New letter to CIC against the use of Foreign National pilots

[mel gibson]

What will it take to stop this practice?

The Prime Minister is being influenced by someone.

He just allowed a number of former Royal Air Force pilots to be hired by the RCAF, due to
Crewing shortfalls. I believe that he does not quite understand the civilian component, or is being
" lobbied" by someone.

I also believe that it is an attempt to secure votes in certain regions of the country.

Only Canadian pilots know the shi$ we have to do to get to an airline job. The average politician
just does not understand. It is either jealousy of the job or simple misunderstanding of what the profession requires. We make the job look easy and I believe that the majority of Canadian pilots are over qualified for the positions they are in. Just look at foreign pilots in their fancy uniforms in an International terminal with an entourage of flight attendants. There is no friggin way that these under qualified yahoos should be flying these aircraft.

It will take a haul loss to make this thing real.

They will have an enquiry, blame the pilots , blame the system, implement a few bullsh@t recommendations and carry on. The government will continue to get its' landing fees and taxes and the owners and executives will continue to get rich.

Good job Gilles. Vous Parlez pour tous!!! ( was I close?)

[gonnabeapilot]

Sunwing uses mostly the reciprocal method. Or so they claim anyway. Their problem of course is how to go from 6 aircraft in the summer to 24 aircraft in the winter by using that method ? How can one reciprocate on a one-to-one basis if you import more foreign pilots into Canada than you have Canadian pilots on your payroll ?

Maybe Sunwing has just been biting off more than it can chew and assumed bending Immigration rules was ok. If they need to carry more passengers, but the number of pilots is an obstacle, one possible solution is to increase the size of their aircraft. That's what most airlines do. One A-330 carries about twice the amount of passengers as a B737-800. Instead of sending 4 B-737s to Varadero in one day, you send 2 A-330s...... I happen to know a Canadian company that could wet lease a few, all flown by Canadian crews.........

Just wanted to raise a couple points of discussion in regards to your arguments... The first one is that Sunwing management likes to make the point that the legal definition of reciprocal does not mean equal. As long as the opportunity exists for a single Canadian pilot to work over-seas they are well with-in their right to bring foreign pilots over to work with-in Canada. There is also no definition to the type of reciprocal work that is required to be done. Whether Canadian pilots are flying wet-leased C-Reg aircraft over-seas or are contract flight crews operating Foreign Reg aircraft over-seas, they have been given opportunities for reciprocal work and Sunwing has met the required terms to bring foreign pilots into Canada.

As for your second point, the obstacle is not the number of pilots required. The obstacle is that Sunwing is a travel company and the airline is simply a tool to allow the travel company to get its customers into the beds down south. Again, management will point out that it is cheaper to send 4 B-737s to VRA in one day than to send 2 A-330s. Because the profit margin exists on the packaged-vacation and not the flights, the travel company will always choose to operate 4 B-737s over 2 A-330s as they will not want to eat into their profits with higher transportation costs. This is the same reason why Sunwing and Canjet do not operate 757s. Now how those 4 B-737s are operated is up for debate. My understanding is that every Canadian 737 operator was approached by Sunwing to see if they would be able to offer a competitive rate to provide some of the required lift of the travel company and the only company that was able to provide a competitive bid was Canjet who A: Already happens to be aligned with Sunwing's biggest competitor (I'm sure you're well aware of just how well that worked out for Transat with Westjet) and B: Who would be meeting that need for additional lift by hiring foreign pilots anyways. So at the end of the day, we are in the situation we are in. Personally I don't happen to like that situation and I agree that we should all be fighting to ensure we get 1-1 reciprocity however we are also bound by the realities surrounding our situation and I don't see those realities changing any time soon.

[Gilles Hudicourt]

There is also no definition to the type of reciprocal work that is required to be done. Whether Canadian pilots are flying wet-leased C-Reg aircraft over-seas or are contract flight crews operating Foreign Reg aircraft over-seas, they have been given opportunities for reciprocal work and Sunwing has met the required terms to bring foreign pilots into Canada.

You used, in your post, the wording used in the new CIC guidelines for Reciprocal workers, those that were published in June 2012. Before then, the CIC guidelines for reciprocal pilots read as follows:`

"R205(b) allows foreign workers to take up employment when reciprocal opportunities are provided for Canadian citizens to take temporary employment abroad"

This wording did not allow Canadian pilots working for Sunwing while flying Sunwing aircraft overseas (Wet-Leases) to be considered as having "employment abroad". They work for Sunwing. The new wording however seems to allow it:

"R205(b) allows foreign workers to take up employment in Canada when Canadians have similar reciprocal opportunities abroad"

I have no problem with it if Sunwing wants to count its pilots working overseas on Wet-Leases (flying Sunwing Canadian registered aircraft overseas) as fulfilling its commitment under the reciprocal deal.

