Transport Canada Civil Aviation (TCCA) underwent many changes since the organization changes of 1995. New concepts and approaches were introduced in successive key strategic documents such as Challenge’98, Flight 2005: A Civil Aviation Safety Framework for Canada and Flight 2010. Each new direction built upon the previous key strategies. These strategic documents and associated changes reflect broad Government of Canada initiatives as articulated in Results for Canadians and other directives.

TCCA committed to implementing safety management systems in aviation organizations to establish, through proactive management, more industry accountability and to instil a positive safety culture throughout the aviation industry. This evolving direction turned into the most important safety framework initiative, not only in TCCA, but in other Transport Canada regulatory areas as well.

To enable TCCA to continue to develop, implement and sustain the Safety Management System (SMS) oversight framework and its own Integrated Management System (IMS), management must ensure the workforce and the organization are in a position to effectively deliver these programs into the future. Therefore there is a need to identify and address any gaps in the capabilities of the workforce and its organization structure.