Transport Committee on Oct. 31st, 2022

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

Thank you very much.

My first question is for Mr. Morrison of the National Airlines Council of Canada.

I have heard you complain about the long delays in receiving applications from your members for staff certification with the federal government. How does this affect your operations? In a labour shortage environment, how can this be an issue for you?

[Jeff Morrison]

I will answer you in English.

Part of the challenges, especially over the past summer, were in receiving health certifications for pilots from Transport Canada. There were significant delays, much longer delays than the average. What that meant essentially was that pilots were sitting around not able to work.

Another good example is any airline personnel who required access to sensitive areas of airports requiring a certification an RAIC. There were delays in getting those out as well. As a result, without those proper certifications, airline crews, including flight attendants, were not able to access airports and were therefore also not able to work. That was a contributing factor to some of the disruptions that we saw this summer. We hope that those delays won't be repeated in the future.

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

Thank you.

I also have a question for Ms. Dias from Unifor.

The Bloc Québécois feels that one of the possible solutions to the labour shortage is to retain experienced workers in the labour market. Among other things, we thought of possibilities such as implementing tax incentives to make it financially attractive for them to stay in the labour market longer.

I was wondering if you found this solution interesting and if you had any other possible solutions that would make it possible to retain experienced workers in the labour market.

[Kaylie Tiessen]

I'll answer for Ms. Dias, who had some technical difficulties today, so she couldn't join the meeting.

In terms of attracting experienced workers, we're talking about higher-quality work here. If someone left and went to a different job, they did so because the job was more attractive. That would mean higher pay, less chaotic scheduling, being able to plan their life and not just be following the whims of some scheduling technology, as one piece of the puzzle. Then other pieces of the puzzle would be to attract people to come back from retirement, and those sorts of things. I would love to have a conversation about that.

We could talk about that here in the office and get back to you. I'm sure that Ms. Dias has thought of that, but unfortunately she just couldn't be here.

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

Thank you very much, Ms. Tiessen.

I brought it up because it seems to me that we often talk about the time it takes to train staff and the fact that people who come in, once they've been trained, don't necessarily have the work experience, whereas experienced workers already have all that. It might be more practical to try and keep them longer, because it saves a lot of work not having to train new people.

I'll speak to the representative from Pascan Aviation Inc.

Mr. Roberts, we have had the opportunity to meet elsewhere than here, sometimes with your partner, Mr. Gagnon, to discuss the pilot shortage you are facing.

From your side, do you see any particular measures that could be put in place by the government, for example, to help you make sure that you have enough pilots, and that people see this as an interesting profession?

When I was younger, I was an aviation cadet, and at that time, when I spoke to my colleagues, a lot of them said they were interested in aviation, but that becoming a pilot was expensive, and one of the only ways to get access to it at a reasonable cost was to do it through the cadet route.

[Julian Roberts]

Good afternoon.

Honestly, when I was young, I was really attracted to aviation. It's much less common for young people to be interested in it today. I have three young children, and I never heard them or their friends talk about aviation. Back then, working in aviation was almost a trend. Now there is not much advertising in schools. There are obviously not many programs that exist, except for the aviation mechanic program at CEGEP. There are flight schools, but they only train about 30 pilots a year, when 300 are needed.

Becoming a pilot costs, today, about $90,000. It's certainly not easy for young people to take out a loan from the bank or have their parents sign a mortgage for this training, especially in an industry that in recent years has been very volatile.

There are probably education activities that should be organized in schools, to talk a bit more about our industry. It's a really interesting and exciting industry, but it doesn't appeal to young people today like it did in the 1990s, for example.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

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

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

In that case, I will come back later with another question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Perfect. Thank you very much.

Next we have Mr. Bachrach.

You have six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all of our witnesses.

I'd like to ask Ms Tiessen, from Unifor, a couple of questions.

What you said, Ms. Tiessen, around contract flipping is particularly concerning. I was trying to imagine what it would be like to be an employee in one of those roles and to have a set of benefits as part of a collective agreement, and then to have the contract flip and lose the stability and the expectation of those every couple of years.

First, I'm wondering if this problem has become worse in recent years. Second, I'm wondering if you can point to a specific legislative or regulatory change that would help address this issue for employees in the air sector.

[Kaylie Tiessen]

We definitely have a specific regulatory change. The change is to implement full successor rights by changing the Canada Labour Code so that when a contract is flipped, the collective agreement goes with the new contract. That would mean any increases in pay, better benefits, scheduling issues, time off, vacation time, all of those different pieces that are in the collective agreement would move with the workers when they move to the new company.

It's not that workers are getting fired. It's that a company lost a contract. Often a contract is flipped because a company comes in with a lower cost, and that happens because they can lower wages and working conditions. If we amend the Canada Labour Code to implement full successor rights, that would eliminate those worst effects of contract flipping on people.

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

You mentioned the idea of a minimum living wage at airports. We've heard from airport authorities that have implemented minimum living wages. Are you aware of these? Could you share your thoughts on how these stack up?

[Kaylie Tiessen]

I absolutely can.

We've seen in a number of different locations in the U.S. that minimum standards for wages at airports can be increased quite dramatically, and that what happens is that the quality of work is better, airports become more efficient, there's less turnover and the customer service is of higher quality. There are all of these different pieces. That's been the case in Seattle. It's been the case at Newark, LaGuardia, JFK and LAX. LAX is actually a living wage employer.

