Supplement to Statistics Canada's Generic Privacy Impact Assessment related to Childhood National Immunization Coverage Survey

Date: October 2021

Program manager: Director, Centre for Social Data Integration and Development

Director General, Census Subject Matter, Social Insights, Integration and Innovation

Reference to Personal Information Bank (PIB):

Personal information collected through the Childhood National Immunization Coverage Survey is described in Statistics Canada's "Special Surveys" Personal Information Bank. The Personal Information Bank refers to information collected through Statistics Canada's ad hoc surveys, which do not form part of the regular survey taking activity of the Agency. They cover a variety of socio-economic topics including health, housing, labour market, education and literacy, as well as demographic data.

The "Special Surveys" Personal Information Bank (Bank number: StatCan PPU 016) is published on the Statistics Canada website under the latest Information about programs and Information Holdings chapter.

Description of statistical activity:

Statistics Canada has conducted the Childhood National Immunization Coverage Survey (CNICS) every second year since 2011, under the authority of the Statistics Act, on behalf of the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC). The purpose of the Childhood National Immunization Coverage Survey (CNICS) is to collect information on immunization coverage for vaccines administered to children and pregnant women.

The survey is intended to:

  • Determine whether children and pregnant women are vaccinated in accordance with recommended immunization schedules for publicly funded vaccines;
  • Provide the World Health Organization and the Pan American Health Organization with estimates of national vaccine coverage for childhood vaccines such as those against measles, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus and polio;
  • Provide information on parental and guardian knowledge and beliefs about vaccines.

CNICS is a voluntary survey, and for the 2021 cycle it collects information for children and youth aged 2, 7, 14 and 17 years old, and women who gave birth between September 1, 2020, and March 1, 2021, living in the 10 provinces and three territories. It excludes those residing on First Nations reserves and those living in institutions. Vaccination data is collected from the parent or guardian of the child, the biological mother (for vaccines received during pregnancy), the health care provider who administered the vaccines (where possible and when permission is provided for children aged 2, 7, 14 and 17 years) and from immunization registries in the provinces of Manitoba and PEI (when the parent or guardian has given permission). These sources of data are combined to create a full and complete picture of vaccine coverage.

Survey topics include vaccination status for childhood vaccines and vaccines administered during pregnancy, reason for non-vaccination, trusted sources of information for vaccination, and knowledge and beliefs about vaccines in general. For the 2021 cycle, questions were added to help understand the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on immunization and vaccine coverage for children and pregnant women. In addition, parents and guardians of children aged 2, 7, 14 and 17 years old are asked for their child's COVID-19 vaccination status and, if not vaccinated, they are asked their likelihood to vaccinate their child.

As was the case in 2019, for the 2021 cycle parents and guardians living in the provinces of PEI and Manitoba will have the opportunity to skip the detailed questions about their child's vaccination history, if they agree to share their child's identifiers with the respective provincial immunization registry. Statistics Canada has data sharing and data acquisition agreements in place with both PEI and Manitoba and as such, when permission is given by the parent or guardian, is able to retrieve the child's detailed vaccination data from the provincial registry. Statistics Canada does not have access to all of the immunization registry records for PEI or Manitoba, only those for the children included in CNICS and where the parent or guardian has given express permission. Statistics Canada continues to negotiate agreements with health authorities to access data from the other provincial and territorial registries. To reduce respondent burden further, record linkage to tax data is used to provide total household income for all respondents.

No other immediate requirements for linking results from the CNICS to other administrative datasets, surveys or the Census have been identified. However, given the importance of vaccinations for health and for social and economic recovery from the pandemic, there is a potential need to have data on vaccination impacts in the future. Any requirements for record linkage would follow established procedures for approval from the Chief Statistician and a record linkage rationale would be provided. If approved, all record linkages would be performed within Statistics Canada's secure Social Data Linkage Environment. Any data products released will be based on aggregated responses and processed to ensure that no individual can be identified.

CNICS is expected to continue to be collected every 2 years, and the data collected for CNICS 2021 will be of particular interest to measure the impact of COVID-19 on routine childhood vaccinations and vaccines administered during pregnancy.

Reason for supplement:

While the Generic Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) addresses most of the privacy and security risks related to statistical activities conducted by Statistics Canada, this supplement describes additional measures being implemented due to the sensitivity of the information being collected. The CNICS will be collecting information on COVID-19 vaccination status and the impact the COVID-19 pandemic, which becomes more sensitive when collected alongside personal information, such as age, education level, ethnicity or other demographic characteristics. This SPIA describes how Statistics Canada has accounted for the unique impact to vulnerable populations when designing and conducting this survey, and integrates relevant principles of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner's Framework for the Government of Canada to Assess Privacy-Impactful Initiatives in Response to COVID-19. As is the case with all PIAs, Statistics Canada's privacy framework ensures that elements of privacy protection and privacy controls are documented and applied.

Necessity and Proportionality

The collection and use of personal information for the CNICS can be justified against Statistics Canada's Necessity and Proportionality Framework:

