CANADIAN ASSOCIATION OF AVIATION DISTRIBUTORS & MAINTENANCE ORGANIZATIONS

c/o 2555 Derry Rd. E. Mississauga, ON L4T 1A1 (905) 678-1234

Dissent

Please consider this as our “Official Dissent” to the NPA’s referred to above and recently discussed in Ottawa at the CARAC Part V / Part VII Technical Committee.

1. Safety Management Systems

From the perspective of an air carrier, these proposals may have some merit. Assuming that they will be implemented “appropriately to the size, nature and complexity of the operation” they might work very well.

However, on behalf of the AMO’s who do NOT also operate in the Part VII environment, we do NOT see the merit of these proposals. We’re already required by CAR 573.09 to maintain a Quality Assurance System; we’re already participating in the newly-introduced Human Factors training; and we’re already obliged by our Provincial Labour Authorities to promote and maintain a safe working environment. TC’s definition of SMS is “A systematic, explicit, comprehensive and proactive process for managing safety risks that integrates operations and technical systems with financial and human resource management to achieve safe operations and compliance with the CARs”. Sounds like “Quality Assurance / Quality Management”. We don’t believe that we need another set of documented/audited “systems” to help us run our businesses more “safely”. If we weren’t running them “safely”, we couldn’t stay in business.

The Government of Canada’s own Regulatory Policy (dated Nov/99 from the Privy Council Office) suggests that the benefit of regulations should outweigh the costs to Canadians, their governments and businesses. Not one of CAADMO’s members can see any benefit arising from SMS… we see only cost.

The same Regulatory Policy document further suggests that the Regulator must show that a demonstrated problem or risk exists. To date, despite our several requests to “show us”, we remain unsatisfied that a problem or risk exists. Certainly not a problem or risk that justifies the cost inherent in implementing SMS and putting the Canadian AMO at a further competitive disadvantage to our U.S.-based competitors.

Furthermore, the same Regulatory Policy document dictates that the “special circumstances of small businesses” be addressed. We submit that the “one size fits all” approach taken in these NPAs in no way addresses the special circumstances of small business AMOs.

Our recommendation … SMS is simply not a universal fit for the entire aviation industry, and should NOT be applied to CAR 573 AMOs except where the AMO is one component of a much larger organization certificated for CAR 70x operations.

2. Fatigue Risk Management Systems

These NPAs weren’t actually tabled at the latest Part V / Part VII meeting, so we can’t formally dissent at this time. However, for the record, we see absolutely NO merit in this set of systems. We would request that before they are brought back to the table, TC reconsider them in light of our Position Paper dated March 2, 2004. Nothing that TC has presented nor discussed since the March CARAC meeting has changed our viewpoint on this subject. These NPAs are, to quote my counterpart at AEA Canada, “pure regulatory overkill”.

The cost to implement these systems, a cost to be borne by an already over-regulated, over-burdened aviation industry will, in our view, VASTLY exceed any perceived benefit. We conservatively estimate the cost to implement FRMS to be $12,200 per average AMO (as outlined in the attached Schedule I) plus another $5,000 to $10,000 for annual “upkeep”. We do not see ever recovering this through “FRMS benefits”.

Our recommendation ... Fatigue Risk Management should merely be one component of an SMS, addressed by Policy Statements and Training only, when in fact an SMS is actually required based on size and complexity of a CAR 70x organization.

Sincerely yours,
CANADIAN ASSOCIATION OF AVIATION DISTRIBUTORS
& MAINTENANCE ORGANIZATIONS

Jeff Leavens
President

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