However, if that is to be, the foreign pilots who come to work in Canada for Sunwing at the controls of Wet-Leased aircraft should also be counted as Foreign Pilots allowed into Canada under the reciprocal deal, which is going to further muddy the waters, waters that are already murky as it is.

CIC already admitted that one of the reasons they allowed Sunwing to abuse the reciprocal system is because they have in fact no idea how many Sunwing pilots work oveseas, for they play no role and have no records on Sunwing Canadian pilots who go work overseas. They had to rely on Sunwing's word.

CIC also plays no role in Foreign pilots who come to work in Canada on Wet-Leases because these pilots require no Canadian Work Permits. So CIC has no records on these pilots , whose aircraft Wet-Leases are approved by the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA).

So, one now expects a CIC officer, before approving new Work Permits for Foreign pillots under the reciprocal scheme, to attempt to count, not only how many Sunwing pilots have gone to work overseas on Wet-Leases, on which he has no records, but also how many Foreign Pilots have come to work for Sunwing in Canada on Wet-Leases, on which he also has no records.

How many Czech pilots were flying the Wet-Leased Czech 737 last winter? They are to be counted.
How many Portuguese pilots were flying the two Portuguese Wet-Leased 767s this summer? They are to be counted.
How many Czech pilots will crew the 5 B-737s Sunwing plans to Wet-Lease this coming winter ? They will need to be counted too.

That is my point.

[bigskyjoc]

Gilles, how many aircraft did Transat send to other countries on a "wet lease" to cover flying like the Haj? Have you ever been part of a wet lease Gilles?

[Gilles Hudicourt]

Gilles, how many aircraft did Transat send to other countries on a "wet lease" to cover flying like the Haj? Have you ever been part of a wet lease Gilles?

Every case is different. Every country is different. Every Airline is different.
The Hajj for Garuda is a perfect case where Wet-Leases are required.

Garuda is a relatively small airline with 80 and some aircraft, it's less than half the size of Air Canada. It's however one of the only Indonesian Airlines that is not blacklisted in Europe, and in Saudi Arabia. So it's not like it can ask help from other Indonesian Airlines to do the Hajj, they are not allowed to go to Saudia Arabia by the Saudis..... Garuda itself was blacklisted from 2007 to 2009.

Imagine that the Canadian Military contracted Air Canada to fly 120,000 Canadian soldiers from Trenton to Turkey, starting on Sept 20th, and have them all back to Canada by Dec 2 with a one week break with no flying in the middle. Air Canada would have to do this while maintaining all their regular flights. How would they do it ?

That is what Garuda is tasked with as far as the number of passengers, the distances involved and the time frame. Are you certain you want to compare that to Canjet and Sunwing ?

To reply to your question, 4 aircraft went to the Hajj on Wet-Lease for Garuda last year, for a little over two months, and no I have never done it. It's way too senior. I stay and do the regular stuff......

[Gilles Hudicourt]

Gilles, how many aircraft did Transat send to other countries on a "wet lease" to cover flying like the Haj? Have you ever been part of a wet lease Gilles?

And look at what article I found .

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/corporat ... ent/539754

Garuda’s move comes less than a year after announcing that it would no longer hire foreign pilots. A strike by 650 local Garuda pilots that July led the state-run airline to bring foreign pilots’ benefits more in line with their local counterparts.

“A meeting between the company’s management and the Garuda Pilot Association concluded three things, among them that the company agreed not to employ foreign pilots anymore. The company will not extend contract of foreign pilots,” Elisa Lumbantoruan, Garuda’s finance director, said late last October.

At the time, foreign pilots earned $7,200 a month, including housing benefits, compared to $5,000 for Indonesians.

[Gilles Hudicourt]

Another letter I wrote a few days ago. No reply to this one so far.....

David Manicom
Director General
Citizenship and Immigration Canada
Immigration Branch
365 Laurier Avenue West
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 1L1


Montreal, August 27, 2012

Dear Sir,

The unjustified and abusive issuance of Canadian Work Permits to Foreign Pilots for Sunwing and Canjet must cease. There is no shortage of qualified Canadian pilots in Canada and Sunwing has not, and will not fulfil its requirements under the reciprocal deal that has all too generously allowed them to bring in too many foreign pilots into Canada. CIC should therefore no longer provide them with any Work Permits for Foreign pilots.

As you are probably aware by now, Air Transat has given lay-off notices to over 50 Canadian pilots, all of whom had been flying large wide-bodied aircraft on trans-oceanic routes and from Canada to the Caribbean basin. All of these pilots are fully qualified and have the necessary experience to fly for both Canjet and Sunwing. This is not restricted in any way to Air Transat pilots for there are in Canada many other Canadian pilots who are qualified to fill in those positions and who would happily do so if given the opportunity.

