Transport Committee on Oct. 31st, 2022

[Dan Muys, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

That makes good sense to us, too. Obviously, as you pointed out, trying to match those credentials from jurisdiction to jurisdiction has been cumbersome and has delayed the process.

[John McKenna]

Could I add something to that, sir?

It takes four years to train an AME in Canada. That's the training requirement by Transport Canada. That's twice as long as any other jurisdiction. Why is that? It's that the regulation has not been amended since the 1990s, and they are not taking into consideration new teaching technologies, the new teaching environment and the operating environment. That is a disincentive to get people to come to our industry.

[Dan Muys, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

Certainly. As you pointed out in your testimony, that's a decades-old regulation that really needs to be updated compared to other jurisdictions like the U.S., U.K. and Europe, as you mentioned.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Muys. Your time is up.

Next we have Mr. Rogers.

You have five minutes.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Thank you, Chair.

Welcome to all the guests today.

We have heard many witnesses talk about the various reasons for labour shortages, but I was really intrigued, and I want Ms. Tiessen to confirm for me the numbers she talked about regarding Sunwing. If I heard her correctly, they had 800 applications for 100 jobs. Were these local pilots or were these international pilots?

[Kaylie Tiessen]

The information I have from our members is that there were 800 applications for a pilot job posting and 148 people were hired.

I don't know where they were hired from. I don't know what their previous experience was.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

That leaves a substantial number of people, 600-plus, who are still out there. I'm assuming they went to work for other airlines somewhere. I was amazed at that number when you said that, after hearing so many people talk about the labour shortages and the lack of pilots to fly planes.

Anyway, thank you for that. I appreciate the information.

I want to ask Mr. Donald a question.

Your organization states that “education/training programs have not kept pace with the rapidly evolving technological needs of the industry.” Moreover, “sector-wide, there is a limited capacity to educate and train interested students.”

Can you elaborate on these educational training shortcomings? Why haven't the aviation and aerospace industries amended the issues? What is preventing the industry from doing so?

[Robert Donald]

Thank you, Mr. Rogers.

I'm not sure what report you're reading from, but it is correct that colleges in Canada are required to teach what is mandated by Transport Canada. Transport says how many hours. It has to be in the classroom. It cannot be remote. There was an extension for the pandemic, but that has not been extended.

That curriculum is out of date. It still insists that students have a knowledge of cloth wings and wood structures.

We've spoken to Transport Canada. They have said they will update it, but they have not. We've been saying this for three, four and five years. It hasn't been updated since 1999.

They're requiring that students learn things that are no longer in airplanes. It defies logic. That's something an AME from Germany can be refused on, that they didn't study cloth wings and wood structures. They can't get their licence here. TC tells them to take a course on cloth wings and wood structures. Nobody will teach that.

I'll stop there.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

I appreciate the information and the answer.

For Nav Canada, in your opinion, Mr. Girard or Mr. Bagg, what actions need to be taken to attract and retain more workers for your industry? I know you alluded to some things, but I'd like to have a detailed response, if you could.

[Ben Girard]

It is very hard, actually, to attract people for the simple reason we are all competing for the same people a lot of the time.

At Nav Canada, unfortunately, with the longer training programs, somebody has to very much make a time commitment and be in training for two or three years in order to get a job at the end. I'm not sure the government can do anything, but at Nav Canada we make the jobs very interesting in the working condition environment. We offer a lot of great opportunity inside Nav Canada.

We have been in the top 100 employers for a number of years in a row. We are very proud of that. We think this is attracting the right people into the business.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

In your opinion, what actions can we take on the technology front to reduce the stress and workload for ATC workers?

[Ben Girard]

We're implementing a lot of things from a technology perspective. We've submitted a number of those to the NTCF and they've been approved. We thank the government very much for that.

We're looking at technology in line with what ICAO recommends that countries should move to in order to keep up with the great service that is delivered. Things like trajectory-based operations make it very interesting for controllers and increases safety and efficiency. It makes it very interesting for them by taking a lot of the more mundane tasks and leaving the tasks that are very interesting, when they actually sit in position and control airplanes.

We are—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Girard.

I'm sorry to cut you off, but unfortunately, Mr. Rogers' time is up.

