By Lisa Gordon | November 15, 2013 Estimated reading time 7 minutes, 17 seconds.
As it closes in on its 80th birthday in 2014, the Air Transport Association of Canada (ATAC) is busier than most octogenarians. As the official industry voice of a diverse membership – ranging from flight training units to air taxi operators to scheduled airlines – ATAC’s seven permanent staff members and 15 industry committees focus on a wide range of issues affecting commercial aviation in Canada. And, while its diverse member roster brings benefits such as a broad industry perspective, it also brings challenges.
“We have such a wide variety of members that they all have particular issues,” said ATAC president and CEO John McKenna, who assumed the leading role at the association in 2009.
McKenna spoke to Canadian Skies shortly before the association’s 79th annual general meeting and tradeshow, scheduled for Nov. 17-19 in Montreal, Que. He said the top issues for the association’s 180 members include fatigue risk management regulations, the de-icing cost structure at select airports, provincial infringement on the feds’ jurisdiction over aviation, and international student visa processing.
“There are big issues with the level of government service,” said McKenna. “We have a very good rapport with Tower C (the Ottawa headquarters of Transport Canada) and they’re doing the best they can, but they have a lot on their plate; there’s still a lot of regional disparities.”
For example, said McKenna, there is still a lot of pushback from regional inspectors with regard to the SMS (safety management system) process. “The carriers are the ones caught in the middle on this,” he said. “There are outrageous examples we bring to Transport’s attention to say ‘what’s going on?’ We need to sort these things out, and it takes forever.”
Unfortunately, when something big breaks at Transport Canada, other issues get pushed to the back burner, lamented McKenna. “When Minister Baird pulled the POC (private operator certificate) from CBAA (the Canadian Business Aviation Association) in March 2010, a lot of resources had to be reallocated. SMS was put on the back burner. More recently, I’m hearing the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster has had a huge impact on Transport Canada resources and attention. How will this impact us down the line? I don’t know.”
ATAC submitted a letter to the Minister of Transport on Oct. 24, 2012, in which it asks for the widespread implementation of SMS across the industry by April 1, 2014. “Of course, that’s not going to happen,” said McKenna. “There are quite a few issues; quite a few concerns there.”
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There are other irons in the fire at ATAC, which McKenna said employs a “content lobbying versus contact lobbying” approach. Generally, this means ATAC will work extensively at the lower management level of government to impact the content of draft regulations. “We deal with the Minister when we have to, and we’re very happy with (the selection of) Minister Lisa Raitt (as Minister of Transport). She’s solid, and she certainly has clout in Cabinet. But we do a lot of behind the door negotiations.”
That work continues in other key areas, too, including a member awareness campaign on upcoming belly cargo inspection procedures; efforts to ensure Canada’s passenger rights bill fairly assigns blame to all parties involved in a flight’s delay; and hastening the long-delayed CARAC review process at Transport Canada.
“Our wide variety of members makes it more complex when we have to comment on something like fatigue management,” said McKenna. “We dissented along with other associations, because you can’t have a ‘one size fits all’ approach. Martin Eley’s office certainly recognizes that fact, but where do we go from here? What we’re seeing basically is that the larger operators are limited by their collective agreements; but we don’t want their rules imposed on the rest of us!”
As the aviation industry heads into another winter season, ATAC is also focused on changing the charging mechanism for de-icing services, which McKenna said “greatly favours the big guys.”
There never seems to be any down time at ATAC. The big project over the past year has been changing association by-laws to conform with the new Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act – an exercise that has sucked up a lot of money and a lot of time.
“It changes much of our language, our year-end, how we even categorize our members and their voting privileges,” explained McKenna. “We spent a lot of money on legal advice to comply with the new law. We’ve had to re-label associate members as industry partners, for example. It’s done now, but it’s taken over a year.”
Staff at the association will be holding their collective breath at the upcoming AGM in November, the first to be held under the new by-laws. If all goes smoothly, they’ll know the by-law revisions were done right. With about 450 people expected to attend the event, McKenna said trade show booth numbers are up this year over last, and the association is hoping that Minister Raitt will accept its invitation to attend. New to the agenda is a member spotlight session, which will allow one company to highlight its recent innovations. This year, Bob Deluce will be in the spotlight, with an update on Porter Airlines. Also for the first time, the Jim Glass Humanitarian Award will be presented in memory of Glass, who was co-founder and managing partner at Transwest Air when he unexpectedly passed away in 2012 at just 50 years of age. And last but not least, Sunwing Airlines president and owner Colin Hunter – who is an executive by day and a popular crooner by night – will entertain attendees at the gala dinner. For more information, visit www.atac.ca.