I am well aware that the work permits issued under an LMO are jointly administered by CIC and HRSDC but once the LMO has been issued by HRSDC, it is still CIC, your office, that issues the Work Permit to the foreign nationals. So I will begin with the LMO based work-permits.

I have 26 years experience as a professional pilot and around 15,000 flight hours, including 8,500 on large jets, namely the Boeing 757, the Airbus 310 and the Airbus 330. I have never flown the Boeing 737NG. But I can. All it take is a course of a few weeks, the same course that can also be provided to a brand new 200 hour pilot, just out of flight school, and with zero flying experience outside his flight school. Yes sir, a 20 year old pilot with a brand new commercial licence with zero flying experience can be type-rated on the Boeing 737NG. Yet, that type rating, that anyone with a commercial licence can obtain, regardless of experience, makes the inexperienced 20 year old qualified to work at Canjet and leaves me, with all my background, unqualified to do so. This is what they want civil servants at CIC and HRSDC to believe anyway when they request the LMOs on that basis. That claim is preposterous and dishonest. Yet it is on the basis of a $10,000 type-rating that any kid can get from a simulator company, that Canjet is turning away experienced Canadian pilots who may be on Employment Insurance, and hiring Type-Rated Foreign pilots instead, pilots who pay no taxes in Canada. Are you aware, Mr Manicom, that the amount of money a qualified and laid off Canadian pilot will collect from EI in one year is more than what a B-737NG type-rating costs Canjet ? So to save Canjet the money that this company should invest in training its temporary pilots, the government of Canada is going to pay in EI premiums more than Canjet would have spent in providing the type-ratings to begin with. This is a form of subsidy to Canjet, that foreign pilots also benefit from. If the Government of Canada wants to subsidy Canjet, at least it should do so by providing Canadian Pilots with the type-ratings that Canjet requires of them to he hired, instead of giving those jobs to type-rated foreigners and keeping the Canadians on EI.

As for the reciprocity deal from which Sunwing Airlines has been benefiting these past years, they have simply been importing more foreign pilots than they employ Canadian pilots in Canada. It does not take a doctorate in nuclear physics for anyone to deduct that under such conditions, they have not been fulfilling the reciprocity agreement in any form or shape. Sunwing employed last year about 150 Canadian pilots. Yet they imported about 200 Foreign pilots under various schemes.

On top of the 150 Canadian pilots Sunwing employed last year, I saw various memos and press releases stating they had employed an additional 15 full time Canadian pilots and another 20 seasonal Canadian pilots for the winter, for a total of about 185 Canadian pilots. Mark Williams, the Sunwing CEO stated in an interview that he gave to a member of the press (http://www.canada.com/business/Pilots+s ... story.html) that he intended to employ 130 foreign pilots this coming winter (under the reciprocity scheme). Yet this year, Sunwing sent no Canadian pilots to work overseas for any foreign airline. None. The 40 to 50 pilots they did send to Europe, went there to fly Canadian-registered Sunwing operated aircraft, that were on Wet-Lease to European airlines. These pilots were at the employ of Sunwing the whole time. Mark Williams, the Sunwing CEO, admitted in the same article that he counts the Wet Lease pilots he sends to Europe as fulfilling his side of the reciprocal agreement. Such pilots should not count under any reciprocity agreement since the foreign pilots of Wet-Leased aircraft which come to Canada to fly for Sunwing require no work permits from CIC and are not counted the reciprocity agreement. Your office does not even have knowledge of their presence in Canada. This past winter, in January, Sunwing Wet-Leased a Czech-registered B-737 which came with about 15 Czech pilots, none of which needed Canadian Work Permits. This summer, Sunwing has been wet-leasing two Portuguese Boeing 767s to do flights between Canada and Europe, who came with about 30 Portuguese pilots, none of which require a Work Permit from CIC. They are still working in Canada now. Your Immigration officers know nothing about these foreign pilots either. This coming winter, Sunwing announced in an internal memo that intended to Wet-Lease 5 Boeing 737NGs from Europe, thus by-passing the need for CIC Work Permits for that group of pilots. These 5 aircraft would come with about 60 pilots who would be working in Canada but whose presence your CIC officers, whose job it is to keep track of Sunwing reciprocity compliance, would know nothing about.

If pilots at the controls of Wet-Leased Sunwing aircraft sent to Europe are to be counted towards fulfilling the reciprocity agreement Sunwing submitted to CIC, then all foreign pilots who come to Canada to work at the controls of foreign aircraft Wet-Leased by Sunwing and who require no Work Permits must also be counted under Sunwing's reciprocal agreement, even if these require no Work Permits. That is the only way to achieve a "neutral market impact".

