I found it much easier to negotiate contracts and start international businesses by using the methods not accepted in Canada or the USA. The little white envelop with $$$$. In South East Asia, South America, Mexico, Eastern Europe, Africa it is a common and accepted practice. I met with the chief executive of the Deutsch Bank in Honk Kong and he advised me to never forget the little white envelop. He lost a $6 billion dollar container port deal for that one little slip up.
The cost of operating an aviation business in Canada has become so financially crippling that many operators cut corners wherever they can just to make a marginal profit on their investment and hours of work.
As TCCA slides further and further away from hands on oversite of the industry and turns over the oversite to the operators with new methods such as SMS it is a Godsend to operators who spent time and effort in the process of evading TCCA's catching them in non compliance.
Now the shoddy operations will be in a better position to pencil whip their compliance to the regulations and as long as TC reads what looks to be good stuff nothing will happen until the next accident.
I have given much thought to where we are in aviation here in Canada and what is needed to return to where we should be.
To put it simply two things must happen before aviation in Canada gets back to fair and efficient regulation.
First there has to be a Federal open transparent inquiry into the way TCCA is managed starting in the office of the DGCA, and the Prime Minister must be forced to explain why his Minister of Transport has been blind to the moral corruption within TCCA and its affect on aviation in Canada.
Second there has to be funding put back into rebuilding the Regulator to a position where the Regulator polices the industry in a hands on manner and the Regulations and TCCA policies are enforced in a fair and consistent manner in all Regions, rather than the scatter gun manner in which TC interprets the rules at present.
This will mean that the Federal Government will need to put probably billions into rebuilding the Regulator back into the efficient oversite body it must be. One of the most critical issues is the hiring of people with experience in the industry who can be relied upon to do their jobs according to the Regulations and not at the whim of Regional Managers such as we have here in the Pacific Region, if nothing else we deserve people with integrity who are deserving of the position of trust that their office demands, rather than someone like the present RDCA who if he were in the private sector would be fired for just cause.
The billions spent will be money saved when one examines the cost of doing business in aviation in Canada as it now is.
And of course the public will have a better expectation of safety actually being served, rather than the Alice in Wonderland scenario we now have under the present structure of TCCA.