  1. Necessity:
    The main objectives of CNICS are to determine if children are being vaccinated in accordance with the recommended immunization schedules for publicly-funded vaccines and to measure to what degree recent public health recommendations are being adopted to increase vaccination against the flu and pertussis during pregnancy. CNICS results also allow Canada to meet its commitment to provide the World Health Organization and the Pan American Health Organization with estimates of national coverage for childhood vaccines such as measles, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus and polio.
    Analysis of vaccination status, the knowledge and beliefs section together with demographic characteristics provides information to help health authorities focus vaccination campaigns for the under-vaccinated and vulnerable populations within our communities. CNICS results help inform the development of communication strategies and education outreach programs to address vaccination concerns. It is also important to note that CNICS targets the same age groups, provides the same demographic characteristics, and criteria to measure vaccine coverage for all provinces and territories, which allows for analysis and comparisons across jurisdictions. This information, together with the results on parents' knowledge and beliefs about vaccination, provides data that is not available from other sources such as provincial or territorial vaccine registries.
    For CNICS2021, a section was added to measure the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on immunization for children and pregnant women, as well as COVID-19 vaccine uptake for vaccine eligible children. It is believed that the pandemic has had an impact on the routine immunization of children with recommended vaccines and on the vaccination of pregnant women. It is important to measure and understand this impact in order to address any delays and/or barriers. It is also important to understand how the pandemic may have influenced beliefs about vaccination in general.
    The personal identifiers for the children included in the survey (child's full name, date of birth, and provincial or territorial health card number) are collected in order to link with vaccine registry data and so reduce response burden now and in the future (once new agreements with provincial and territorial health authorities are signed). Personal identifiers are removed from the data file and stored separately and securely, once the linkage has been performed. When identifiers are provided and parent or guardian permission has been given, it allows Statistics Canada to use an administrative source of vaccination data rather than asking detailed questions of respondents, thereby decreasing burden. At the moment, this is only possible for respondents residing in the provinces of PEI and MB, with whom Statistics Canada has negotiated data sharing agreements to access vaccination registries. Statistics Canada is actively pursuing agreements with the other provinces and territories.
    The stakeholders for CNICS include: the Public Health Agency of Canada (who funds the survey program to measure vaccination coverage and reports results to the World Health Organization); provincial and territorial health authorities (who use the results to inform vaccination programs); healthcare providers and experts in epidemiology (for analysis and understanding of the factors influencing decisions around vaccination); and the Canadian public (to understand how well their children and pregnant women are protected against infectious diseases).
  2. Effectiveness - Working assumptions:
    The Public Health Agency of Canada has been sponsoring the Childhood National Immunization Coverage Survey (CNICS) every two years since 1994. Statistics Canada began conducting the survey on behalf of PHAC in 2011. The primary objective of the CNICS is to estimate immunization coverage rates for childhood vaccines in accordance with the national immunization recommendations.
    The CNICS collects immunization data for the following vaccinations: measles, mumps, rubella, varicella, polio, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, Haemophilus influenzae type b, for children ages 2 and 7; Rotavirus, pneumococcal, meningococcal and hepatitis B for 2-year old's; human papilloma virus (HPV) and hepatitis B for 14-year old's; meningococcal, and the tetanus-diphtheria-pertussis (Tdap) booster for 17-year old's. In 2019, the survey scope was expanded to collect immunization data from biological mothers of babies 0-6 months in order to estimate the rates of vaccination against pertussis and flu during pregnancy. New for the upcoming 2021 survey cycle, questions about the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on vaccination will be asked of parents of children (all age groups) as well as biological mothers of babies 0-6 months in age. Questions on COVID-19 vaccination uptake and likelihood of vaccination will be asked of parents of children aged 2, 7, 14 and 17 years.
    All Statistics Canada directives and policies for the development, collection, and dissemination of surveys and their results are followed. Survey responses will not be attached to respondents' addresses or phone numbers. The 2021 data will be representative of the Canadian population at a national level, and may be broken down (disaggregated) at the provincial and territorial level for pregnant women and children aged 2 years old. More detailed results are needed for pregnant women because the pertussis and flu vaccines have only recently been recommended for women during pregnancy to protect their child in the first few months of life. Provincial and territorial level results for 2 year old's have been collected every 2nd cycle of CNICS to allow for accurate and detailed tracking of progress towards childhood vaccination goals. In addition, childhood vaccine coverage results from each cycle of CNICS are also reported to the WHO and Pan-American HO. When the quality of the estimates is sufficient and the identity of respondents is protected, disaggregation by other demographic characteristics (such as ethnicity or immigration status) may be possible.
    The CNICS asks parents and guardians of children to provide personal identifiers for the selected child in order to perform record linkages with provincial and territorial immunization registries and reduce response burden now (for residents of PEI and Manitoba who have sharing agreements in place) and in the future (for residents of provinces and territories with whom Statistics Canada is pursuing data sharing agreements). These identifiers include the child's name, date of birth and their provincial or territorial health card number and are used to link to the child's detailed vaccine history housed within the immunization registries when the parent or guardian has given permission and when sharing agreements have been negotiated with the appropriate health authority. All parents are asked about sharing data for the purposes of record linkage with registry data. If there are no data sharing agreements currently in place for the respective province or territory, the parents permission would be required to evaluate the coverage and quality of registry data compared to survey data, once agreements have been approved and signed. The identifiers are not retained in the final survey data results.
  3. Proportionality:
    CNICS has been collecting information on childhood vaccination for many years and with the advent of the pandemic and subsequent development of COVID-19 vaccines, it was deemed logical and appropriate that it also collects information on the vaccination status of children eligible for vaccination against COVID-19 and the likelihood of non-vaccinated children to be vaccinated in the future. This information may be considered sensitive, however after careful consideration and consultations with partners, the benefits of having results that measure coverage and risk to children's health during the pandemic were sufficient to warrant the added burden and impact on the privacy of respondents. The questions are short and simple, re-using wording from other CNICS questions, and adapting questions from other surveys such as the COVID-19 Vaccination Coverage Survey (CVCS). The new questions were reviewed and assessed by experts from the Questionnaire Design and Resource Centre at Statistics Canada to ensure they are clear, concise and coherent.
    All the data to be collected are required for the purpose of the survey as described above. Careful consideration was made for each question and response category to ensure that it would measure the research questions and help inform future decisions about childhood and pregnant women vaccine programs and specifically those related to COVID-19 vaccination. Experts at PHAC worked closely with Statistics Canada to determine the content of the survey questions, including the demographic information that will help in the analysis of the survey results. Information such as the respondent's age, gender, ethnicity and education level, all have the potential to affect a person's access to healthcare and their beliefs about vaccination. It is important to include these factors, where possible, when analyzing survey results and progress towards vaccination coverage goals.
    The 2021 sampling strategy was designed to provide results at the national level for all age groups (2, 7, 14 and 17 years) including pregnant women, and at the provincial and territorial level for children aged 2 years old and for pregnant women (except in the territory of Nunavut). Without substantially increasing the sample size, it is not possible to ensure that the survey would produce reliable results for smaller population groups, such as some of the more vulnerable populations.
    The sample size is 19,494 and can be broken down by age group as follows:
    Age group Sample size
    2 years 9,274
    7 years 1,044
    14 (male) 775
    14 (female) 774
    17 846
    Pregnant women 6,781
    Total 19,494
    The sample of pregnant women in Nunavut was reduced in order to alleviate burden which has been an emerging issue for the territory with a small and dispersed population, especially during the pandemic. The Northern Governance Committee at Statistics Canada was consulted and involved in determining the sampling strategy for the north and it was decided that, given the reporting obligations to WHO, collection efforts will focus on obtaining meaningful and publishable results for 2 year old's in the territory of Nunavut. The Centre for Indigenous Statistics and Partnerships also provided input to ensure appropriate engagement, and consideration for the interests of Indigenous peoples.
    Statistics Canada directives and policies with respect to data collection and publication will be followed to ensure the confidentiality of the data. Individual responses will be grouped with those of others when reporting results. Individual responses and results for very small groups will not be published. The grouping of results will make it impossible to identify individual respondents and reduces any potential impact on vulnerable populations or subsets of populations. Survey results will be made available in the Federal Research Data Centre (FRDC) but no personal identifiers will be included. PHAC experts, who have been deemed Statistics Canada employees, will have access to this micro data file to assist them with data validation and the analysis of survey results. Only aggregate/grouped data that has been vetted for confidentiality will be allowed to leave the FRDC. All data results are managed in accordance with Statistics Canada's security and confidentiality requirements.
    The survey findings will support decision-making at all levels of government concerned with ensuring the health and safety of children in Canada by protecting them from infectious diseases such as COVID-19. These benefits are believed to be proportional to the invasion of privacy and associated risks.
  4. Alternatives:
    The CNICS has been negotiating data sharing agreements with provincial and territorial health authorities to have access to children's detailed vaccination histories since 2017. The project has progressed with agreements now in place for Manitoba, Prince Edward Island and the Northwest Territories (with whom it is not yet possible to access the data because of technical reasons), but there is still a long way to go before it would be possible to use registry provided vaccine data instead of parent or healthcare practitioner provided information for all provinces and territories. As a result, the only way to obtain a complete and comprehensive picture of childhood vaccine coverage across Canada is through the CNICS. As a survey collecting information on childhood vaccines, it makes sense that CNICS should also incorporate questions on COVID-19 vaccination as children become eligible. There is no other survey that is as well placed to ask these questions about the COVID-19 vaccination status of children and the likelihood they will be vaccinated. Many Statistics Canada surveys, such as the Canadian Community Health Survey, the Canadian COVID-19 Antibody and Health Survey, the COVID-19 Vaccination Coverage Survey and the Canadian Perspectives Survey Series, collect information on COVID-19 vaccine status and willingness, but don't have the ability to easily focus their efforts to capture data for children's vaccination against COVID-19.
    The CNICS provides up-to-date and comparable results for the provinces and territories. It also provides a detailed breakdown of why people are choosing not to get their children vaccinated and allows health authorities to address concerns and promote childhood vaccine uptake.