It seems that CIC officials had mis-administered the reciprocal agreement with Sunwing either by claiming ignorance or by suggesting that they had been taken for a ride by Sunwing representatives. This can no longer be claimed by them in the future. The situation is now clear and it has become public.

This winter, we will have a group of experienced pilots who will take it very personally if any foreign pilots are issued work permits by CIC while they are collecting EI or are forced to accept lower paying jobs, or again are forced to expatriate themselves to the Middle East or to Asia to support their families. And they will be very vocal about it.

I do not know if your administration has already taken any steps or measures to address to subject of this email, I have yet to read anything to that effect, but I certainly hope it has.

Regards,



Gilles Hudicourt
Air Transat A330 captain (writing on my own behalf)

[rudder]

Gilles,

While I applaud your objectives, your tone with correspondence with the overseers of the policies in question will have to be less agressive. The argument will be won on fact, not opinion nor emotion.

Keep up the good fight. But perhaps consider hiring a professional PR consultant to write the letters. And always check your facts - they must be 100% accurate. Credibility is everything.

Good luck.

p.s. why are these letters not being written by ALPA?

[Gilles Hudicourt]

Gilles,

While I applaud your objectives, your tone with correspondence with the overseers of the policies in question will have to be less agressive. The argument will be won on fact, not opinion nor emotion.

Keep up the good fight. But perhaps consider hiring a professional PR consultant to write the letters. And always check your facts - they must be 100% accurate. Credibility is everything.

Good luck.

p.s. why are these letters not being written by ALPA?

Thanks for the advice. You are probably correct. My first letters were more toned down and I am getting a little frustrated at that fact that often I just do not get any reply at all to my letters, even when they are specifically addressed at a particular person, as this one was. When I do get replies, as when I wrote to the CIC Minister, the person who replied to me on his behalf was either very misinformed or plainly lied to me. A Mrs Sylvie Charbonneau wrote to me that all Foreign pilots who came to Canada for Sunwing came under an LMO provided by HRSDC and that Sunwing had no reciprocity agreement on file at CIC. This allowed them to attempt to simply sweep the problem under the rug, and pass it on to someone else, in this case HRSDC. Here is her direct quote:

.....However, I would like to clarify that there is no reciprocity agreement in place for foreign pilots coming to work for Canadian companies and these jobs require a Labour Market Opinion (LMO) from Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC).

As this matter falls under the responsibility of the Honourable Diane Finley, Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development, I have taken the liberty of forwarding a copy of your correspondence for her information and necessary action.

Thank you for taking the time to share your concerns.

S. Charbonneau
Ministerial Enquiries Division

The agreement in question, the one Mrs Charbonneau told me does not exist, had already been obtained from CIC under an Access to Information Request.

See here: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/department ... 2/june.asp

A-2012-00799 A copy of the Reciprocal Agreement and any supporting documentation used by Sunwing Airlines as the basis for the issuance of work permits to foreign pilots, which allows them to act as flight crew members for Sunwing Airlines in the 2011-2012 season, pursuant to the section 205(b) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations. Disclosed in part 1

I trust that ALPA is also working on this file on its end.

Gilles

[mbav8r]

Gilles, first I would like to thank you for all you're doing to address this very big issue. Second, have you tried to approach the media with this story? The public will care, they will care that the politicians who are supposed to work for us, the people paying their wages, aren't acting in OUR best interest. There are still many unemployed people who will care that as a direct result of this, there are more unemployed people. I think you need to find a reporter who will help you bring this to the attention of the masses, because 50 angry pilot writing letters will likely have little to no effect. A story on the news about 50 angry pilots letters being ignored, will!

[Gilles Hudicourt]

Second, have you tried to approach the media with this story?

I have. This is what I obtained so far.

http://www.canada.com/business/Pilots+s ... story.html

[KAG]

Gilles, thanks for your hard work. If I were in your fellow Transat pilot shoes I would apply to UI and ask for financial grants to get 737 type ratings. In fact I'd take it a step further and get EVERY ATPL rated pilot in Canada who is unemployed to apply.
Now don't get me wrong I don't want the tax payer to pay a dime towards a type rating, nor realistically do I think think it will at 50K a pop is a lot of money our government would be unwilling to spend. But it would be great ammunition for further media coverage that on one hand our government is allowing hundreds of jobs to go to foreign pilots while not helping unemployed Canadian pilots.

It boggles my mind that our Gov would be so willing to negate all the potential income tax revenues by allowing hundreds of good paying middle class jobs to be outsourced. Not to mention the unfair financial advantages this allows for some Canadian companies.