Mr. Barsalou‑Duval, you have the floor.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Roberts, I wanted to continue to talk to you about the difficulties in recruiting pilots. One of the ways in which we train new pilots is through flight schools. For example, it was mentioned that the Mirabel facility was the main place where pilots were trained in French in Quebec. Unfortunately, Aéroports de Montréal has increased landing and take-off fees astronomically. This amplifies the pilot shortage. Yet, unlike other places in Quebec where there are flight schools and people complain about the noise caused by planes constantly taking off and landing, this was not the case in Mirabel. This forces schools to move or even close their doors.

Do you think the government should act to prevent this kind of practice? How do you see the situation?

[Julian Roberts]

You have to understand that a pilot who has just finished school is not a pilot I can hire tomorrow, because he doesn't have the required flight hours. For example, Sunwing has received 600 applications, but none of these people have the required flight hours or experience to fly. Perhaps that's why it ended up with only 150 pilots.

Our human resources department has received about 200 resumes, but we can't hire these pilots because they don't have enough hours in the commercial planes we use. If the government created a program that didn't cost $70,000 or $90,000 for a pilot to get his or her licence, a lot more people would choose this profession. Especially in the current context, given inflation, few parents will encourage their children to enrol in a flight school. It takes a different approach. Studying at CEGEP to become a mechanic doesn't cost anything; why isn't it the same for pilots?

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

Thank you, Mr. Roberts.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

You have 10 seconds left, Mr. Barsalou‑Duval.

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

All right.

Mr. Girard, according to Nav Canada, could the current labour shortage threaten some control towers in the regions where there is less traffic?

[Ben Girard]

No, not at the moment. We have 250 people in training and over the next two years we will have another 500 people added to that number. We hope to be able to fill the classrooms and as we recruit people, we believe we will be able to increase traffic where there is a need.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Girard and Mr. Barsalou‑Duval.

Next we have Mr. Bachrach.

You have two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I have a question for Mr. Girard from Nav Canada.

Mr. Girard, during the pandemic, the committee heard both from Nav Canada and from the union representing Nav Canada workers about the risk of losing skilled employees during the pandemic and the impact that would have on the overall operation, particularly in skilled fields where years of experience and training are required to perform really specialized roles.

At this juncture, in looking back, could you tell us a little bit about what actually transpired? Were these fears realized? I know that at the time Nav Canada was looking to the federal government for fairly significant financial support. I don't believe that was received in the amounts that were requested. Did we actually see this accelerated loss of experienced personnel during the pandemic?

[Ben Girard]

What I can share with you is that we did see people leaving. Some of it was through programs.

You have to understand that 66% of our cost is people. We had to take very hard decisions at Nav Canada to reduce our workforce by 12.7%. That didn't affect anybody directly in operations, other than we offered some incentives to retire early. Those people were going to retire anyway in a short time frame, or there were chances of their retiring in a short time frame. These people left. Other people who left through normal attrition, retirement, or things like that, we didn't necessarily replace at the time.

It is important to note that we have rehired lots of these people. We have called back and rehired 50 people, actually.

During that time period, what really didn't help us was that because of COVID-19, we were unable to train for a number of different reasons. The first one was for the safety of our employees and ensuring the service delivery. As you can imagine, a trainee and an OJI work very closely with one another. We didn't want to chance the spread of COVID-19. In addition to that, we had such a reduction in traffic that it was very hard to justify how we could qualify people with the low level of traffic. It was questioned both by the union as well as by Transport Canada.

Unfortunately, we had to let those trainees go. We didn't make any headway during that time.

We have since rehired most of these trainees. In the last year we qualified about 100 of them. As I said before, we still have about 250 trainees in the system.

Yes, people left, and then we—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Girard.

Thank you very much, Mr. Bachrach.

Next we have Dr. Lewis.

You have five minutes.

[Leslyn Lewis, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

Thank you.

My first question will be for Mr. Morrison.

You mentioned digitizing travel. I assume that would improve efficiency.

Do you believe that Canada has the capacity to adopt its own digitized platform? Do you believe that we would need outside companies to assist us, or international partners to do this?

[Jeff Morrison]

Thank you for the question.

I can't comment on the best platform or who could best deliver the platforms. What I can say is that technology, as was discussed previously, can play a role in improving and bringing efficiencies to the travel system. Even with something like ArriveCAN, which has been hotly debated over the past several months, the fact that its purpose has now been transitioned to be a voluntary tool for customs purposes has proven to be, I think, more beneficial than it had been in its previous iteration.

I can't speak to the providers, but I can speak to the technology. It can absolutely serve a purpose in terms of improving efficiency.