Mitigation factors:

Some questions contained in the CNICS may be considered sensitive as they relate to parents' and guardians' views on vaccination against COVID-19, a complex and often difficult topic to broach during the pandemic. However, the overall risk of harm to the survey respondents has been deemed manageable with existing Statistics Canada safeguards that are described in Statistics Canada's Generic Privacy Impact Assessment, as well as with the following measures:

Transparency

Prior to the survey, respondents will be informed of the survey purpose, allowing them to decide whether they wish to participate. The survey purpose reads:

For parents/guardians of children aged 2, 7, 14 and 17 years:

The information collected by the Childhood National Immunization Coverage Survey (CNICS) measures the proportion of Canadian children who are vaccinated against certain diseases. It also asks parents and guardians about their knowledge of vaccines and the diseases they are meant to prevent, as well as their opinions about vaccines.

The data will be used to:

  • provide childhood vaccine coverage rates across Canada
  • understand parents' and guardians' knowledge and beliefs about vaccination
  • help improve public health programs.

For pregnant women:

The Childhood National Immunization Coverage Survey (CNICS) collects data on vaccines received by mothers during their pregnancy, and on mothers' knowledge and perceptions about vaccination during pregnancy.

The data will be used to:

  • measure the percentage of Canadian pregnant women who were vaccinated for whooping cough and influenza during their pregnancy
  • understand mothers' knowledge and beliefs about vaccination
  • help improve prenatal health programs.

This information will be provided to survey participants via invitation and reminder letters. It will also be reiterated at the beginning of the questionnaire. Respondents will also be informed in the invitation letter, reminder letters, and in the questionnaire itself, that their participation is voluntary before being asked any questions. Information about the survey, as well as the survey questionnaire, will also be available on Statistics Canada's website.

Confidentiality

Variables that directly identify respondents or their children will be separated from the data files in the first stage of data processing and placed in a secure location with controlled access. Variables that might indirectly identify respondents are examined and modified as necessary in order to protect the privacy and confidentiality of respondents. Individual responses will be grouped with those of others when reporting results. Individual responses and results for very small groups will never be published or shared with government departments or agencies. Careful analysis of the data will be performed prior to the publication and sharing of aggregate data to ensure that marginalized and vulnerable communities are not disproportionally impacted.

Conclusion:

This assessment concludes that with the existing Statistics Canada safeguards and additional mitigation factors listed above, any remaining risks are such that Statistics Canada is prepared to accept and manage the risk.

Formal approval:

This Supplementary Privacy Impact Assessment has been reviewed and recommended for approval by Statistics Canada's Chief Privacy Officer, Director General for Modern Statistical Methods and Data Science, and Assistant Chief Statistician for Social, Health and Labour Statistics.

Pierre Desrochers
Chief Privacy Officer
Date: October 28, 2021

Eric Rancourt
Director General,
Modern Statistical Methods and Data Science
Date: November 4, 2021

Lynn Barr-Telford
Assistant Chief Statistician,
Social, Health and Labour Statistics
Date: November 5, 2021

The Chief Statistician of Canada has the authority for section 10 of the Privacy Act for Statistics Canada, and is responsible for the Agency's operations, including the program area mentioned in this Supplementary Privacy Impact Assessment.

This Privacy Impact Assessment has been approved by the Chief Statistician of Canada.

Anil Arora
Chief Statistician of Canada

Supplement to Statistics Canada’s Generic Privacy Impact Assessment related to the acquisition of child welfare data from child welfare agencies

Date: March 2021

Program manager: Director, Centre for Social Data Integration and Development

Director General, Social Insights, Integration and Innovation Branch

Reference to Personal Information Bank (PIB):

In accordance with the Privacy Act, Statistics Canada is submitting a new institutional personal information bank (PIB) to describe any personal information obtained from child welfare agencies, and provincial and territorial ministries, for the purposes of the Statistics Act. The following PIB is proposed for review and registration.

Canadian Child Welfare Information System (CCWIS)

Description: This bank describes information on child maltreatment, and family services obtained from child welfare agencies in Canada, including provincial and territorial ministries responsible for family services, Indigenous and other child welfare agencies. Personal information on children and caregivers may include first and last names, date of birth, gender, Indigenous and ethnic status, language, addresses and family demographics, as well as information related to their cases (reports made to the authorities, maltreatment types, level of substantiation, case assessments and outcomes, service provision, need for protection, placements, adoption or reunification).

Note: All direct personal identifiers such as names, addresses and data provider IDs are removed and replaced with a Statistics Canada record identifier. The personal identifiers are stored in a separate file with highly restricted access. Only the Statistics Canada identifier is kept with the information used for the database, to allow linkage between statistical files.

Class of Individuals: Children and caregivers (parents and guardians) accessing services or involved in child maltreatment cases reported to child welfare agencies in Canada.

Purpose: The personal information is used to create national statistical data on child maltreatment, and to enable statistical analyses of interactions with the system and of passage through the system, including referral to services, placement in foster care, connections to family, and reunification. Personal information is collected pursuant to the Statistics Act (Sections 3, 7, 8, 13, 22).

Consistent Uses: Subject to Statistics Canada's Directive on Microdata Linkage, information on child maltreatment may be combined with surveys or other administrative data sources for approved statistical purposes and longitudinal analysis. These data are used to: produce standardized national, provincial and territorial estimates; conduct retrospective, prospective, and life-course analyses; better understand protective and risk factors, and transfers between jurisdictions.

Retention and Disposal Standards: Information is retained until it is no longer required for statistical purposes and then it is destroyed.

RDA Number: 2007/001

Related Record Number: StatCan SSD 040

TBS Registration: To be assigned by TBS

Bank Number: StatCan PPU 813

Description of statistical activity:

With the collaboration of child welfare agencies, provincial and territorial ministries and Indigenous organizations and governments, Statistics Canada intends to acquire administrative data on child welfare in order to develop the Canadian Child Welfare Information System (CCWIS) on behalf of the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC). The CCWIS is a national public health information system on child welfare, and its purpose is to support nationally standardized analyses and reporting on child maltreatment; investigations and outcomes; the number of children in need of protection; and passage through the child welfare system, including referral to services, placement in foster care, connections to family, reunification, and other requests for family services. These data may be linked to other data held by Statistics Canada to better understand the family context, risk factors for child maltreatment, and long-term education, health and other outcomes for children.  Such linkages could inform policies, laws, programs and family support services to improve the lives of children and their families. Moreover, as Indigenous children are overrepresented in the child welfare system, quality national data on child welfare, including standardized provincial and territorial data, can be of particular benefit to programs and services aimed at ensuring the well-being of First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities.

Reason for supplement:

Statistics Canada's Generic Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) presents and addresses the privacy principles and levels of potential security risks related to its statistical activities. Existing safeguards have been assessed as sufficient to address the potential privacy risks associated with the CCWIS. This project will follow standard Statistics Canada data stewardship practices to ensure the privacy of any data collected.

The purpose of this PIA supplement is to clearly illustrate the need for this personal information to achieve Statistics Canada's statistical mandate, and to demonstrate the public benefit that will be derived from the CCWIS data.

