Transport Committee on Jan. 28th, 2021

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

I want to know whether you believe that the government's support for the aviation sector must be fair, meaning that it must ensure a minimum amount of competition. This would enable small regional carriers to provide reasonable service without being crushed by large companies such as Air Canada.

[Derrick Stanford]

Probably the first challenge we'd have is to have any air carriers. We're currently without service to a lot of our stations in Atlantic Canada. I'd love to be able to imagine a situation where we have competition, but first we need some service.

The federal government did announce a plan called the regional air transportation initiative, which we are working on with our economic development agency in Atlantic Canada, which is ACOA. We are exploring different kinds of options. Again, due to provincial restrictions, it's actually even difficult to travel intra-Atlantic Canada at this time as well. As an example, if I were to go to Nova Scotia, I would be required to quarantine for two weeks when I got back to New Brunswick.

We're going to explore these ideas. We are looking at it, but right now, because of the pandemic, we don't have a lot of options with regard to potential carriers.

[Monette Pasher]

We have a strong regional carrier in our region, PAL Airlines. They've actually been growing throughout the pandemic. We're pleased to have that partner, but our big issue is really connecting our region to the rest of Canada and internationally and globally when we do recover. We didn't really have the problem of no competition here. On a lot of our routes we had Air Canada, WestJet, Porter. We did have good competition and fares in our region.

We took a decade to build up that network. I think our concern in this region moving forward is to see our connectivity to the rest of Canada be rebuilt. We are working with our national carriers to do that, and we are still supporting our regional carrier as well. We only have—

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Thank you, Ms. Pasher.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Ms. Pasher.

Thank you, Mr. Barsalou-Duval.

We're now going to move on to Mr. Cannings of the NDP for two and a half minutes.

Mr. Cannings, the floor is yours.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you.

I'd like to go back to Mr. Best.

You talked about NavCan and that issue. As I understand, NavCan is basically funded by the amount of traffic at any given airport. It's been suffering, as everyone in the industry has been in the last year. It seems to have a mandate for safety, but it obviously doesn't have a mandate for regional services and maintaining the industry.

Do we need a new funding model for NavCan or a new oversight model that gives the government some real say in ensuring that it remains operating in these airports so that we can recover quickly in situations like this?

[Doug Best]

Yes, Nav Canada is a cost-recovery business. Is there some sort of change to the act? Probably. It's our idea that somewhere down the road something has to happen. Nav Canada doesn't really have the ability right now to save very much money. They have a rate stabilization fund. They have the use of probably about $200 million. Other than that, cost recovery is pretty simple. You only have to take in as much as what you need.

Should it be reviewed? Yes, it should be. It has been...since 1996. We're talking about 25 years since Nav Canada came to life. The issue right now is the fact that, yes, the executives are taking into consideration finances before safety. That's why we're here.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Well, maybe I'll pass that on to Mr. Giguere as well.

My colleague Brian Masse, the MP for Windsor West, is investigating new legislation that would give the Minister of Transport the ability to veto any NavCan decisions about closing operations so that we can save these regional services. I'm just wondering if Mr. Giguere might want to comment on that.

[Rob Giguere]

At the root of all this is the lack of flights. The solution is to get the industry moving again. Support the industry and it will return. Get that connectivity. As we heard from our colleagues in Atlantic Canada, whether someone is coming from Asia into Canada to go to the Anne of Green Gables house or coming in to go to our great national park in Banff, connectivity to the world and connectivity across Canada is what will drive traffic, and what will drive traffic will give the revenue in the traffic over to air traffic control.

As I have said before and as I said earlier, air traffic controllers assist in a meaningful way. It's not insignificant at all. Having them at the airports reduces risk. The more traffic there is, the more conflict there can be. The core issue is to get the airline industry stabilized to make sure we have a healthy industry on the other side of this pandemic that can take its place in the world and in Canada, and to make sure we service all those regional airports with lots of connectivity. That's all the northern airports and all our first nations communities. The entire industry needs some assistance.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Giguere and Mr. Cannings.

For our last speaker today, I want to once again welcome Ms. May to the committee.

