Health committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the invitation to speak with the committee today. I'm Aaron McCrorie. I'm the associate assistant deputy minister for safety and security at Transport Canada. I can assure you that everybody at Transport Canada is committed to Canadians' safety and wel

Health committee  Thank you for the question, Mr. Chair. Unfortunately, I can't speak to whether the plane itself was taken out of commission. What I can note is that all airlines do have existing standard operating procedures for grooming the aircraft between flights and after flights. We've been

Health committee  No, we don't.

Health committee  Similar to some of the other questions around the understanding of the health dimensions of the virus, that's not our area of expertise at Transport Canada. We defer to our colleagues at the Public Health Agency of Canada. We're working with them to provide information to the air

Health committee  Thank you for your question. As I said, it's really the Public Health Agency of Canada that is responsible for deciding on the appropriate measures. Transport Canada's role is to work with the agency to convey the information to Canadian companies. The role we would play is ba

Health committee  Yes.

Health committee  Again, we're playing more of a facilitative role. The first, as I think Mr. Vinette alluded to, is to require pilots on aircraft, when somebody is identified as potentially having symptoms, to immediately notify the air traffic control system so that when they arrive, the system

Health committee  Do you mean if somebody demonstrates symptoms on the aircraft? That's correct. Regardless of how the captain of the aircraft becomes aware, it is their responsibility then to inform air traffic control, who will then notify us, and then we'll notify.... It's about making sure tha

Transport committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm Aaron McCrorie, the associate assistant deputy minister for safety and security at Transport Canada. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, guided by the latest public health advice, Transport Canad

Transport committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's clear that ensuring a healthy and safe transportation sector is essential for reopening borders, restarting the tourism industry, and for the safety and security of Canadians at large. Transportation will play a vital role in supporting the country's

Transport committee  Thank you for the question, Mr. Chair. When it comes to the pilot projects, the testing projects, we've been playing a supporting role. I hate to defer the question, but I think for you to get a sense of the timelines and the level of effort to get it launched, you'd probably be

Transport committee  Again, when it comes to the implementation of the pilots themselves, typically it's going to be Health Canada and PHAC that are the leads, but there are other pilot projects that are being contemplated. The Vancouver airport is contemplating a pilot project, for example, and I be

Transport committee  Mr. Chair, perhaps I could take that question.

Transport committee  In terms of the number of tests that have been deployed, we'd have to defer to our colleagues at Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada. I could note that from a Transport Canada perspective, we saw that the restrictions at the border, obviously at the outset of th

Transport committee  Sorry about that, Mr. Chair. I was hoping I'd go through my career without being told I was on mute, but apparently not.