Necessity and Proportionality

The collection of personal information for the Canadian Child Welfare Information System was assessed against the four-part test proposed by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, and aligns with Statistics Canada's Necessity and Proportionality Framework:

  1. Necessity:
    The CCWIS will fill a gap in annual national statistics, including provincial and territorial statistics, on the reporting, assessment, progression, and outcomes of children reported to child welfare authorities in Canada. Currently, there is no framework or comprehensive data source allowing for the production of national data on child maltreatment-related and other family involvement in child welfare by age, sex, Indigenous identity and ethnic status by province or territory. There are urgent calls for Canada-wide data on these issues to inform regional and national child welfare prevention and protection policies and practices. Data-informed child welfare is crucial to protect and improve the lives of many Canadian children and their families. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, among others, are calling for data that include, but are not limited to, foster care involvement and risk factors for child placements, the need for which will be addressed by the CCWIS. The information to be contained in the CCWIS is being discussed through extensive engagement sessions aimed at identifying the needs of a broad range of stakeholders and subject matter experts in child welfare, including academics, researchers, service providers, provincial and territorial governments, Indigenous governments and organizations, the Public Health Agency of Canada and other federal partners.
  2. Effectiveness (Working assumptions):
    The high quality, timely and relevant data produced by the CCWIS will support the development of evidence-based policies and programs to improve the child welfare system. The collection of personal identifiers will help ensure high data quality by removing duplicate information and identifying repeat reporting. It will also provide opportunities to identify risk factors for child maltreatment and long-term outcomes by reviewing trends over time and outcomes of children into adulthood. Reliance on administrative data sources, as opposed to a survey approach, will reduce the burden on limited child welfare workers' resources.
  3. Proportionality:
    The CCWIS will have clear public benefits as the findings it will generate are expected to inform policies, laws, programs and family support services to ensure:
    • that children whose situations are such that they are going to need to be 'in care' for a long period of time are quickly identified and placed into stable care situations;
    • that this group of children is small, because effective supports are available within communities in need of such supports; and
    • that only children who need to be placed into care for their safety are, while children who do not need this are not wrongly placed into care.
    Future data linkage activities involving the CCWIS will need to satisfy stringent and independent approval mechanisms prior to initiation. Proportionality has been considered based on the following elements – sensitivity, ethics and design elements:
    • Sensitivity: The data collected for CCWIS is of a sensitive nature due to the elements being measured and the fact that most of the data collected concern children and child maltreatment. In addition, a significant proportion of the data to be collected will come from Indigenous children in a context where Indigenous communities are increasingly seeking greater decision-making powers in terms of the control of information on members of their communities. Moreover, the option of linking child maltreatment data with other data sources held at Statistics Canada to expand the informational value of the CCWIS, could potentially increase the sensitivity of the project. To reduce the risk of sensitive information being disclosed, the data will be processed according to current Statistics Canada best practices and in accordance with all relevant directives and policies. In particular, personal identifier variables (e.g., name, address, etc.) will be stored in a file separate from the child maltreatment data and accessible to only a limited number of employees on a need-to-know basis. Further, any proposition to link CCWIS data to other Statistics Canada data holdings will be required to undergo a stringent justification and review process in accordance with the Directive on Microdata Linkage before moving forward. Only the file with the personal identifier variables with no child maltreatment data is required for the linkage. The resulting linked data file keys are subsequently used to link the child maltreatment data with other data files – no direct identifiers are involved at this stage.
    • Ethics: Statistics Canada has engaged, and will continue to engage, with all provinces and territories, as well as with Indigenous stakeholders. Experts in the field of child maltreatment, from both PHAC and from the broader research community, have been consulted in order to ensure that any collection of data for CCWIS will be done ethically. In addition, we are adhering to transparency practices by documenting, on Statistics Canada's website, our intensions to obtain information on child maltreatment.
    • Flexibility of design elements: There are dozens of child welfare agencies in Canada, and each is under the jurisdiction of its respective province or territory. There is no national standard for collecting and storing data related to child welfare. Consequently, some jurisdictions have centralized systems, while others do not, and the data vary among provinces and territories in terms of both content and format. During a series of consultations with various stakeholders in the child welfare sector, child welfare service providers clearly advised that it would be far too burdensome for them if Statistics Canada were to request that they respond to a survey to describe a random sample of their cases. Previous methodological investigations by Statistics Canada to evaluate the sampling requirements for producing high quality estimates from a survey-based approach for the collection of data on child welfare also revealed that a high number of child welfare agencies would need to be selected for collection and that this exercise would need to be repeated throughout the 12 month reference period. Instead, it was deemed more practical for each of the jurisdictions to provide data files containing the relevant variables for every case they manage.
      Therefore, the estimated quality at the province/territory level should be sufficient to meet the policy needs.
      In terms of the content of the data acquired, Statistics Canada will request only those variables necessary to determine the national child maltreatment indicators that have been created in consultation with PHAC and other experts in the field of child welfare. Any additional variables that may be provided to Statistics Canada will be destroyed.
      The risk mitigations and the potential public benefits of this project have been deemed as proportional to the privacy considerations.
  4. Alternatives:
    A feasibility study was conducted with a broad range of child welfare stakeholders to identify an appropriate data collection approach for the CCWIS.  Through discussions with PHAC, it was determined that some child maltreatment data are being collected through the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect/First Nations Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect (CIS/FNIS) funded by PHAC and managed by the Assembly of First Nations (AFN). While this last survey has provided great insight into child welfare, it is completed by child protection workers and there is concern about response burden. In addition, stakeholders' data needs have evolved to include the need to capture repeated interactions with the child welfare system. For example, a one-time assessment visit to a family from a child welfare worker due to a transitory situation or a mistaken concern has very different meaning than repeated visits due to chronic problems. The chronicity of child welfare involvement cannot be adequately captured by aggregate data. The need to understand trends over time, repeated interactions, and children's outcomes into adulthood requires the collection of individual level data. Potential data providers advised Statistics Canada that they would not participate in the CCWIS should the project proceed with a survey-based approach dependent on child welfare workers' participation, due to limited resources and the existing burden on these professionals. Moreover, surveying parents, guardians and children involved in child welfare investigations would not be appropriate for ethical reasons as it may harm those involved in welfare investigations or accessing services. This last approach would also encounter methodological challenges.

Conclusion:

This assessment concludes that, with the existing Statistics Canada safeguards, the agency is prepared to accept and manage any remaining risks.

Formal approval:

This Supplementary Privacy Impact Assessment has been reviewed and recommended for approval by Statistics Canada's Chief Privacy Officer, Director General for Modern Statistical Methods and Data Science, and Assistant Chief Statistician, Social, Health and Labour Statistics Field.

Pierre Desrochers
Chief Privacy Officer
Date: March 23, 2021

Eric Rancourt
Director General,
Modern Statistical Methods and Data Science
Date: March 30, 2021

Lynn Barr-Telford
Assistant Chief Statistician,
Social, Health and Labour Statistics
Date: April 15, 2021

The Chief Statistician of Canada has the authority for section 10 of the Privacy Act for Statistics Canada, and is responsible for the Agency's operations, including the program area mentioned in this Privacy Impact Assessment. This Supplement to the Generic Privacy Impact Assessment is approved by the Chief Statistician of Canada.

Anil Arora
Chief Statistician of Canada

Integrated Business Statistics Program (IBSP)

Reporting Guide

This guide is designed to assist you as you complete the 2021 Annual Civil Aviation Survey - Level I. If you need more information, please call the Statistics Canada Help Line at the number below.

