Transport committee  When you look at zoning as it relates to development, airport authorities are responsible for producing something called a noise exposure forecast. That's something they receive guidance on from Transport Canada. That exposure forecast provides guidance in terms of what kind of d

Transport committee  The exposure forecast work is done by the airports, specifically developed by airport authorities, not by Nav Canada per se.

Transport committee  There are different construction techniques that mitigate noise in terms of the quality of insulation, window panes, and so on. In Canada, we have some natural noise mitigation factors because of our winters—we have a lot of insulation in our homes—but that is not something that

Transport committee  I'm not 100% sure which organization would be responsible for that. I think that goes back to the zoning requirements with respect to what's an appropriate development in an area.

Transport committee  There isn't specific guidance in terms of a noise requirement for aircraft operating over residential areas. We use things like noise modelling when we're developing flight paths to understand the noise impact of changes, and we communicate those changes. We also identify ways to

Transport committee  There are some metrics. You had some folks here earlier—at the previous hearing with Colin Novak, for instance—who talked about metrics and how they can understand annoyance, but there isn't a specific requirement to meet a decibel level.

Transport committee  There haven't been any recent significant changes concerning the approaches. Certainly the traffic at the Montreal airport has increased and more planes are landing at the airport. However, there have been no changes in air routes to take into account the population increase in t

Transport committee  Of course we use noise modelling to understand the impact of air routes. When we work specifically on modernizing the airspace and we consider changing the airspace, we use modelling and census information to establish the number of people who are likely to be affected by the noi

Transport committee  The last major update of Montreal's airspace took place in 2012.

Transport committee  In terms of looking at the airspace change, we're guided by the airspace change communications and consultation protocol. It has some robust requirements and accountabilities for Nav Canada when it's conducting airspace change. That includes how and when consultations are condu

Transport committee  If you look at our current situation, you will see that we actually recently established something called an industry noise management board, which brings together technical expertise from across the industry. One of the tasks of that industry, starting in Toronto, is to come up

Transport committee  Ideally, we want to do continuous descent with every aircraft. Ideally, we have an aircraft from top of descent—that's cruise altitude—coming on continuous descent all the way to the runway. We'd like to use that as much as possible. We do have to use levelling sometimes to pro

Transport committee  The proponent of that change would be the GTAA, and they'd be better positioned to respond to that question.

Transport committee  Sure. The biggest change that happened in Calgary, obviously, was subsequent to the addition of a new runway. It was important for the airport to be able to accommodate its growth. That resulted in airspace redesign. Being 30 kilometres from the airport seems quite far, especial

Transport committee  Sure, absolutely. Of course, when you look to the west of the city, there's green or agricultural space and it seems obvious. It is very much about sequencing and managing traffic. We use Transport Canada's approved design criteria, internationally used design criteria, so ther