Transport Committee on Oct. 31st, 2022

[Julian Roberts]

Today, a pilot coming out of school is going to fly firefighting planes or small planes. He can also be a flight instructor. However, there is so much pressure on pilots, there is less and less access to these small companies. So, in the future, fewer and fewer young pilots will be able to do the number of flying hours needed to get into the big airlines.

As for solutions, we've been talking about them for years. It's not simple. I don't think there's a quick fix that can be put in place to address this. As for reducing the number of hours required to be allowed to fly or to obtain an airline transport pilot licence, or ATPL, I don't think that's a solution either. We need to have access to pilots who can do their hours in small companies. Unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer small companies that allow young pilots to gain experience.

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

Mr. Gagnon, you were interrupted earlier in your answer about possible solutions. I will give you the opportunity to conclude your remarks.

[Yani Gagnon]

I was going to mention the retirement age. For large carriers, the retirement age is 65. I think that could be reviewed.

There is also the whole question of funding. As my colleague was saying, $100,000 to obtain a commercial licence is unimaginable for a young person.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Gagnon.

Next we have Mr. Bachrach.

You have two and a half minutes.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to return to this issue of contract flipping and the impact it has on employees in the air transport sector.

I'm looking at a government press release from 2018. This was when Patty Hajdu was the employment minister. The release says:

Finally, the Minister will be recommending a regulation extending the protection of remuneration levels to workers covered by a collective agreement at airports and airlines following contract retendering. The practices of contract retendering or “contract-flipping” are serious issues at some Canadian airports and we are taking action. We will work with stakeholders during the regulatory process to ensure we get this right.

Ms. Tiessen, I'm curious. Did the government ever bring this regulation forward, and if they did, why does the problem associated with contract flipping still persist at our airports?

[Kaylie Tiessen]

We've been advocating to end the worst effects of contract flipping at airports for a really long time. We made three recommendations. Two of the three recommendations have been implemented. They are slightly watered down, but they were implemented.

It's the third one that still needs to change. Now, a worker who is rehired will be rehired at the wage they had before with the previous contracting company. However, they're not guaranteed to keep their job, and they don't keep all of the other protections or benefits that were negotiated or earned, including vacation pay, potentially scheduling and those sorts of things.

We asked for three changes to be made. Two of them have been made, and the one to implement full successor rights is the one that's left. That's the confusion there.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

On that point, I'm curious. In your conversations with the government, have they told you why they did not act on that third point? It seems like a fairly major one that you don't get to keep your job, necessarily, and that the other non-wage benefits aren't included in the regulation. Can you speak to what their rationale was there?

[Kaylie Tiessen]

I can't, but I can tell you that we're very hopeful that something like the change we're asking for could be made soon. All of the MPs may have seen our campaign on this topic. We'll probably be meeting with you—hopefully, in short order—to discuss this topic.

It's incredibly important to our members in the aviation sector and to those in other sectors as well who are impacted by contract flipping that the change is made so that we can protect the quality of people's work, particularly in a labour shortage environment where we need to be increasing the quality of work, not decreasing it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thanks very much, Ms. Tiessen.

Thank you, Mr. Bachrach.

Mr. Strahl, you have five minutes.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Thank you very much.

I thought we had some interesting recommendations during Mr. Badawey's intervention, but I did find it interesting to have one of the witnesses—I think it was Mr. Gagnon—say that we're competing against everyone else in the world. Certainly what we're hearing today is that the government isn't keeping up, and that we are actually letting down the industry by failing to recognize foreign credentials, failing to recognize people who want to come here to work in our industry. Instead, the government bureaucracy is set up and arrayed against those people.

I want to go to you, Mr. Morrison.

You mentioned in your testimony that there are obstacles to the recognition of foreign credentials and that the government needs to do more to promote airlines both domestically and around the world. We've heard about the Transport Canada obstacles. In your experience, are there other obstacles or other interests, perhaps, that are against recognizing those foreign credentials?

[Jeff Morrison]

First, just to reiterate, it's absolutely true that we are competing not just with other sectors within Canada but that this is an international competition. Countries around the world are all competing for the same pools of skilled labour.

I think Mr. Donald identified a couple of bizarre examples in some cases, yet they exist, of those bureaucratic requirements that Transport Canada has in place regarding training. It's not just that. As you know, I've talked a bit about the delays in pilot certification for health purposes and so forth.

I was recently with an airline employee who was giving me a tour of an airport. He couldn't actually get through parts of the airport because his employee certification had expired the day prior, and it was only good for one year. Quick examples like that show.... Why did he have to recertify every year for something that in other jurisdictions is good for five or 10 years?

It's little examples like that which add up and really put employees in a disadvantaged position.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

We heard in previous testimony from Andrew Gibbons from WestJet, for example, about the instability in the industry caused by an “accordion” approach—I think he used that term—to regulation and what impact that has had. We've heard again and again how employees in the sector have left not just because of the mandates, but because of the insecurity of the industry as a whole.