Help Line: 1-877-949-9492

Your answers are confidential.

Statistics Canada is prohibited by law from releasing any information it collects which could identify any person, business, or organization, unless consent has been given by the respondent or as permitted by the Statistics Act.

Statistics Canada will use information from this survey for statistical purposes.

Table of contents

Business or organization and contact information

This section verifies or requests basic identifying information of the business or organization such as legal name, operating name (if applicable), contact information of the designated contact person, current operational status, and main activity(ies).

1. Legal name and Operating name

Legal Name
The legal name is one recognized by law, thus it is the name liable for pursuit or for debts incurred by the business or organization. In the case of a corporation, it is the legal name as fixed by its charter or the statute by which the corporation was created.

Modifications to the legal name should only be done to correct a spelling error or typo.

To indicate a legal name of another legal entity you should instead indicate it in question 3 by selecting 'Not currently operational' and then choosing the applicable reason and providing the legal name of this other entity along with any other requested information.

Operating Name
The operating name is a name the business or organization is commonly known as if different from its legal name. The operating name is synonymous with trade name.

2. Designated contact person

Verify or provide the requested contact information of the designated business or organization contact person. The designated contact person is the person who should receive this questionnaire. The designated contact person may not always be the one who actually completes the questionnaire. If different than the designated contact person, the contact information of the person completing the questionnaire can be indicated later in the questionnaire.

3. Current operational status

Verify or provide the current operational status of the business or organization identified by the legal and operating name in question 1. If indicating the operational status of the business or organization is 'Not currently operational' then indicate an applicable reason and provide the requested information.

4. Main activity

This question verifies the business or organization's current main activity as classified by the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) is an industry classification system developed by the statistical agencies of Canada, Mexico and the United States. Created against the background of the North American Free Trade Agreement, it is designed to provide common definitions of the industrial structure of the three countries and a common statistical framework to facilitate the analysis of the three economies. NAICS is based on supply-side or production-oriented principles, to ensure that industrial data, classified to NAICS , are suitable for the analysis of production-related issues such as industrial performance.

The target entity for which NAICS is designed are businesses and other organizations engaged in the production of goods and services. They include farms, incorporated and unincorporated businesses and government business enterprises. They also include government institutions and agencies engaged in the production of marketed and non-marketed services, as well as organizations such as professional associations and unions and charitable or non-profit organizations and the employees of households.

The associated NAICS should reflect those activities conducted by the business or organizational units targeted by this questionnaire only, as identified in the 'Answering this questionnaire' section and which can be identified by the specified legal and operating name. The main activity is the activity which most defines the targeted business or organization's main purpose or reason for existence. For a business or organization that is for-profit, it is normally the activity that generates the majority of the revenue for the entity.

The NAICS classification contains a limited number of activity classifications; the associated classification might be applicable for this business or organization even if it is not exactly how you would describe this business or organization's main activity.

Please note that any modifications to the main activity through your response to this question might not necessarily be reflected prior to the transmitting of subsequent questionnaires and as a result they may not contain this updated information.

If the current NAICS associated with this business or organizations is not correct, please provide a brief description of the main activity and provide any additional information as requested.

Balance Sheet, Annual - Statement 20 (I)

Financial assets

Current assets

Include:

  • cash, bank balances (including deposits in transit, special deposits for the payments of debts, and so on) and short-term investments due within one year from the date of the balance sheet;
  • current accounts and notes receivable as well as other current assets such as inventories, charges to subscribers on transportation contracts, interests and dividends receivable, and so on.

All other financial assets – (Include investments and special funds.)

Include investments in associated companies, other investments such as investments in stocks, bonds, and so on, and special funds such as equipment purchase funds, funds set aside for such special purposes as contractual deposits, pension funds, self-insurance funds, and so on.

Property and equipment

Operating - flight equipment – (Include capital leases.)

Include:

  • flight equipment owned and/or under capital leases;
  • the cost of aircraft (airframes), aircraft engines, propellers, components (aircraft communication and navigational equipment) and spare parts that have been purchased outright. Flight equipment under capital leases includes the cost of flight equipment acquired under a capital or finance lease, in other words, a lease for a period considered to be the whole or nearly the whole life of the aircraft.

Accumulated depreciation and amortization - flight equipment

Include:

  • accumulated depreciation and amortization of flight equipment owned and/or under capital leases;
  • accrued charges representing losses, not replaced by current repairs, occurring in physical property and suffered through current lessening of service value due to wear and tear from use and the action of time and the elements; and losses occurring through obsolescence, supersession, new technological developments, changes in popular demand and the requirements of public authority.

Operating - ground property and equipment – (Include capital leases.)

Include:

  • ground property and equipment owned and/or under capital leases;
  • the cost of non-airborne communication and meteorological equipment, ramp equipment, maintenance and engineering equipment, surface transport vehicles and equipment, furniture, fixtures and office equipment, buildings and land as well as miscellaneous ground equipment such as medical equipment, airport and lighting equipment, passenger service equipment, hotel, restaurant and food service equipment, storage and distribution equipment. Ground property and equipment under capital leases includes the cost of ground property and equipment under a capital or finance lease, in other words, a lease for a period considered to be the whole or nearly the whole life of the property or equipment.

Accumulated depreciation and amortization - ground property and equipment

Include:

  • accumulated depreciation and amortization of ground property and equipment owned and/or under capital leases;
  • accrued charges representing losses, not replaced by current repairs, occurring in physical property and suffered through current lessening of service value due to wear and tear from use and the action of time and the elements; and losses occurring through obsolescence, supersession, new technological developments, changes in popular demand and the requirements of public authority.

Non-operating property and equipment – (Include capital leases.)

Include the cost of all non-operating property and equipment, in other words, all property and equipment not included in the "operating" categories above.

Accumulated depreciation and amortization - non-operating property and equipment

Include accumulated depreciation and amortization of the non-operating property and equipment.

All other assets

Include long-term prepayments, developmental and pre-operating costs such as the cost of extraordinary training, unamortized discounts and expenses on the issue of long-term debt securities, property acquisition adjustments, other intangibles such as payments made for patents, copyrights, and so on, and other deferred charges.

Total assets

The sum of the assets above less the accumulated depreciation and amortization.

Liabilities and capital

Current liabilities

Include:

  • current accounts and traffic balances payable, including balances subject to current settlement and payable to associated companies and/or shareholders, and notes payable on demand or within one year from the date of the balance sheet; current accounts and traffic balances payable, including balances subject to current settlement and payable to associated companies and/or shareholders, and notes payable on demand or within one year from the date of the balance sheet;
  • the current portion of long-term debt and the current obligations under capital leases;
  • air traffic liabilities (unearned transportation revenue), which includes the value of passenger tickets sold but not used or refunded as of the date of the balance sheet, and pre-paid amounts for the transportation of baggage, freight and mail for which the transportation has not occurred as of the date of the balance sheet;
  • salaries and wages accrued and unpaid, taxes accrued and unpaid, dividends payable, deposits by subscribers on transportation contracts (air travel plan liabilities, in other words, deposits received under air travel plan contracts) and other current and accrued liabilities.

Advances from associated companies and/or shareholders

Include the net amount from associated companies and/or shareholders for notes, loans or advances which are not currently settled.

Long-term debt and other non-current liabilities – (Include capital leases.)

