Transport Committee on Oct. 31st, 2022

[Robert Donald]

I believe they think that the gaps in education can be filled more easily than they can. I don't believe they understand completely that you cannot take a short course on the missing academic credential. It does not exist, so I don't believe they're working on a solution to that problem.

I think the solution is moving to a competency-based system as opposed to simply comparing what was studied in Germany or India against what Transport Canada requires.

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

You've presented very compelling testimony in that regard.

I want to go quickly to Mr. McKenna.

This seems to be a theme we're hearing. We certainly saw it with the passport fiasco. We don't have enough people working back at their offices.

You said that it's taking three to four times longer to get things done than it used to, and you mentioned that is idling equipment. Can you give some examples? I know you listed a number of things for which it is now taking three or four times longer. It used to be 90 days. Three or four times longer than 90 days is now a year.

How is that impacting people staying in the industry? We're talking about a labour shortage. If it takes a year to get recertified or a year to get back to work, what impact does that have on the workforce?

[John McKenna]

As was mentioned with the visa applications, it's good to change a policy to allow immigration. Then again, the administration of that policy is something altogether different. You have a huge backlog of people waiting for processing, and it's not happening. Policy is great, but you have to be able to do it.

We have members who have purchased planes and can't fly them because they have not been approved or included in the operating certificate, so they're sitting on the ground until that's done, and that could be months. This is very valuable equipment that's just sitting there.

There are numerous examples that carriers can give you to that effect, so it's a question of delays. It's not a question of policy in many cases, except for, as Rob Donald referred to, certain regulations that really need to be updated. For those that have been, there are no boots in place to carry it out.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Please give a 10-second response.

[John McKenna]

They've updated their regulations to make them more current and with modern technology.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Strahl.

Next we have Mr. Badawey.

You have five minutes.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to thank the witnesses for coming out today and giving us their testimony. As many if not all of you know, this study has been very in depth, and we've heard a great deal of testimony from many of the witnesses that we expect would be contained within the final report and would therefore be responded to by the minister and the department.

Where I want to go with this is to give each one of you an opportunity to give some testimony that would find its way into the final report, and again, be responded to by the minister.

I'm going to start with Mr. Roberts.

I want to give you the stage to provide us with anything that you haven't yet, and again, that you would like to see as part of the final report.

[Julian Roberts]

Thank you.

One thing that could help me fairly quickly would be to re-evaluate the flight and duty requirements for 703 and 704 operators and, equally, reviewing this new regulation for regional operators like Pascan Aviation.

A one-size-fits-all approach does not work for regional aviation today. The rules were put in place for companies like Air Canada and WestJet, and they are impacting us significantly. If that's something we could look at, that would be of greatest benefit to our company and possibly to many other smaller airlines in Canada.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Robert.

Mr. Morrison.

[Jeff Morrison]

I'll mention one thing.

I would really encourage the committee to look at the new program that was introduced by the British government today, Generation Aviation. They're facing the exact same problem as Canada. They're tackling it with a federal program that works, by the way, with airlines and other employers to promote careers, to actually partner and to get skills training into the schools and make a career in aviation appealing to young people there.

I'd encourage you to look at the program. Let's look at potentially duplicating it here in Canada.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Morrison.

Ms. Tiessen.

[Kaylie Tiessen]

I have three things.

One is that, when it comes to training, we need to make sure we're not just relying on experienced workers. An experienced worker doesn't become experienced without training and experience. We need to make sure we're moving with the whole pipeline. That includes making sure there are enough seats in schools so that people can get the training that they need.

Another one is thinking about the living wage piece. Airports are non-profit institutions that are mandated to contribute to community economic development. Paying people fairly would be one piece of the puzzle to building the community around the airport.

The final one—and with regard to the question posed to me earlier—is to always work collaboratively. We work collaboratively with our employers in all sorts of different situations. We'd be happy to make sure we're implementing the right solutions to retain workers who are hired and to attract the workers who need to be hired.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Thank you, Ms. Tiessen.

