Air Safety Round Table: Richard Balnis

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Richard Balnis became a member of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) in the Ontario university sector in 1980. He has been a CUPE staff researcher out of the union’s head office in Ottawa since 1985. CUPE represents about 595,000 workers across Canada.

As a researcher, Richard works on behalf of CUPE’s 20,000 members in the federal sector, including about 8,500 flight attendants at Air Canada, Air Transat, CALM Air, Canjet, Cathay Pacific (Toronto and Vancouver bases) and First Air. His duties include general research support, collective bargaining, legislative representation and participation in litigation on many health and safety matters, among other responsibilities.

In his legislative role, Richard participated in the Government of Canada’s Dryden Commission Implementation Project (charged with implementing the recommendations of Justice Moshansky’s Inquiry into the Air Ontario crash at Dryden in 1989), the development and implementation of the Canadian Aviation Regulations (CARs) in 1996, the ongoing Transport Canada CARAC and security consultation processes and the debates concerning Bill C-6/C-7 amending the Aeronautics Act to implement aspects of Safety Management Systems (SMS).

Richard’s presentation at the roundtable will describe CUPE’s assessment of the origins of SMS, the flaws of SMS and how it is being implemented in Canada, and next steps to deal with the Canadian SMS “regulatory juggernaut”.

Remarks

(Video 10:04)

Good afternoon. There is always a danger of going after Greg Holbrook, so I’m going to try to focus down my comments on parts that are complimentary. It is amazing that we have so many different people in the room and we’re talking about the same thing but we have so many different stories.

First of all, let me tell you what CUPE is; CUPE is a union representing nearly 600,000 workers across Canada. Since 1985 CUPE has represented flight attendants. Today we represent on a good day, 8,500 flight attendants at six CAR 705 operators. Our largest is Air Canada, Air Transat, Calm Air – a very small operation, CanJet which was in the news on Monday, Cathay Pacific actually at the Vancouver and Toronto bases, and First Air. I have been with our flight attendants since 1985 I do remember the Dryden Commission implementation project. We were there when the CARS were developed. We were part of the CARAC and Transport Canada security consultation process.
And I really thank Hugh and Ian for being here; Hugh having survived the process and Ian at personal risk. Where we have met under different circumstances, but as I've learned you were both workers, and you were doing what your bosses told you. That is something that people forget about inspectors, that they don't run things; they actually have, as Greg said, a tremendous interest in safety.

We've been part of the creation of SMS and the debates over all these Bills and I think there is a paradox here. SMS has been put into place in aviation, and it began in 1999. Bill C-7 was being considered back in 2000, 2001. Even though the Bill hasn't been passed, SMS is fully through the industry. But I think what we saw, and there are three reasons we oppose SMS and Bill C-7. We literally saw the deal being struck between Merlin Preuss and the industry; we will trust you more, you will be able to self-regulate and look after your own affairs, TC will back off of you, there will be less enforcement, less control of what you do, and TC will be able to get by with less resources because they are subject to ever-increasing budget cuts. While that may be a Merlin Preuss managerial response to declining resources, it opens the door to industry abuse as we've heard for the last two hours.

That was our first concern.

Secondly, SMS transfers the determination of the acceptable level of risk from the regulator in the public interest to the industry itself, so the air carrier would be setting its own level of safety.

And finally, as I think Greg has spoken, and others, SMS has been accompanied by dismantling of the absolutely necessary Transport Canada oversight and enforcement mechanisms.

Assistant Deputy Minister Marc Gregoire has a very clever public relations line when it comes to SMS; we can't have an inspector on every aircraft, so we have to trust industry. But surely the response is not to have no inspectors out there doing and checking under the hood. That was our third concern.

Now, to help our legislators understand why, I've provided two case studies.