Include:

  • the face value or principal amount of debt securities (for example, bonds, trust certificates, debentures, notes) issued and assumed by the air carrier and in the hands of others, which is not payable within twelve months of the balance sheet date;
  • long-term obligations under capital leases, which refers to the present value of unexpired contracts for the acquisition of aircraft under such lease arrangements.

Deferred income taxes

Include taxes that will be owed on income, but that have not yet been assessed.

All other liabilities

Include:

  • deferred credits which correspond to unamortized premiums on all classes of long-term debt, and other deferred credits such as securities issued or assumed by the air carrier, and other unadjusted accounts that cannot be cleared as of the date of the balance sheet;
  • provisions for major overhauls such as for flight equipment (in other words, liabilities of uncertain value or timing associated with the complete disassembly and inspection or repair of an aircraft, engine or other component of an aircraft) and other provisions such as liabilities of uncertain value or timing.

Shareholders' equity

Capital stock

Include the equity capital invested in a business through the purchase of various classes of common and preferred shares.

Retained earnings

Include the portion of after-tax profits left over, after dividends have been paid to shareholders, for reinvestment into the company. If this account is negative, then the amount indicated for this item should be shown with a negative (-) sign.

All other items

Include other paid-in capital and reserves. Other paid-in capital or contributed surplus includes the premiums or discounts that have resulted from selling stock, and stock received from donations. Reserves include any reserve fund such as reserve for self-insurance, reserve for pension, reserves against potential future losses, and so on. Also, include proprietorship or partnership accounts (balance year-end).

Total liabilities and capital

The sum of liabilities and capital plus the sum of shareholders' equity which should equal total assets.

Statement of Revenues and Expenses, Annual - Statement 21 (I, II)

Scheduled services

Transportation of passengers or goods, or both, by an aircraft provided by an air carrier that operates the air service and that, directly or indirectly, sells some or all of its seats or part or all of its cargo space to the public on a price per seat, price per unit of mass or price per volume of cargo basis.

Charter services

Transportation of passengers or goods, or both, by aircraft pursuant to a contract under which a person, other than the air carrier that operates the air service, or its agent, reserves a block of seats or part of the cargo space of an aircraft for the person's use or for resale to the public.

Include air ambulance service and the movement of people and goods to logging or heli-logging sites.

Exclude firefighting and heli-logging activities and the movement of people and goods to a firefighting site. (The former Transport Canada TP 8880 document "Starting a Commercial Air Service" outlining a list of activities which are specialty has been replaced with a new document TP 4711 "Air Operator Certification Manual" as of December 2020. A PDF version of volumes of this manual can be requested at: Air Operator Certification Manual – TP 4711)

Passenger revenue

Refers to the revenue earned from the transportation of passengers on scheduled and charter services. Include revenue from all surcharges (baggage, fuel, seat selection, changing or cancelling flights, and so on) that are retained by the air carrier. Exclude amounts such as taxes, navigation fees, security fees, and so on that are collected but passed on to other entities.

Goods revenue

Refers to the revenue earned from the transportation of goods on scheduled and charter services. Exclude taxes such as the Goods and Services Tax (GST), Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) or Provincial Sales Tax (PST).

All other flight-related revenue

Refers to the revenue earned from air transport activities not included in passenger revenue or goods revenue. Include revenue from other flying services such as flying training, recreational flying and other specialty flying.

All other revenue

Include subsidies and revenue earned from all other sources (including contra revenue, revenue of a corporate nature (leasing revenue, third party ground-handling, and so on), ancillary passenger revenue not easily allocated by operating flight (customs brokerage, and so on), revenue from in-flight sales (beverages, food, entertainment and wireless Internet access, and so on)).

Total operating revenue

The sum of passenger revenue, goods revenue, other flight-related revenue and revenue from all other sources.

Operating expenses - Ground property and equipment maintenance

Employee wages, salaries and benefits

Direct labour costs (wages and salaries) expended on the maintenance of ground property and equipment.

Include benefits such as employer contributions to pensions, medical benefits, insurance, and so on.

All other maintenance - ground property and equipment expenses

Expenses, both direct and indirect, incurred in the repair and upkeep of ground property and equipment.

Include materials and supplies, purchased repair services and all other related expenses.

Total maintenance - ground property and equipment expenses

The sum of the previous two expense items.

Operating expenses - Aircraft operations

Flight crew wages, salaries and benefits

Include the wages, salaries and benefits for flight crews (pilot, co-pilot, navigator, and so on).

Include benefits such as employer contributions to pensions, medical benefits, insurance, and so on and layover expenses such as hotels and meals.

Aircraft fuel and oil

Expenses for turbo fuel, gasoline and all other fuel and oil consumed such as turbine oil and piston oil.

Include throughput charges, non-refundable duties and taxes.

Landing fees

Include airport landing fees paid both in Canada and outside of Canada.

Navigation fees

Charges remitted to NAV CANADA or other international suppliers for the provision of air navigation services. Air navigation services include aeronautical communication services, aeronautical information services, aeronautical radio navigation services, air traffic control services, aviation weather services, emergency assistance services and flight information services.

Aircraft insurance

Expenses for insurance against accidental damage to flight equipment while in flight or on the ground and for insurance against liability occurring from the operation of aircraft or, in the case of non-insurance, the resulting expenses for which the carrier is liable.

Aircraft rental

Expenses incurred for the rental of aircraft (and crew) from other carriers, such as in chartering, interchange and operating or lease agreements.

All other aircraft operation expenses

Expenses incurred directly for the in-flight operation and related standby time of aircraft which are not elsewhere classified.

Total aircraft operations expenses

The sum of the previous seven expense items.

Operating expenses - Flight equipment maintenance

Employee wages, salaries and benefits

Direct labour costs (wages and salaries) expended on the maintenance of flight equipment.

Include benefits such as employer contributions to pensions, medical benefits, insurance, and so on.

Materials and supplies

Expenses on materials and supplies for the maintenance of flight equipment.

Purchased repair services

Expenses for repair services for the maintenance of flight equipment purchased from outside suppliers.

All other maintenance - flight equipment expenses

Expenses, both direct and indirect, incurred in the repair and upkeep of flight equipment.

Total maintenance - flight equipment expenses

The sum of the previous four expense items.

Operating expenses - In-flight services

Employee wages, salaries and benefits

Include:

  • the wages, salaries and benefits paid to cabin crews (flight attendants, and so on);
  • benefits such as employer contributions to pensions, medical benefits, insurance, and so on, and layover expenses such as hotels and meals.

Passenger food and supplies

Include expenses for in-flight meals, complimentary drinks, and so on, and the cost of supplies and personal services furnished to passengers.

Passenger liability insurance

Include the premiums for passenger liability and accident insurance paid by the carrier.

All other in-flight service expenses

Include passenger-related expenses incurred due to interrupted flights, including hotels, meals, taxi fares and other expense items, the cost of other services provided to passengers, such as pay, allowances and the cost of passenger service personnel, and all other services provided for the comfort of passengers in transit.

Total in-flight service expenses

The sum of the previous four expense items.

Operating expenses - Aircraft and traffic servicing

Employee wages, salaries and benefits

Include:

  • the wages, salaries and benefits paid to ground personnel;
  • benefits such as employer contributions to pensions, medical benefits, insurance, and so on.

Purchased services

Expenses for aircraft and traffic servicing purchased from outside suppliers.