I noted that when the COVID measures were lifted it was made very clear by the Minister of Health and by the Minister of Transport that this was simply a suspension, and that at any time the government could slam back into place those regulations that had punished the industry, depending on what they deem to be necessary at the moment.

Mr. Morrison, what impact does that have on your members and on the employees who have experienced a loss of income, a loss of security, over the last couple of years, whether they were subsidized by the government or not? What impact does that have by not having that security, in that these regulations, these restrictions, could be slammed back into place at any time without warning from the government?

[Jeff Morrison]

It's very difficult for everyone in the sector not having that certainty in terms of where we're going.

I'll give a very brief example. In the past several months prior to the pandemic restrictions being lifted, we saw a significant increase in the amount of harassment and abuse being faced by airline employees, particularly flight attendants, who were in the position of having to enforce the mask mandate on flights. It's one of the reasons we called so strenuously for that particular measure to be lifted. We wanted to protect the well-being of our workers in not having to enforce that particular measure.

If we had something like that reimposed, not only would we again be facing a significant increase in harassment and abuse of our employees, but it would destabilize a lot of the workforce, who frankly would not be certain whether they would have a job in six months or eight months down the road.

We very much hope that reimposition is not on the table for the travel and tourism sector, especially when we have evidence that, in fact, it did very little to nothing to curb community spread of COVID.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Do I have much time, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

You have 20 seconds left, Mr. Strahl.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

I will generously give that back to the committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Strahl.

Next, and finally for today, we have Mr. Chahal.

You have five minutes.

[George Chahal, Liberal, Calgary Skyview, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to everyone for providing testimony today.

I'll start off with Nav Canada and Mr. Girard.

I'd like to know a bit more on the shortages with the air traffic controllers. Are we seeing this around the world, and what are the impacts here in Canada?

[Ben Girard]

Wow, that's a loaded question. The world is a big place, sir.

In some jurisdictions, yes, and I would say probably in most with the people we're working with.... However, there are other countries that I would not have this data for.

I can speak from a knowledgeable place for Nav Canada. For air traffic controllers specifically, we're looking to hire about 150 people. I should say that we're short about 150 people, and there is attrition over the years that is going to add to that.

Air traffic controllers are obviously very important at Nav Canada. However, we have our flight service specialists who do about the same work, and we're short by about 50 of them.

We can have all of the air traffic controllers and flight specialists in the world, but if we don't have technologists to repair and install and maintain our equipment, then these people cannot do their jobs. In the next year, we're looking to hire about 187 of these people.

[George Chahal, Liberal, Calgary Skyview, AB]

What percentage of air traffic controllers are successful in completing their training? You talked about the numbers there, but what is your success rate, and how can we improve things for the folks who aren't able to complete their training? What are the gaps?

[Ben Girard]

It depends. I can talk to you about success rates historically and it depends where you qualify. There are a number of different air traffic controllers, and they are not all created equal.

In the ACCs, we used to have a checkout rate, as we call it, of around 45%. In the towers, it was around 55%. I was talking about the flight service specialists. There is about a 75% success rate there, which was pre-COVID, in 2019.

As I said, we recalled a lot of the trainees, and we have a bit better success rate than we had pre-2019. We've done a bunch of different things, and making training a priority was one of them.

Obviously, we have our unionized employees as well, who are involved in the training and doing an excellent job in training and qualifying these people. There are a lot of different activities.

To answer your second question, I was talking about different areas where we can work with the government, with Transport Canada, to modernize our training and qualification model.

Right now, if you're a controller and you're qualified in the Vancouver tower and you want to train in Dorval tower, there is a lengthy training program. We retrain you. Even if you're a qualified air traffic controller, we retrain you on how to be a controller in Dorval. That's as opposed to recognizing, as part of the training program, that you're already qualified and have at least the basic qualifications to be a controller that you gained from another facility.

We have to modernize that training and qualification to be based more on competency, as opposed to geographic location. That is work that we need to carry on with Transport Canada. Any help that the committee can bring there would be most appreciated.

[George Chahal, Liberal, Calgary Skyview, AB]

I want to go back to a comment you made. You talked about success rates of 45% and 55%. What are you doing to improve those success rates when you get those numbers higher, specifically on your training programs with your employees who are going through the program?

[Ben Girard]

There are a lot of different things we're doing. For example, one thing that we've done recently is we've established a group of senior managers and, on a monthly basis, we talk about every single trainee who has any difficulty.

One area where I think we've improved is that, at times, we would wait until there was a recommendation to cease training in order to take action. Now we get involved a lot earlier, and then we invest in helping the person in training as well as the person conducting the training. The team responsible for the training gets into coaching coaches and extra simulation runs into whatever the person needs earlier in the process.

I don't want to say that we've found the solution for everything, but, as I said, since we've started training again, we have seen a better success rate overall than we saw pre-COVID 2019.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Girard.

Thank you, Mr. Chahal.

On behalf of the committee members, I would like to thank all of our witnesses for giving us their time and expertise on this Halloween evening.

I wish a wonderful Halloween to those of you going out with your children.

With that, this meeting is adjourned.