The first document is something that talked about the situation at SouthWest Airlines and other airlines last year. The reason why this case study is so important is that Bill C-7 wants to legitimize exactly what they have in the US industry; corporations self-disclosing violations without penalty as long as it is fixed. What is documented there is the case of SouthWest Airlines. They announced a violation to the regulator to avoid enforcement action; trust us, we broke the law, trust us. They then flew the planes that they reported were no longer in compliance for nine further days, and in some cases up to nine months, before doing the repairs. The FAA regional office turned a blind eye. The corrective action plan from Southwest was clearly inadequate, but accepted by the FAA. It was only exposed by brave whistleblowing inspectors, who were doing a night inspection and saw the cracks on the plane.

Now, if you turn to page 7 of the document, what you will see are the very important issues that are relevant from the US that affect us in Canada.

Essentially, you need effective whistleblower protection for the inspectors, but also for the employees out there. There is a far too cozy relationship between the regulator and the airlines. There is the danger of inadequate resources and limited hands-on oversight and surveillance. You cannot trust the industry to be operating (safely). Self-disclosure of regulatory non-compliance breeds a lax safety regime. Not the opposite, not a layer, not better.

Now the very last few pages of the document are recent clippings indicating that in March of this year, '09, SouthWest has agreed to pay 7.5 million American dollars as a civil penalty, the second largest fine ever in the United States, next to Frank Lorenzo's Eastern Airlines, for those who remember that airline. They have agreed to all sorts of corrective actions way above what they had originally proposed when they said, let's violate the law.

The second case is on a white document, and Greg has already spoken about it. That is the Canadian Business Aviation Association (CBAA) experiment. This is a cover document for 337 pages of documents that were obtained under the Access to Information Act. This is a summary of what was found.

Before Bill C-7 was even passed, TC allowed this industry lobby group to take over regulation of private operators. As Greg said, they called it self-regulation, and then dropped it (the title). TC conducted an audit of how CBAA was doing its job in 2007. Now if you go to page eleven of this particular document, which is a summary of what is going on, what is incredible that TC inspectors were auditing the CBAA at the very same time that the Standing Committee on Transport was reviewing this particular provision and were never told that this was going on. It is incredible. Then you will see at the bottom of page 18 of the document, that CBAA scored below acceptable scores in twelve areas of its work. Its corrective action plan was insufficient and then Transport Canada senior management overruled its own inspectors concerns, and simply said, we like what you're doing.

Now about ten months later, A.B. Williams Engineering crashed in March 2008 in Wainwright, Alberta. So, what was going on here? It should be remembered that it was a series of accidents that led to TC regulation of this sector of industry in the first place. Now they've deregulated it and turned it over to an industry body. That is documented.

Now, all the references in this document speak to the documents you don't see, but if we need to use it again, we'd be happy to provide it.

What's next for SMS? I'm getting a little fearful of what is going to happen. I think Greg has touched on the flaws. But I think we are now experiencing the SMS juggernaut.

CARS 705 airlines are in the final phase of implementing SMS. They are being audited right now.

Airports are just beginning their phase in of SMS.

CARS 702, 703 and 704 air operators, it looks like their regulations are coming soon and they will begin regulating themselves. I think as was demonstrated today from the testimony of the victims of that part of the industry, they are the least capable segments of the industry to do anything about looking about themselves.

Delegation is underway to the helicopter industry, at the same time that we have the tragic crash off Newfoundland.

The CBAA experiment continues to lurch forward despite its unsatisfactory audit.

Inspections and enforcement remain suspended.

If you read the January 2009 Federal Budget it looks like Civil Aviation is getting hit for less and less resources. So the inward spiral continues on.

We've also just talked about the confidentiality agreements.

This is a grim government agenda. But I think through our work together today and meeting today, I look forward to our discussions to turn this around. I am optimistic.

I thank Mr. Bevington for inviting us here today, the two Kirstens who sort of bird-dogged all the cats into the same room. But more importantly, those who have risked their jobs and their careers to come forward and tell us what we always knew was inside and now they have revealed it.

I look forward to our discussions on how to deal with this government agenda.

Thank you.