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Canada needs more aviation inspectors, air traffic controllers: union

The head of the Air Traffic Controllers Union of Canada says the government needs to hire more aviation inspectors after Ottawa's flight safety oversight score plummeted.

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OTTAWA – The head of Canada's Air Traffic Controllers Union says it's upset the government hasn't shared with it the findings of a U.N. agency audit of the country's air traffic regulation, oversight and inspection regime.

Nick von Schoenberg, president of the Canadian Air Traffic Controllers Association (CATCA), said neither the federal government nor Nav Canada, which runs the civil aviation system, shared the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) report that Canada's score had dropped. Total 30 points out of 100 points. This would put Canada below the international average for controls and inspections.

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He said he wondered what the government might be hiding.

“I haven't seen the report, which worries me,” he said. “Perhaps if we were reading the audit, we would be more comfortable with that score. Maybe we'll feel more comfortable.”

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Von Schoenberg says his members are overworked and understaffed. He also said the government should hire more aviation inspectors because of the damning protocol (the inspectors are represented by another union). Neither ICAO nor the government has released the document, but copies of the draft were obtained by some media outlets in December. The secret audit looked not at the safety of Canada's aviation sector, but at the country's regulatory, oversight and inspection regime.

“We need more inspectors. We need better training of inspectors (and) part of the problem is recruitment,” von Schoenberg said in an interview.

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Canada's score of 95 in 2005 dropped to 64 in last year's audit. The reports concluded that three areas of security oversight in the project were behind major takedowns: aircraft, airports and air navigation.

The National Post has not seen the full report, but the Canadian Press obtained a copy of the draft in December.

The CATCA president said Canada's aviation industry is one of the safest in the world, but noted it is self-regulating.

“I think the audit shows that we can't demonstrate that we're safe, we don't have the processes in place to ensure safety. And this is completely different from saying that we are not safe,” he said.

The United Nations body has recommended the federal government create a system to ensure full compliance by airlines and airports, strengthen certification for dangerous goods and ensure proper training and fatigue management of air traffic controllers, the Canadian Press reports.

The CATCA president said the proposal to manage fatigue for air traffic controllers was an issue he had been raising for some time.

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Chaos at Canadian airports in late 2022 and into 2023 as Canadians begin to travel after years of pandemic lockdowns has exposed a number of issues with the country's aviation industry, including a shortage of air traffic controllers.

According to Von Schoenberg, staffing cuts for dispatchers have gotten worse in recent years, with airports coping with staffing towers by making better use of overtime without exhausting dispatchers. According to him, there is currently a shortage of about 300 workers across the country.

“We've been operating at minimum staffing levels for a long, long time,” he said. “When we hit the pandemic, the situation was real and they had to lay off trainees … and given the way training works now, you can't just pick it up and put it back together in a hurry.”

“It will take a long time to dig ourselves out of that hole. Thus, the situation worsened,” he added.

In response to reports of the draft ICAO audit in December, the Canadian government noted that the UN report was not an indicator of the country's safety performance and did not highlight any issues requiring immediate action.

“ICAO has not identified any significant safety issues with Canada's civil aviation system, and we know our country's aviation sector is one of the safest in the world,” Transport Minister Pablo Rodriguez Laura Scaffidi said at the time.

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With additional reporting by Canadian Press

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