Good afternoon, members of the committee. Thank you for the invitation.
I'm here today as president of the Canadian Air Traffic Control Association, more commonly known as CATCA, and I'm representing our 1,800 members from across the country.
I am accompanied by the regional vice-president, Mr. Benoit Vachon.
CATCA is a labour union and a professional association, representing air traffic controllers employed by Nav Canada. We consider ourselves important stakeholders in Canada's air navigation system. We're dedicated to the provision of safe and reliable air traffic control and air travel within Canada. The air navigation system itself is a vital component of the economy and a critical link in the supply chain for Canada.
I am an air traffic controller. I've worked in a variety of units over the course of my 26-year career. As such, I have experienced first-hand many of the issues that we'll speak about.
As are other occupations in the aviation sector, air traffic controllers are currently experiencing an acute shortage of qualified people. For air traffic controllers, however, this situation is not new but has existed to varying degrees for many years. There is no singular explanation for how we got here. There are some unique challenges facing us as we go forward. I would break these into broadly two areas.
First is recruitment and training. There was a shortage of air traffic controllers prepandemic, and the severe industry contraction during COVID resulted in a further reduction in numbers and a cessation of all training by the company. The pace and strength of recovery by the aviation sector have meant that Canada is now desperately short of air traffic controllers. What many outside of our industry do not realize is that every unit or sector in air traffic control requires individual training time unique to that unit. The total training time is approximately two years and in many cases more. The qualification rate has historically been only 30% to 40%. That, combined with the general labour shortage—which presents challenges for attracting suitable candidates—and an aging workforce, means that achieving the adequate number of air traffic controllers is going to be very difficult going forward.
Second is the job itself. Air traffic control is a highly demanding 24-7 occupation with a very high level of responsibility. All of that places a huge amount of personal stress and strain on the men and women doing it, as well as on their families. Historical short-staffing has meant that to function, the system has always relied on a high amount of overtime by controllers. This has been welcomed to some degree by workers. However, we have reached a point now where there are no longer enough controllers to provide the required hours, even when they are consistently working up to the legal maximum. This is resulting in unacceptable demands on workers, as they are routinely expected to work long days with insufficient support. The incidence of single stand time—a controller working alone with no relief—has become commonplace in our industry. CATCA does not support this practice. I believe Canadians would want at least two controllers in every control tower and control unit, in the same way that they expect more than one pilot on the flight deck. It is not responsible to rely on one unsupported controller on their own.
What do we need to do?
First, we need to focus on training, and we can't stop. We can't risk shortfalls in staffing by focusing on absolute minimum numbers. We need to build resilience into the system by developing a reliable, ongoing training system that supplies a steady stream of controllers. This should be a stated long-term objective of Nav Canada.
Second, we need to manage attrition by focusing on retention. This is perhaps the only way to address short- and medium-term challenges in staffing. Nav Canada needs to keep every air traffic controller it has, and it has to be willing to do anything it takes to do that. This goes for the entire country, but it is particularly true for some very important units such as the Toronto Pearson tower, Vancouver tower and the Montreal terminal, which are particularly vulnerable.
Third, we need to get creative and collaborative. Throughout the pandemic, labour relations reached a low point, and there have been a number of workplace initiatives and policies that have had a severely negative impact on engagement and workplace morale. If we are going to expect people to work together to get through this, then that's going to have to change. We're going to have to come up with some common sense solutions to scheduling that will unlock resources and address fatigue at the same time. We're going to need to agree on some common sense fatigue rules for air traffic controllers that the employees will actually support. We'll need to agree on ways to get controllers access to reasonable opportunities for leave and vacations when they want them so they can maintain some degree of work-life balance.
Fourth and finally, we need to develop some reliable, understandable metrics and compile data on delays, restrictions and other capacity constraints so we that have a measure on how we are doing as a system. We can't address bottlenecks in the system if we don't properly identify where they are.
Those are my remarks. I genuinely hope these observations and recommendations will assist the committee. I'd be happy to provide any further information and welcome any questions from the committee members.
Thank you very much. Merci.