Dear :

For the past ten years the Canadian Owners and Pilots Association (COPA) has been trying to get Transport Canada to deal realistically with the fact that the international search and rescue satellite system (COSPAS-SARSAT) will stop monitoring the current 121.5 MHz type of Emergency Locator Transmitters (ELTs) on February 1, 2009. Only in the past year did Transport Canada finally put this before the joint government-industry Canadian Aviation Regulations Advisory Council (CARAC) to develop Notice of Proposed Amendments (NPAs) recommendations covering both the requirement for the more costly replacement ELTs broadcasting on 406 MHz and permitting other available alerting devices. In November 2007 consensus was reached between government and industry and the CARAC put forward a cost-effective recommendation recognizing the latest developments in search and rescue alerting technology.

In January 2008, senior management at Transport Canada unilaterally revised the NPAs it was putting forward for legal vetting and then Gazette I publication. To everyone’s surprise Transport Canada ignored the recommendations of the CARAC and is going forward with NPAs that will effectively mandate the most expensive and least effective of the options available. By not returning the NPAs to the CARAC for further consideration Transport Canada has circumvented its own consensus-based regulatory review process.

What aircraft owners generally want, and COPA is advocating, is that the new regulations should allow aircraft owners to choose the best distress alerting option for the type of aircraft they own and the type of flying they do, from several options that are currently available and will become available as technology progresses. Transport Canada is effectively mandating the most expensive option, and the oldest technology. There are alternatives permitted but none are available to the vast majority of aircraft owners.

The bottom line is that if these new NPAs are permitted to go through to regulation Canadian light aircraft owners (approximately 25,000) will be forced to purchase and install equipment that is inferior to current technology at a total cost of between $80,000,000 and $120,000,000.   

The justification behind this bad decision by Transport Canada seems to be that the Department of National Defense stands to save millions of dollars by reducing false alert search costs but with no significant improvement in the likelihood for successful search and rescues. The CARAC proposed alternatives could both reduce false alert costs to DND and increase search and rescue success rates at a fraction of the cost to the aviation industry.

This is a very complex issue. I am attaching a short Briefing Paper as well as the Letter of Dissent filed by the Canadian Owners and Pilots Association. You can also find a more in depth report on the issue on the COPA web site at: www.copanational.org/non-members/body_files/Transport%20Canada%20effectively%20mandates%20406%20ELTs.htm

As your constituent I am asking that you bring this matter to the attention of Transport Minister Cannon and seek to have the three NPAs referenced in the attachments stopped. The matter should then be sent back through the CARAC process for further industry evaluation.

As you will see from the Briefing Paper if the NPAs go forward as proposed it will have divisive and devastating effects on General Aviation in Canada. In addition, since the US is not mandating the same ELT solution, cross-border flights by thousands of US General Aviation aircraft will be severely curtailed which will have a further negative economic impact.

The COPA headquarters is located in Ottawa and Kevin Psutka, COPA President and CEO, is available to discuss this with you or your assistants at any time. Please feel free to contact Kevin at 613-236-4901 (extention 102) or kpsutka@copanational.org .

This is a very important matter for the many thousands of aircraft owners across Canada.

Thank you,