This all seems to divide into two parts. First the fact that a fellow pilot seems to have broken his professional responsibility by attempting to fly impaired. This is very serious and inevitably shines a negative light on all of us, however unjustified. The Calgary police, Sunwing and Travel Service will need to investigate and make sure that the systems in place to catch this type of thing functioned properly and that it wasn't just dumb luck that this pilot didn't get the chance to endanger the public.
The second issue is that this is a foreign pilot operating on a LVC. Clearly Slovakians are no more likely to suffer from alcoholism than native Canadians. Sunwing is employing approximately 100 European pilots this winter on a combination of wet leases and on LVCs. This is in reciprocity to the 150-160 Canadians that operated in Europe on wet leases in 2016.
For the record, all pilots operating on LVCs undergo a full company groundschool, simulator and TC PPC. To Clunkdriver, no, TC has not been cut out of the loop. The candidates use an approved syllabus and are PPC'ed by the same A checks, with the same oversight, as Canadians.
I have no doubt that you encountered poor RT from a Sunwing crew. I have heard some poor RT from lots of ESL pilots who carry a Canadian passport. Hell, I've heard lots of poor RT from mono-lingual anglo speakers.
Canadians can't operate in Europe on an LVC, we used to be able to, but no longer. This means that the wet lease is the only option open to us. From an immigration standpoint, Sunwing pilots sometimes have to get work permits from the country in which we are based and sometimes not. All depends on where. Over 100 where issued to us over the summer. If we don't maintain this reciprocity, over 100 Canadians will be laid off in the summer.
From a quality of life stand point, it is better for the Sunwing pilot group to bring these pilots to Canada under an LVC as opposed to a wet lease. This way every European slots in under the most junior Canadian. This also means that many more basing options are open to Canadians instead of having a wet leased airplane based in the city you desire.
The Winston