In Toronto, the living wage is $22 an hour. It's slightly different across the country, but there's a calculation that is done by many different communities across the country. That's something that could be implemented to quickly increase the quality of work at an airport.

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

Finally, Ms. Tiessen, this issue of technological change in the air sector is an interesting one. I think it's hard to argue with the point made earlier that technology has made air travel and the air transport sector more efficient. I think all of us have experienced that as air passengers.

From a labour perspective, what are the important things to consider as we see technology take on a larger role in that space?

[Kaylie Tiessen]

We definitely want to see the people who do the job, those who use the technology or are having some of the tasks replaced by technology...they need to be consulted. What often happens is that technology is introduced and no one asks the people who have potentially 30 years of experience in doing the job what it's like to do the job and the challenges that come up and all sorts of things. That being said, those mistakes are embedded into a piece of technology, so when the baggage handling system breaks down or the customer service call lines.... When new technology is introduced, our members aren't consulted, and then the technology breaks and they have to fix it.

Another piece of the puzzle for customer service representatives is that a lot of decisions that airlines make are made in a black box. You go to the counter and you're told that you're on a flight two days from now and it's the only one available. This decision has been made in a black box. Our members don't have anything to do with that decision, but they take the brunt of the frustration and the harassment, and they don't get support from the industry, from their employers, in order to deal with the harassment that is coming at them. That is one additional piece of the puzzle.

I will say that we're not opposed to technological change. We want to work together to get the highest-quality technological change possible to make sure that we can deliver the best service possible.

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

Thank you.

I'm going to shift to ask Mr. Morrison from the National Airlines Council of Canada a question.

The wage subsidy was really designed by the government as a tool to avoid the attrition of employees during the pandemic. Among airlines, I think there were different experiences. Some major airlines took the wage subsidy, and some didn't.

Could you provide some comment overall on the success of the wage subsidy in stemming the loss of skilled employees and on what were the experiences of those different airlines that took different approaches?

[Jeff Morrison]

Very briefly—I know that I don't have much time—you're right in saying that different airlines used the different recovery programs in different ways. I can't speak to the individual experiences of all of them.

I can say, in fact, that a report I saw just this morning from StatsCan referred to those various COVID recovery programs as a lifeline for the airline sector, in that if it weren't for many of those programs, there would really be questions in terms of the viability of a Canadian airline sector today. They ensured that airlines could continue to operate in extremely difficult circumstances to get us to the point where again today we're back to or very close to 2019 or prepandemic levels. That's good news for the travelling public.

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

Thank you, Mr. Morrison.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Bachrach.

Next we have Mr. Muys.

The floor is yours for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all witnesses for your testimony here today.

My first question is for Mr. McKenna.

I forget the reference, but I read somewhere that you were quoted in November 2021 as saying that you're ready to go, and the government is the one that’s holding you back. It's a year later, so I'd like to ask you, is this still true? What's better, if anything? How do we best fix what needs to be fixed in terms of holding back the sector?

[John McKenna]

It is better in that we have done away with COVID measures. To comment also on what my colleague, Mr. Morrison, was saying, the wage subsidy helped, but it doesn't keep an airline flying if there are no passengers. It just kept the lights on for many companies. What's better now is that there is a growth in demand, so there's a growth in service.

The government is not there yet, because the government is still working from home. The delays for getting service requests executed are extremely long, and that's postponing our recovery.

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

Maybe you could elaborate a bit more on that, because that's a problem we have noticed elsewhere as well with the number of people in government departments working from home. It's delaying a lot of the things that need to get done.

How does that compare to prepandemic, a year now since, you noted, the government was holding you back? What do you see in the next year or two to get that backlog cleared?

[John McKenna]

Visa applications, rate card applications, timed certificate applications, medical approvals, licence renewals, professional exams, pilot proficiency tests, aircraft certification—all this stuff is taking three or four times longer than it ever has, and we don't understand why.

Transport Canada is short of resources, and it's short of competent resources, experienced people. They don't recruit from the air transport industry anymore. They have other standards now, but very few people have aviation experience, and it's causing great delays.

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

Picking up on that, Mr. Donald, you gave a very detailed breakdown of 58,000 by 2028, which is an astonishing figure. I think you referred to a competence-based assessment process. You talked about the long bureaucratic processes that we have been faced with that are holding things back. Mr. McKenna just commented on that.

Maybe you can elaborate a bit further on how we get things moving. We're not going to get 58,000 people all at once, so how do we tackle that?

[Robert Donald]

As I alluded to in my remarks, we need to improve the process for bringing in foreign-trained workers, foreign AMEs. As I said, Canadian companies want to hire Canadians, but when we don't have them, we need experienced workers and better access to them.

Adding those two NOC codes I referred to will help. As well, we need what I was referring to about competency. Transport Canada follows a mechanical bureaucratic process comparing what an individual studied in India, Germany or any other country against what they set out in chapter 566, which Canadian colleges must teach.

That no longer makes sense. It never did, but it's even worse now. Transport Canada needs to move to a competency-based assessment for foreign AMEs coming to Canada. This individual can work on an Air Canada plane in Frankfurt, but can't work on it here. It doesn't make sense.

I could go on, but I will stop there.