Ms. May, you have the floor for the last five minutes of the meeting.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Thank you very, very much.

Again, I'd like to thank Parliamentary Secretary Bittle for this opportunity.

I would want to ask all of you questions. I have to confess that I am bicoastal. I am from Cape Breton Island originally, and now I live on Vancouver Island. As much as I love Cape Breton, I don't want to ever live anywhere but Vancouver Island.

Getting back to Richard Cannings having a relationship to J.A.D McCurdy, the Silver Dart took off in front of our former home in Baddeck, off Baddeck Bay, so I feel very close to all of Ms. Pasher's regions. When we talk about connectivity, from Cape Breton to Halifax we used to have Via Rail. Then we had the bus line. Both of them are gone. People are really dependent on the Sydney airport.

I want to focus my questions, if I can, to Mr. Best about air traffic control.

I have some stressed-out constituents on stress leave from being at Nav Can, being air traffic controllers, and my impression is that it's not new that NavCan puts finances ahead of safety. I don't want to be too blunt, but the constituents with whom I've spoken have relayed—and I was alarmed to hear it—that the elimination of the supervisor position in air traffic control towers across Canada might have had an effect on safety. This is years before COVID.

I want to get a comment from you, Mr. Best, before I ask my next question. Am I recalling this correctly, that we lost a whole category of supervisors of air traffic control towers?

[Doug Best]

Yes, from time to time, obviously, Nav Canada does make some decisions that are financially based. Obviously, they do their own risk analysis with regard to the safety management system. That's an internal system that's overseen by people at Transport Canada.

But yes, I'm sure, Ms. May, if you're coming from Vancouver Island, you're probably talking about Victoria. It did happen in Victoria, where they did lose their supervisors. Did it have an effect? Absolutely it does. Any time there's any sort of job loss like this, it does, and it does affect safety.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

I have been raising with the transport committee over the years, and I'll ask Mr. Best if it's still worth investigating it, whether or not it's worth going back over the Transportation Safety Board report from 2018. I think it was a 2017 mid-air collision that happened in Sainte-Foy or over St-Bruno, Quebec.

I wonder, Mr. Best, if you think it's worth looking into that further to see if air traffic control had any impact on that mid-air collision.

[Doug Best]

It's difficult to comment on a Transportation Safety Board brief that did come.... Especially when it's over mid-air, it's always very sensitive to us. I can certainly talk about other mid-airs, such as down in Windsor. That's why they still have a tower down there. It's because of the airspace they work in. It's very, very difficult to work right beside Detroit.

Obviously, we did have some sort of an impact, but we would have had a bigger impact if our control service had been able to reach out a little bit further than it does now.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

I'll focus on COVID and the decline in revenue to NavCan leading to cutbacks. I think a lot of Canadians would be surprised to realize that regulation of something as significant as air traffic control relies on an agency that was privatized in 1996. Although a non-profit private agency, it requires a revenue flow from the travelling public.

Mr. Best, would this be an occasion where we should review—and this is closer to what Mr. Cannings was asking—fundamentally the model of a privatized arm's-length body for our safety? I am, of course, a frequent flyer, as are all MPs. Is this a model that we should reconsider?

[Doug Best]

I believe there needs to be some kind of a reconciliation of some of the issues that are currently going on at Nav Canada, of course. To be very blunt—as you were with regard to that question—I would say yes.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Thank you.

I also want to turn to the representatives of.... Certainly, I sometimes feel as though I live at YVR. Just to express [Technical difficulty—Editor].

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Ms. May has frozen. We will give you a second, Elizabeth.

Ms. May has frozen up, and she pretty well did that right on time. It's 5:30, so we will conclude our meeting.

To all of you on the committee, as well as to Ms. May as our guest, I thank you for the questions that you asked our witnesses. To the witnesses, more importantly, I thank you for your time today. It was very kind of you to come out and give us a lot of the input for this study. It's very valuable and we expect it to be reflected in the analysts' report that comes back to committee. For that reason, once again, I thank you very much for your time today.

To all members, once again, thank you. We will see you on Tuesday.

This meeting is adjourned.