Air Safety Round Table: Ian Bron
Ian Bron is a former Transport Canada Chief of Aviation Security Regulations and Chief of Marine Transportation Security Regulations. He left Transport Canada after raising concerns about serious problems affecting safety and security.
Remarks
(Video 7:51)
I would like to thank Kirsten Stevens and the Honourable Dennis Bevington for inviting me to this round table.
I should state at the outset that I am not an expert in aviation safety. However, as former Chief of Aviation Security Regulations and Chief of Marine Transportation Security Regulations at Transport Canada, I am experienced in regulatory development and the culture at Transport Canada. In a previous incarnation, I was an officer in the Canadian Navy.
Safety Management Systems is, in theory, a form of performance-based regulations. Performance-based regulations are intended to give industry choice in the methods used to achieve the goals of the regulations – in this case, to prevent crashes and save lives.
However, in order to work such regulations require certain preconditions, which were outlined by my colleague, Haiyan Zhang. I agree with the assessment that SMS do not satisfactorily meet these criteria – in particular, with respect to transparency and the need to protect whistleblowers.
Having witnessed the culture at Transport Canada and knowing the reprisals faced by Transport Canada employees face when they speak out, I believe that this omission was deliberate and that Transport Canada is hostile to both transparency and whistleblowing – or ethical dissent, or truth-telling, or any other name one cares to give to people who choose to remember their obligations to Canadians and exercise free speech in the public interest.
The reason given for suppressing this dissent is usually that raising concerns “undermines public confidence in the aviation sector.”
Hugh Danford, who dared to speak his mind about Transport Canada’s failure to provide due diligence in its oversight of the aviation industry and the falsification of documentation, had his career was destroyed. And I, too, am still under attack by Transport Canada management for speaking out on marine security mismanagement and misconduct. As I remain a member of the public service, rest assured that my speaking at this event will not go unnoticed or unpunished.
My point is that I cannot believe that Transport Canada, which does itself not tolerate dissent on vital issues of public safety and security, can successfully lead a new and untested initiative in which it expects a completely different code of conduct from the airline industry.
Simply put, without whistleblowing protection, airline operations personnel will be risking their careers should they refuse a request to cut corners. This is not a hypothetical – it has already happened. Understandably, many will decline. This will put lives at risk. Again, this is not a hypothetical – it has already happened.
I have also witnessed an inappropriately cozy relationship between Transport Canada and industry executives in my work – personal friendships, lavish dinners, and rumours of cruise packages. It is hard for me to believe that it would be different for aviation safety, given that many of the players are the same. For more evidence, one has only to look at the recent incident in which the Minister had to publicly order his inspectors not to sign confidentiality agreements which airline operators were requesting. That such requests were actually accommodated – that an airline would set conditions for the government agency regulating it to inspect – seriously undermine the authority of the government and, I would argue, could only have happened in an environment where airline operators feel that they are in the driver’s seat.
It seems that Transport Canada is prepared to make a leap of faith. They appear to expect airline operators to become compliant, and that their inspectors will be able to detect a safety culture from a few interviews, an examination of documents and a periodic inspection. There has been no risk assessment of SMS – the idea is dismissed on their website as “superfluous”. There appears to be no way to test the system used by any individual airline – to see if their system is actually working.
Considering all these issues, and remembering that food safety was managed in a similar manner prior to the 2008 listeriosis outbreak, we do not think it an exaggeration to call SMS a disaster in the making.
I implore the Minister of Transport to take a long, hard look at his management cadre and the culture they have fostered, to speak to his inspectors in an open forum and to invite families of victims to his office. I ask him to send his regulatory drafters back to the beginning. Start with an independent, thorough risk analysis and cost benefit. Bring in more people to consultations. Monitor industry carefully and demand better. Only then, when risks have been weighed, his inspectors beefed up and all other concerns addressed, should he consider re-launching SMS for responsible, compliant airline operators.
