, it didn't take long for it to run into financial issues, much like the other presenters across the aviation sector have mentioned here today. Nav Canada is currently losing millions of dollars every day, even after the benefit of the Canada emergency wage subsidy is factored in.
IBEW members at Nav Canada are employed as electronics technologists, with specialized training in aviation navigation technology. This specialized training is delivered by Nav Canada to eligible employees who are hired after completing electronics technology courses on their own.
Nav Canada's training is not offered at any other school in the country. The specialized training for IBEW members can take up to two years to complete. Our members and those experts working for the seven other unions at Nav Canada work in close collaboration with one another on a daily basis, and one can simply not operate without the other.
Now these professionals are being laid off, and they are not going to wait around for a call back to work. Their skills and expertise will land them jobs in other sectors around the country and around the globe, leaving a massive gap in Nav Canada's ability to ramp up service when air travel returns to pre-pandemic levels, which we are all hoping for. Simply replacing laid-off workers who seek work elsewhere is not as simple as you may assume.
Inaction on this request will cost Canadians the training and expertise of these professionals who have kept our skies safe and will only slow down the post-pandemic recovery for Canada's air travel, cargo and tourism industries.
I think this important point bears repeating. Reducing staffing levels and the company's capacity to provide an essential service now and for many years into the future is a potential catastrophic safety risk to the aviation sector and to the Canadian public. We need the federal government to act now. It's time to put safety first.
Our ask is simple. We want to see emergency funding in the form of a grant to Nav Canada in the amount of $750 million for both 2020 and 2021. That will help stabilize its operations and retain all Nav Canada employees, including those workers who have been laid off since the pandemic began. This will ensure Nav Canada can safely continue to deliver the key services post-pandemic and into the future.
These measures must be in the form of a grant, as all cost recovery for Nav Canada would require higher fees that would only be passed on to airlines and other clients that are already devastated by the pandemic. We urge the Government of Canada to act now. Further delays will only exacerbate the problem.
Thank you for your time. We look forward to your questions.