All other aircraft and traffic servicing expenses

Include expenses incurred on the ground for scheduling or preparing aircraft for arrival and takeoff, expenses incurred in enplaning and deplaning passenger and cargo traffic, and expenses involved in servicing and handling individual aircraft and traffic on the ground, in preparing aircraft crews for flight assignment, in controlling the in-flight movements of aircraft and the in-flight expenses of handling all traffic including baggage.

Total aircraft and traffic servicing expenses

The sum of the previous three expense items.

Operating expenses - Promotion and sales

Employee wages, salaries and benefits

Include:

  • the wages, salaries and benefits paid to all staff engaged in reservations, ticketing, sales and promotional activities;
  • benefits such as employer contributions to pensions, medical benefits, insurance, and so on.

All other promotion and sales expenses

Include:

  • passenger and cargo commission expenses;
  • the net commission payable to others for the sale of transportation on the reporting carrier's service less the commission receivable from the reporting carrier's sale of transportation on other carriers' services, advertising and publicity expenses and any related expenses, accommodation costs, agency fees for outside services, expenses associated with reservations, city ticket offices and other sales expenses.

Total promotion and sales expenses

The sum of the previous two expense items.

Operating expenses - Depreciation

Depreciation - flight equipment

Include:

  • provisions for the depreciation of flight equipment only;
  • all charges incurred in normal wear and tear on flight equipment which have not been replaced by current year repair, as well as losses in service ability.

All other depreciation

Include:

  • provisions for the depreciation of all non-flight ground and property equipment;
  • all charges incurred in normal wear and tear which have not been replaced by current year repair, as well as losses in service ability;
  • charges for the amortization of capitalized development and other intangible assets.

Total depreciation

The sum of the previous two expense items.

Operating expenses - All other expenses

Include general administration.

Employee wages, salaries and benefits

Include:

  • the wages, salaries and benefits paid to all employees performing the general and administrative functions of the air carrier;
  • benefits such as employer contributions to pensions, medical benefits, insurance, and so on.

Exclude all amounts reported in the previous six wages, salaries and benefits categories.

All other expenses

Include:

  • all operating expenses and general administration expenses not reported elsewhere;
  • expenses for general financial accounting activities, supplementary labour income, property taxes, building rentals, communications purchased, purchasing activities, representation at law, and all other operational administration expenses not directly applicable to a particular function that are not included in the previous operating expenses categories;
  • expenses such as incidental air transport-related expenses associated with revenue reported as "all other revenue";
  • all miscellaneous operating expenses not covered elsewhere;
  • staff reduction expenses.

Total other expenses

The sum of the previous two expense items.

Total operating expenses

The sum of the eight expenses sub-totals, in other words, Total maintenance - ground property and equipment expenses, Total aircraft operations expenses, and so on.

Operating income

Net operating income (a loss should be a negative number)

Total operating revenue less total operating expenses – calculated from the previous questions.

Non-operating income/expenses

Interest and discount income

Include interest income from all sources and cash discounts on the purchase of materials and supplies.

Interest expenses

Include interest on unpaid taxes and all classes of debt including premiums, discounts and expenses on short-term obligations, amortization of premiums, discounts and expenses on short-term and long-term obligations.

All other net non-operating income (enter a negative number for a loss)

Include:

  • capital gains (or losses) from retiring operating property and equipment, aircraft equipment, expendable parts, miscellaneous materials and supplies and other assets, when they are sold or otherwise retired from service as part of a general program and not as incidental sales performed as a service to others;
  • gains or losses made on investments in securities;
  • net miscellaneous non-operating income or loss, which refers to revenue and expenses attributable to financing or other activities that are not an integral part of the air transportation activities undertaken by the carrier, or its incidental services. These could include dividend income, the balance of all income or losses from affiliated companies reimbursed to the carrier, foreign exchange adjustments and special items, such as restructuring expenses, which do not occur on a regular basis.

Exclude staff reduction expenses which should be included under all other expenses.

Net non-operating income (a loss should be a negative number)

The sum of the previous three income or expense items.

Provision for income taxes

Include the provision for taxes payable on net income for the accounting period and adjustments of income taxes relating to previous years, including provisions for deferred income taxes resulting from differences between accounting income and taxable income that arise when the time of including items of revenue and expense in the computation of accounting income and taxable income do not coincide. If the net amount is negative, then the amount indicated for this item should be shown with a negative (-) sign.

Net income (a loss should be a negative number)

Net operating income plus net non-operating income less the provision for income taxes.

Fuel and oil consumed

Turbo fuel consumed

Include fuel used in both turboprop and jet aircraft.

Provide the quantity and expenses for turbo fuel consumed. Turbo fuel includes the turbine fuel uplifted for all aircraft in the carrier's fleet. Fuel uplift can be determined based on delivery notes or invoices, aircraft onboard measurement systems or, if the fuel was supplied by a customer, estimated based on hours flown. Report the quantity of turbo fuel consumed in litres.

Include turbo fuel consumed for all scheduled and/or charter operations, regardless of where purchased. The expenses for turbo fuel consumed should be reported in Canadian dollars, regardless of where purchased. Include throughput charges, non-refundable duties and taxes. If the fuel was supplied by a customer, an approximate value may be provided based on prevailing market rates.

Conversion factor

To convert gallons (imperial) into litres (l), multiply by 4.546092.

All other fuel and oil consumed

Provide the quantity and expenses for all non-turbo fuel and oil consumed. Report the quantity of all other fuel and oil consumed in litres.

The quantity should include gasoline, turbine oil, piston oil and all other types of fuel and oil consumed for all scheduled and/or charter operations, regardless of where purchased. The expenses for all other fuel and oil consumed should be reported in Canadian dollars, regardless of where purchased. Include throughput charges, non-refundable duties and taxes.

Conversion factor

To convert gallons (imperial) into litres (l), multiply by 4.546092.

Total fuel and oil consumed

The sum of the quantities and expenses reported in the previous two items.

Employment

Average number of employees

Refer to the average number of people employed for each of the six categories of personnel.

Include all employees, temporary or permanent, on the payroll of the air carrier during the reporting period. Include part-time employees, prorated to the amount of time worked when compared to full-time employees (for example, two part-time employees working half-time are equivalent to one full-time employee).

Wages and salaries expenses

Include a breakdown of the wages and salaries paid for each of the six categories of personnel.

Exclude all benefits, in other words, employer contributions to pensions, medical benefits, insurance, and so on or layover expenses, such as hotels and meals, for flight and cabin crews.

Employment category

Include:

  • Pilots and co-pilots. Self-explanatory;
  • Other flight personnel. Flight crew (including flight engineers, navigators, and so on) and cabin crew (including flight attendants, and so on);
  • General management and administration employees (including the personnel performing the general and administrative functions such as administrative personnel at headquarters, comptrollers and assistants, directors and assistants (operations, passenger service, public relations, sales), and so on);
  • Maintenance personnel (including the personnel performing the ground property and equipment maintenance such as the carpenters, cleaners, and so on and including the personnel performing the flight equipment maintenance such as the aircraft maintenance engineers and the inspectors of flight equipment);
  • Aircraft and traffic servicing personnel (including supervisory personnel, assigned to ground activities, engaged directly in protecting and controlling aircraft in flight (flight dispatch personnel, flight planning staff), in scheduling and preparing flight crews for flight assignment, in parking and servicing aircraft incidental to line operations and including baggage handlers, aircraft fuelers, and so on);
  • All other employees (including air ambulance attendants, accountants, economists, statisticians, lawyers, purchasing personnel, publicity representatives, and so on).

