Canadian Whistle Blower Lifts Lid on Canadian Air Taxi Safety

In a frank discussion with Canadian CTV, Kirsten Brazier (owner of Ontario air taxi company, DaxAir Inc), warned Canadians that many of Canada's other 3000 air taxis are not flying safely. She claimed that safety violations have become widespread in her industry, that planes are flying overloaded and that maintenance standards leave much to be desired. "Standard industry practice is rule-breaking right across the board," Brazier said. She claims that pilots need to fudge their log books to make it look like they aren't in violation of flight-time limits. Brazier's motivation is Ottawa's proposed legislation, Bill C-6, that would essentially transfer responsibility for managing airline safety from Transport Canada to the airlines themselves. The new regulations, called "Safety Management Systems," would require airlines to investigate their own unsafe incidents, and report back to Transport Canada on their in-house solutions. Greg Holbrook, president of the Canadian Federal Pilot's Association which represents aviation inspectors who work for Transport Canada, says that SMS won't work for the air taxi industry. The head of Transport Canada, Merlin Preuss, claims in defense of Bill C-6 that it is still only a proposal that will likely undergo further changes before it becomes law. From deregulation to self-regulation to anarchy is a logical progression. Canada runs one of the most secretive incident reporting systems in the world. Called CADORS, you can read about it here.

The "Important Notice" on that CADORS page has been there for over six years. It reads: "In response to recent unauthorized disclosures of CADORS information, Transport Canada Civil Aviation (TCCA) is terminating all external access to CADORS except to those agencies named in Info Source. While it is regrettable that the flow of certain safety related information has to be interrupted, other means of conveying portions of this information to industry stakeholders are being explored and will be communicated to our industry partners in the coming months."