Transport committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon. As noted, my name is Robert Donald. I'm the executive director of the Canadian Council for Aviation and Aerospace. This is the first time we've had the privilege of being here, and I thank you for inviting us. For those not familiar with

Transport committee  I would simply confirm what Mr. Deluce said about the shortage of pilots. ICAO, IATA, Boeing, and all others have confirmed the global shortage, the global competition for talent. As we get fewer and fewer pilots, it will exacerbate the problem as companies grow.

Transport committee  We have worked very closely with Employment and Social Development Canada to address precisely these issues over the last 25 years. We believe that we need a national strategy, looking at maintenance, pilots, and other crucial elements, such as MRO, to address this issue. Compani

Transport committee  We don't lobby Transport Canada on the merits of different regulations. The trade associations do that. Our role is to help companies and the industry with training and standards to implement those. So we have training around quality assurance and around SMS, and we have national

Transport committee  In short, I will borrow from Mr. Deluce's comments and the example he gave that when there are not enough pilots, they are forced to hire pilots with less experience for training or operations. The same applies to everyone in the industry, including the maintenance people who ar

Transport committee  We used to have a national labour strategy in this country. We no longer do. As I noted, we work very closely with ESDC on initiatives. We have projects pending with government as we speak to develop the labour market, either to develop new standards or outreach to youth or work-

Transport committee  My apologies. I went over the 45 seconds.

Transport committee  We have started, I'm pleased to say. Last November, we had the first ever national labour market strategy day in Canada here in Ottawa. We had industry, governments, and educators in the room to start addressing the issue. Everybody spoke about the issues. We said, “Good; now we

Transport committee  You go first, Mark. No need to thank me.

Transport committee  It's about ensuring airline staff have the appropriate training and quality assurance training. It's the same thing for the regulators and the inspectors, ensuring that they are properly trained, know what they're looking for, and have the appropriate skills to do the inspections

Transport committee  It's not our area of expertise but from everything we hear anecdotally from those who say it is, yes, we do have high standards, but I can't comment on what changes would help.

Industry committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. Incorporated in 1993, the CCAA is a non-profit, national partnership that works with industry, organized labour, educators and government. We work exclusively on a national labour market strategy for o

Industry committee  Thank you, Mr. Baldinelli. Thank you, Tracy. Yes, we definitely need more workers. We don't have the capacity in Canada to train them. We have one college in Quebec. People from northern Quebec have to move to Quebec for three years to go to school there. It's the same in other

Industry committee  Mr. Baldinelli, I won't speak to anything except the labour market. I'll let AIAC, Tracy and others speak to those questions of consolidation.

Industry committee  It's my pleasure.