Transport Committee on Feb. 18th, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Stephanie, how are you making out there?

She's having some challenges, so I'm going to move to another CPC member.

Mr. Kram, Mr. Soroka or Mr. Shipley, would you—

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Pardon me, Chair. Here I am. You have my apologies.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

There you go. You're all set.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you so much, Chair, for having me back.

Thank you very much to our witnesses for being here.

My questions go back again to the sector-specific supports for the aviation sector. How long has Transport Canada been working on the sector-specific supports for the aviation sector?

As I mentioned in the round with the minister, on March 12 the previous minister stated that the government was looking into it, and then finally, on November 8 the government announced it was starting negotiations. What are your recollections in terms of the timeline for sector-specific support, please?

[Michael Keenan]

In response to the member's questions, I think the department, Transport Canada, has been working on different aspects of support to the sector since March.

I'll give you an example. There were a lot of regulatory changes that we put in place to help the sector cope with the tremendous dislocation. We developed the remote air services program to shore up our services to the most remote and isolated 148 communities in Canada. There was relief for airports. There was a round of it done in the spring. There was a package of about $1 billion in measures for airports in the fall economic statement. There have been a series of actions carried out. There's been ongoing work throughout the entire period.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Can you comment on what it is like to implement policy at such a rapid pace?

What direction have you received from the government, and what direction would have been more helpful? I'm thinking of, for example, the December 31 announcement of the government that it was going to be implementing the PCR testing within seven days, and then, of course, following this, the fear and alarm within the airline sector and airport authorities that the three-day quarantine was going to be implemented. It was described as “immediately”, but then essentially ended up being more than three weeks later. I was told by industry sources that it would take two weeks, but it actually ended up taking closer to three.

Can you describe what it has been like to respond to such a quick turnaround with what seems to be no notice and very little direction, and what could have helped in terms of being able to implement it with more precision and more clarity?

Like my colleague, Mr. Shipley, mentioned, I was also on the technical briefing on Friday, and it was concerning because there seemed to be so little information prior to the orders-in-council being released. What was also alarming was that the majority of questions were from members of the governing party. It is astounding to me that there wasn't even an internal caucus briefing, that they would have to come on this call with their own questions.

Then, as I also saw throughout the pandemic and my time as shadow minister for families, children and social development, at HUMA, where we looked at CERB, where it sort of seemed to delineate and delineate into more specific permutations of programs, we saw the same thing. It sort of started off with broad questions like “What about students?” and “What about workers?” and ended up being “A senior from wherever with their cat, how are they going to get back?”

If you can perhaps provide us with some information as to what it has been like to turn around these policies with such incredible expectations for the safety of Canadians so quickly.... What direction do you think you could have received from the government to perhaps make it easier to adapt and to implement?

This is for anyone. Thank you.

[Michael Keenan]

It's a great question and it's one of a broader perspective, given the premise of the question. COVID-19 has had unprecedented impacts in terms of how devastating it's been for Canada, for Canadians and for those around the world, and in what it's required in terms of government decision-making.

I've been a public servant for over 30 years and I have never seen anything like this, where essentially over the whole year the federal government, all of the provincial governments and governments around the world have had to make what would have been, before COVID, unimaginably quick and aggressive decisions to protect public health. It's been going on all year, so it's hard to find words to describe it.

To come back to the question about the most recent changes, it is a great example. That is simply one chapter in a very long book of difficult surprises and new developments that have to be responded to immediately.

I remember when the news broke about the U.K. variant of concern. That was just a couple of days before Christmas and it shocked the world. The implications of it have been destabilizing for the global fight against COVID. Within hours there were high-level meetings and discussions and analysis and examination of options. Within a number of hours, the government took action and we implemented, quite frankly, an unprecedented measure, which was to use the assessment done over the last 24 hours—during the day and over the night—from the chief public health officer of Canada, and combine the authorities of the Quarantine Act and the Aeronautics Act to actually ban all direct flights from the U.K.

That's something we've never done before for a public health reason, and we did it very quickly based on analysis that was done in a very compressed period to deal with that variant of concern.

We followed that up with an announcement on December 31. We already had strict travel measures—the 14-day quarantine and some of the toughest international travel measures in the world—and we immediately added, with essentially one week's notice, a requirement for pre-board COVID testing for all international arrivals into Canada. We worked with the industry and we consulted with them but on a very compressed timeline.

I would say that we knew it would be challenging for the industry to implement this on such an accelerated schedule, but we also felt it was imperative to do so in terms of protecting public health. I would say we are very appreciative and we recognize that the industry did a great job. There was a very rapid phase-in of that. We moved very quickly to a very high level of compliance, and that's become a significant new measure to protect public health.

In regular, as you might call it, public health peacetime, it would be unimaginable that we would so quickly put in place a measure and impose it, and so dramatically change the requirements regarding what airlines do to screen passengers from 57 countries that have flights to Canada, but it became not just something that was imaginable but something that happened under COVID.

We've seen that happening in terms of the successive steps in measures that have been taken since the discovery of the U.K. variant of concern, the Brazilian variant of concern and the South African variant of concern. There has been a successive ramp-up of some very tough measures, such that now people arriving by air in Canada actually end up with three COVID tests before they're free and clear of quarantine. That is pretty stringent stuff, but it's to try to keep out the devastating effect of these variants of concern.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Keenan.

