Foreign pilots as temporary workers for Airlines in Canada

[Montrealguy]

I have, for a few weeks now, engaged in a private campaign to fight the abusive use by Sunwing and Canjet of foreign pilots as Temporary workers in Canada. I wrote letters to the Minister of Immigration, Jason Kenney, to the Human Resources, Skills and Development Canada Minister, Diane Finley, to the Transport Canada Minister, Mr Denis Lebel, to the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities and finally to the Canadian Transportation Agency.

I have discovered that many others, including the two largest pilot Unions in Canada, ALPA and ACPA, have for years attempted to address this problem, which is getting worse every year, but with very little success. The various government agencies they wrote to or met with, have mostly lent a deaf ear to their complaints.

Sunwing and Canjet cater to travelers flying to sun destinations, a market which mostly exists between late December and April, and the rest of the year to a lessor degree. They have small year round fleets (about 8 and 5 aircraft respectively) which they more than double with short term leases for the high season. This past winter, Sunwing had approx 21 aircraft while Canjet operated around 13 aircraft.

To crew these extra jets during the short winter season, they hire short term temporary pilots, which is fine. But instead of finding a method that would allow them to hire short term pilots in Canada, they outsource these jobs to pilots from other countries.

One method to hire short term foreign pilots that is used by Sunwing is acceptable in my view, if it is done correctly and according to the existing regulations. It's the reciprocity method. That allows for x number of foreign pilots to come to work in Canada for Sunwing during its high season, in the winter, if in exchange, a similar number of Sunwing pilots go work overseas during Sunwing's low season, the summer, which happens to also be the high season in Europe. That method would be acceptable if the number of foreign pilots coming to work in Canada was of the same magnitude as the number Canadian pilots going to work overseas, but it is not. Sunwing has been importing much more pilots under the reciprocity Regs as it has been exporting.

To make matters worse, the pilots who work on wet-leased aircraft do no count in this scheme, for regardless of where in the world they are flying, they are still working for their home employer, under the home employers certificate. So when Sunwing Wet-Leases a Foreign Aircraft, the pilots of the Foreign Aircraft do not need work Permits from Immigration Canada, nor do they need Foreign Licence Validations from Transport Canada. Same goes for when Sunwing sends Canadian pilots overseas on Wet-Leases. So if Sunwing imports 50 pilots who come to Canada to fly Canadian Registered aircraft under the Sunwing Operating Certificate, these require Visas from Canada. Sunwing thus cannot count as reciprocal pilots, 50 Canadian pilots they send to Europe to fly Canadian registered aircraft Sunwing Wet-Leases to European carriers. These do not count. Can only be counted those Sunwing pilots that go work with European work visas for European carriers under those carriers' Operating Certificate. This is the theory anyway. It seems that no-one at Immigration Canada has been keeping tabs on how many Canadian pilots have been going to work overseas in exchange for the foreign pilots Sunwing has been bringing into Canada.

The second method Sunwing has been using to a lessor extent, but the one Canjet has mostly been using is the LMO. It is my opinion that this method has to be stopped completely. This is where the Canadian Airlines need to convince Human Ressources, and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC) that there is a shortage of pilots in Canada, that they have made a reasonable effort to recruit and/or train pilots, and that despite all their best efforts that they unable to recruit or train any Canadian pilots. Once they have satisfied this condition, HRSDC isssues the Canadian Airlines an Labour Market Opinion (LMO), which is a paper authorizing CIC to provide a number of foreign pilot with a Canadian temporary work permit. The problem with this method is that to prove that there are no qualified pilots, these airlines advertise for 737NG type-rated and current pilots only. The 15,000 hour 757 captain need not apply. This logic is wrong for the simple reason that if it becomes acceptable for Sunwing and Canjet to claim that they require a type rating to hire pilots, and use the lack of one to import a foreign pilots instead, what is to prevent all other Canadian Airlines to do the same ? Nothing. Air Transat will require its applicants to be 310 or 330 rated, Air Canada will require 320, 330 Embraer 190, or B-767 or 777 ratiings and Westjet will only hire 737NG type-rated people. There are plenty of all of the above in many countries that pay much less than is paid in Canada and who will gladly leave their countries to come in work in Canada. So do we want to open that door ? There are other arguments. One gentlemen told me he flies water bombers every summer and is laid off every winter and goes on un-employment insurance. He would be happy to have a right seat job in a 737 every winter and go back to his left seat in his water bomber every summer. But he is left on UI and a foreigner is hired instead. There are many other cases like him for Canada has more seasonal pilot jobs in the summer as it does in the winter.

Finally, these airlines have, to a lesser extent been wet-leasing foreign aircraft to augment their fleets. The pilots who come here are licensed in their home countries and are qualified under Annex 1 but do not necessarily meet Canadian standards. Yet, unlike the pilots who come in Canada under the two other schemes mentioned above, the Wet-Lease pilots do not need to be be tested in Canada. This last winter we had a case where 7 Czech Travel Service pilots who came to Canada under a temporary work permit, either failed the Canadian simulator or were so bad in their training that the instructors did not even send them to the test. They were sent home. So what Sunwing did was to Wet-Lease one B-737 from the airline these pilots worked for, and these same pilots came back to Canada at the controls of a Czech-registered Wet-Leased (which aircraft was delivered to Canada brand new from the Boeing factory with its Czech registration). This is the kind of level we may get with Wet-Leases. No Transport Canada oversight on procedures, on the pilots, on the maintenance, on the training, on the spare parts that are used etc etc.... Yet a Canadian tour operator sell tickets on these aircraft to Canadians who have no idea they are flying on a foreign operated aircraft. Oh its written somewhere on the fine print, but the travelling public has no idea......

Back in late 2009, TUI, a large European corporation which controls over 150 aircraft, bought 49% of Sunwing. TUI now provides Sunwing with a large portion of their pilots and aircraft in the winter. TUI's 737s and their pilots are in the low season in the winter. Having Sunwing use them instead of keeping them idle is a win-win situation for Sunwing and TUI, just as it make sense for Sunwing to dump its excess capacity of Pilots and aircraft on TUI in the summer . This must however be done on an equal basis as far as the pilots are concerned. If an airlines such as Sunwing wants to operate just 4 aircraft in the summer and over 20 in the winter, it must find a solution that includes Canadian pilots, not foreigners, except of course those that come to work in Canada under the one to one reciprocal agreement.