Location: National
Key messages:
- Transport Canada (TC) is committed to the promotion of a safe, secure, and efficient air and marine transportation system in Canada.
- Maintaining the integrity of the review process of medical certificates is extremely important. TC has been improving its capacity to process the large number of applications by implementing digital solutions and hiring additional staff.
- The Department is committed to meeting its service standard in the delivery of medical certificates and is actively working towards modernizing the Aviation and Marine Medical Programs.
- TC continues to work with industry and stakeholders to provide timely medical certification for essential aviation services, including commercial operations and pilot training.
- TC is taking steps to modernize marine safety and security in Canada, which includes the digitalization of current seafarer files and certificates. This will help reduce the time required to review and process requests, as well as improve the delivery time of issuing certificates.
Summary of Issue / Background:
- Determining the medical fitness of air and marine operators is essential to maintain the safety and security of Canada’s transportation system.
- TC has been working to improve the aviation and marine medical programs by modernizing regulations and processes to ensure a high standard of service delivery.
Aviation
- Pilots, air traffic controllers, and flight engineers must have a valid medical certification to exercise the privileges of their licenses. TC processes approximately 60,000 aviation medical certificate applications annually, which are essential for maintaining public and aviation safety.
- Since March 2022, applications have increased from approximately 5,000 to 6,000 per month, due to renewed interest in aviation as many public health measures were lifted and flight schools and cadet programs reopened.
- The increased quantity and complexity (e.g., aging pilots given the changing demographics and earlier diagnosis of conditions like mental illnesses) of applications pose immense challenges to TC.
- Approximately 75% of all medical renewals are now carried out immediately in the Civil Aviation Medical Examiner’s office, which is a streamlined process introduced by TC.
- Of the remaining medical files that are not carried out immediately, approximately 15% are non-complex, which are processed and approved within the service standard of 40 business days.
- The remaining 10% of files are medically complex and often require further diagnostics before a medical authority can make a determination with respect to their ultimate disposition.
- Civil Aviation Medicine is currently engaged in several transformational projects. These include:
- The digitalization of all paper medical files;
- Issues management support for applicants via phone and webmail queries;
- Increased medical assessment capacity for complex case management; and
- Improvements to the Electronic Medical Examination Report.
Marine
- On average, 16,000 to 18,000 marine medical files are processed annually.
- Marine Medical Examiners are responsible for conducting a medical assessment on an applying seafarer, and can issue a provisional certificate that is valid up to 6 months. The provisional certificate is then reviewed by TC’s Marine Medical Unit and a certificate is issued to the seafarer.
- A certificate issued by TC’s Marine Medical Unit is categorized as either “fit” or “fit with limitations”, or the seafarer to be deemed “unfit”. Seafarers employed on vessels are required to always have the original documents, either valid or provisional certificate, in their possession.
- TC is working on a major modernization project, which includes the digitalization of approximately 50,000 seafarer paper files. Additional digital solutions are being adopted to facilitate the issuance of certificates by Marine Medical Examiners.
- The Seafarer Services App, a new workload management system that was released in Fall 2021, is being implemented in phases with the Marine Medical Unit while ongoing development and improvement continues to take place.
- As a part of ongoing modernization efforts, a pilot project was implemented in September 2022 that allows a Marine Medical Examiner to complete an electronic Exam Report and send digitally to TC. This reduces the back and forth between Marine Medical Examiners, applicants, and TC, and improves the quality of the data. Currently, 50 out of the 280 delegated Marine Medical Examiners are utilizing the electronic report with the anticipation over the next year in migrating all Marine Medical Examiners into using the electronic report.
- Another aspect of the modernization initiative is to realign how the Marine Medical Unit operates and delegate to Marine Medical Examiners the ability to issue fit and fit with limitation certificates. [ Redacted ]