Thank you, Mrs. Kusie.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Keenan.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

We're going to move to Mr. Bittle.

Mr. Bittle, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

I am wondering if you could provide an update on the ports modernization review, and more specifically the aim to update governance structures that promote investment in Canadian ports.

[Michael Keenan]

I would be happy to.

For that, if I can, I'm going to turn to my colleague Mr. Hanson. It's something he's leading here at Transport Canada.

[Lawrence Hanson]

Thanks very much, and thanks to the member for his question.

As part of the review, we did a significant amount of analysis of different kinds in terms of speaking to stakeholders across the country, obviously, and with the Canada port authorities themselves, and also a lot of internal analysis. We did provide a “What we heard report” in October that gives a sense of some of the key messages.

We are in the process of finalizing our advice to the minister on that. This is a system that has been in place for a lengthy period of time, and it has huge implications for our trade and competitiveness, so we really do want to make sure that we get this right and do it in a way that.... The existing system certainly works very well as it stands, but there's room for improvement and we're just finalizing our advice to think of the best ways to do that.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

Thank you so much.

If I could, I'll ask a broader question on the impacts of COVID on Transport Canada itself: priorities and mental health, including the mental health of public servants and how they're doing their work. I was wondering if you could speak to that.

[Michael Keenan]

I'd be happy to. Thank you for the question.

COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on so many Canadians. Everybody has been affected. Even for those whose livelihoods have not been affected—I think everybody at Transport Canada is in that category—it has still been a very challenging experience.

If you'll permit me, I'll give a shout-out of appreciation to the over 6,000 people who work at Transport Canada. Like everybody else over that weekend in mid-March, we sent everybody home, and on a Monday morning we started up with those 6,000 people virtually, with 98% of them working remotely. At the same time, we had to respond to this unprecedented crisis and take an enormous amount of action in terms of this. We've probably done about three years' worth of regulatory changes in the last year just to ensure the transportation system is safe for Canadians and is responding to the economic crisis. The folks at Transport Canada came through with a real sense of public service.

Like people everywhere in Canada, like so many other Canadians, they've faced the same reality of a higher work burden, the dislocation of working at home and, for many of them, taking care of kids who would otherwise be in school or day care. Folks pulled through. We spent a lot of time worrying about and focusing on mental health and providing mental health support and also a lot of time polling our employees to see how they're doing. They've been amazingly resilient. It hasn't been easy and there have been a lot of challenges, but I think that's the story that all Canadians are experiencing, quite frankly. I think the one thing that people here have is the sense that they hope and they believe that they're helping to make a difference.

Like every other employer, we've had to find ways of doing things differently. We're now doing a lot of things virtually, and we're living on Zoom and Teams and finding a way to get it done. We believe that we're still able to, through different strategies. Sometimes we do things in person. We've used GoPros and high-resolution cameras to remotely inspect ships, because it wasn't safe to put inspectors on them. We're continuing the work and hanging in there, and again, like all other Canadians, we are trying to hang in there through a very difficult experience.

Thank you for the question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Do you have one more quick one, Mr. Bittle?

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

Sure.

Maybe I'll ask for an expansion on your answer with respect to inspections and the important work that TC does on the safety side of things. You mentioned the GoPro cameras, but could you expand on that and on what Transport Canada is doing with inspections?

[Michael Keenan]

I'd be happy to.

I think I'll turn it over to Kevin Brosseau, the senior assistant deputy minister for safety and security, to elaborate on that.

[Kevin Brosseau, Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security, Department of Transport]

Thank you to the member for the question.

I'm very proud in my role as the senior ADM of safety and security, joined by a few thousand employees, in terms of the ability to be able to pivot to provide and ensure safety and security for Canadians across the transportation modes, whether that's as in the example that Deputy Minister Keenan provided with respect to ships, or on the rail side with the transportation of dangerous goods, where we're doing work differently, yet at the same time ensuring that the highest risk items, the highest risk areas and the priority areas are still being attended to.

It's an evolution. It has been an evolution for the past year. I think we've learned lessons about how we can actually function more efficiently and deliver on our key services in a more effective way.

You raised this question before. There has been a mental health toll—no doubt. Folks are tired but still very committed to the cause. They believe in their hearts that delivering on our safety and security mandate is primary. Really, frankly, speaking for them, I'm very proud of their work.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Brosseau.

Thank you, Mr. Bittle.

We're now going to move to Mr. Barsalou-Duval for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My first question is for Mr. Keenan.

If people test positive for COVID-19 when they return to Canada, are they transferred to federal quarantine facilities? Could you provide us with information on the cost of accommodation per person?

[Michael Keenan]

Thank you for the question.

I don't have exact numbers for the costs of the designated quarantine facility, but the system works.... The Public Health Agency of Canada has a network of designated quarantine facilities across the country and has—

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

You don't have the data to hand; that's understandable. We would, however, be grateful if you could pass them on to committee members later.

Have you been contacted by NAV CANADA representatives to advise you of planned service reductions? If so, can you tell us where they will be applied?

[Michael Keenan]

NavCan has indicated that it intends to carry out a series of studies on changing the level of service in a series of control towers and flight service stations. It has not yet filed with Transport Canada any formal proposals to change the level of service. It has indicated that the work is under way.

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

Thank you.

Have officials or people in the minister's entourage had the opportunity to have discussions with a potential Air Transat buyer other than Air Canada?