Mr. Girard.

[Ben Girard]

Very quickly, there are three items that come to mind.

The first one is that we need to modernize how we train and license people, especially our air traffic controller group. We need to move to competency-based licensing as opposed to geographic licensing. It's something that we need to work on with Transport Canada.

The second one has been identified by others and affects us as well. Any help that we can get to bring in skilled foreign hires that require labour-intensive labour market impact assessment right now would be very beneficial for us. We've benefited from hiring somebody from Ukraine, actually, with the LMIA that the government gave us. Anytime we can bring in somebody with experience as opposed to somebody right off the street would help.

Finally, and a little more broadly, we'd be interested in discussing with the government it making an investment in the planned modernization of our training programs and supportive technology for them.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Girard.

Mr. McKenna.

[John McKenna]

I also have three things.

The first is to make sure that regulations reflect the reality that we live in, which is not the case right now.

Second, in the last 10 years, demand for our services has grown by about 5% a year, but Transport Canada's safety budget has been consistently cut. Actually, over the 1990s, it was cut by 25%, making it basically impossible for them to carry out their mandate, so the efficiency has dropped to historic lows.

Finally, we've been proposing for years that the government offer a loan guarantee program to help people access funds to train commercially. This is, basically, very low risk for the government, and a few hundred thousand dollars would help train many, many, pilots.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. McKenna.

Mr. Donald.

[Robert Donald]

Ms. Tiessen referred to having enough seats in schools to train people. Every college in Canada teaching aviation maintenance engineering programs has a wait-list, some up to two years—the only exception is ÉNA out of Quebec—yet they're not producing enough graduates. Nobody's going to wait two years to get into a program. They'll go into construction or other industries. That's a huge issue.

I don't believe it's realistic to believe that provincial governments will fund the massive investment needed in bricks and mortar institutions to bring that capacity up to what we need, although CCAAT just got a grant to increase its capacity, but it admits that's unusual. Therefore, we need new ways to train. We need tools for industry to train its own people off the street who don't have prior experience and who don't go through college programs.

I'll stop there.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Donald.

Mr. Bagg, Im going to try to get to Mr. Gagnon in 30 seconds, so if you could make these comments quickly, that would be great.

[Jonathan Bagg, Director, Stakeholder and Industry Relations, Nav Canada]

That was covered by Mr. Girard previously.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Gagnon.

[Yani Gagnon, Executive Vice-President and Co-owner, Pascan Aviation Inc.]

Thank you.

I don't want to be a wet blanket, but I think people don't realize how critical the situation is. It was urgent before the pandemic and it has become critical.

In North America alone, there will be a shortage of 65,000 pilots over the next 10 years. That means hiring and training 20 pilots a day. It's going to be a very difficult situation and something needs to be done.

For small carriers like Pascan Aviation, the situation is exacerbated because the large carriers are draining our pool of pilots. This is not just a North American phenomenon; it's a global phenomenon. We are competing with the entire planet.

My colleague Mr. Roberts talked about the possibility of changing the regulations that deal with the flight duty period. I think there are other things that can be done, particularly in relation to the retirement age in the major airlines.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Gagnon. Unfortunately, time is up.

We will now turn the floor over to Mr. Barsalou‑Duval for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We have heard Mr. Roberts and Mr. Gagnon talk about their concern that the pilot shortage will worsen in transportation, particularly with the regional carriers, which are on the front lines. There is a risk that the major airlines will dip into these carriers to get better qualified pilots.

It was also explained to us that a pilot with a solo pilot's licence, who comes out of a flight school, is still not qualified to fly a commercial aircraft. For a pilot who has just obtained his licence, there is a long way to go between flying a Cessna and a passenger aircraft.

Could solutions be put in place to help pilots move from this stage to the next stages?

Mr. McKenna, I didn't hear you on that question. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that. If not, it would be interesting to hear from Mr. Roberts or Mr. Gagnon in that regard.

[John McKenna]

Actually, I always prefer to hear from carriers. So I'd love to hear what they have to say about it.