Total employees

The sum of the number and the wages and salaries expenses for the six categories of personnel.

Revenue or expenses by area of operation

Passenger revenue

Include a breakdown of the revenue earned from the transportation of passengers for each province, territory and outside of Canada based on where the transportation service was provided. Total passenger revenue should equal the sum of passenger revenue from scheduled services and charter services previously reported.

Goods revenue

Include a breakdown of the revenue earned from the transportation of goods for each province, territory and outside of Canada based on where the transportation service was provided. Total goods revenue should equal the sum of goods revenue from scheduled services and charter services previously reported.

Employee wages and salaries

Include a breakdown of employee wages and salaries for each province, territory and outside of Canada based on where the employees are located. Total employee wages and salaries should equal the total wages and salaries expenses reported in the "Employment" section above.

Data Engineering in Rust

By: Scott Syms, Shared Services Canada

The breadth of the Python ecosystem is invaluable to the data science community. Python's selection of tools allows its users to access expressive environments to explore data, train machine learning models and display results in a self-documenting format. It's even been suggested that Jupyter Notebooks, a popular Python data exploration environment, replace the traditional scientific paper.Footnote 1

However, Python has its issues. The very elements that make it accessible and usable, such as dynamic typing, reference counting, and the global interpreter lock, can prevent programs from making full use of available computing resources. This is most apparent when processing large datasets or computational intensive workloads.

Typically, there are two approaches to large computing workloads in Python. C

For data scientists working with big data or heavy computational workloads, Python provides some work-arounds. Computational accelerators such as Numba,Footnote 2 PyPyFootnote 3 and PystonFootnote 4 use leverage coding optimizations to add speed to single machine development environments. When it's combined with Python's concurrency support,Footnote 5 these libraries can boost the processing capacity of a single machine.

Another approach employs libraries such as DaskFootnote 6 and PySparkFootnote 7 to distribute processing over several machines. There's nothing stopping you from doing both – optimize in place and distribute the load.

Ultimately, the tools you use are defined by implementation constraints. For data scientists with access to managed cloud environments, the ability to spawn hundreds of machines to quickly chew through data is an obvious way to address the computing problem. For users with more modest resources, however, the scalability options may be limited. AI at the edge of the network may not have the same compute capacity available as with cloud environments.

Near the end of 2020, the science publication Nature suggested an alternative to some of the traditional approaches to science data computation.Footnote 8 The author proposed writing scientific software in Rust, an emerging and highly-performant new language.

The Rust programming language made its debut in 2009 as a side project for Mozilla programmer, Graydon Hoare. It offers similar performance to C++, but provides better safeguards around memory use and concurrency. Like C++ and Python, it can be used across a range of platforms – from microcontroller programming, to high capacity asynchronous web applications. Rust applications can be compiled to WebAssembly,Footnote 9 allowing them to run in the browser at near-native speeds.

The combination of speed, safety and interoperability is an ideal mix of features when dealing with a big data engineering problem that comes from the analysis of global ship positional data.

Automatic Identification System

By international agreement, ocean-going vessels must transmit voyage data messages using the Automatic Identification System (AIS).Footnote 10 These messages can be collected from space, aggregated into a global picture of shipping activity and sold to commercial and government organizations. The article Building a Maritime Picture in the Era of Big Data: The Development of the Geospatial Communication Interface+, describes the challenges with collecting vessel position data for global surveillance.Footnote 11

The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) manages Government of Canada contracts for space-sourced global maritime tracking data. On any given day, they distribute millions of positional messages to maritime stakeholders across the government. Over the past decade, the CSA has collected well over 50 billion messages.

National Marine Electronics Association (NMEA) maintains the global AIS standard. A sample of AIS data is provided below.


1569890647\s:VENDOR,q:u,c:1569890555*5F\!AIVDM,1,1,,A,13KG9?10031jQUNRI72jM5?40>@<,0*5C
1569890647\s:VENDOR,q:u,c:1569890555*5F\!AIVDM,1,1,,B,13aEPIPP00PE33dMdJNaegw4R>@<,0*77
1569890647\g:1-2-6056,s:VENDOR,c:1569890555*3A\!AIVDM,2,1,6,A,56:GTg0!03408aHj221<QDr1UD4r3?F22222221A:`>966PW0:TBC`6R3mH8,0*0E
1569890647\g:2-2-6056*58\!AIVDM,2,2,6,A,88888888880,2*22

Each sentence above contains metadata about the position report. They include:

  • the time the observation was made by the sensor,
  • the source of the detection,
  • the time the report was relayed from satellite to a ground station, and
  • whether the sentence is a fragment of a group of messages.

Although some of the message is human-readable, important data about ship identity and movement is wrapped in a six-bit ASCII payload near the end of the sentence. Eric Raymond's AIVDM/AIVDO protocol decoding websiteFootnote 12 presents a detailed guide on how ship data is packed within the string.

Decoding AIS with a Rust Application

The goal set for this Rust application is to convert an archive of raw AIS data into a JSON equivalent that can be used for data analysis. The output should preserve the original data for reprocessing, if needed. Reformatting the data as JSON is a valuable step in the data engineering pipeline as it allows the data to be loaded into a DataFrame, a database, or converted into a read-optimized format, such as Apache Parquet.

Below is the desired output when using JSON to packet and preserve original data alongside derived elements.


{
"sentence":"1569888002\\s:VENDOR,q:u,c:1569884202*4F\\!AIVDM,1,1,,B,1:kJS6001UJgA`mV1sFrGHAP0@L;,0*56",
"landfall_time":"1569888002",
"group":"",
"satellite_acquisition_time":"1569884202",
"source":"VENDOR",
"channel":"B",
"raw_payload":"1:kJS6001UJgA`mV1sFrGHAP0@L;",
"message_type":1,
"message_class":"singleline",
"mmsi":"725000984",
"latitude":-45.385661666666664,
"longitude":-73.55857,
"call_sign":"CQ4F3",
"destination":"HALIFAX",
"name":"SS MINNOW",
"ship_type":"23",
"eta":"",
"draught":"",
"imo":"",
"course_over_ground":"86950448",
"position_accuracy":"0",
"speed_over_ground":"101",
"navigation_status":"0"
}

Walking through the RUST program

To extract data from AIS data, each character in the payload must be converted from six-bit ASCII to its binary equivalent and the entire sentence is merged into a long binary string. Pieces of string are converted back into human readable numbers and text.

Figure 1: Extracting data from the payload requires it to be converted to binary.

Figure 1: Extracting data from the payload requires it to be converted to binary
Figure 1: Extracting data from the payload requires it to be converted to binary. The payload is being converted to binary before the data can be extracted. The process is described in the following section. Image in text: kJS6001UJgA'mV1sFrGHAP0@L; 110010111101101001000101111010101001010101001010100101000101010010101001010101001010 SS MINNOW

To help squeeze all the computing possible from the host machine, Rust offers "fearless concurrency". The workload can be easily distributed across all available computer cores with message-passing channels relaying the data between threads.

The process is divided into three pools. The first is a single-threaded process that reads a source file of AIS data, inserting each line into a struct field, and passes the struct to a pool of threads that does the initial parsing through a channel.

The receiving thread parses the single line position messages, and forwards the results to a file writer as a JSON packet. Multiline sentences are passed to a second pool of threads that cache and reassemble sentence fragments. Again, these results are forwarded to the file writer as a JSON string.

Given that processing is handed off to competing concurrent threads, there are no order guarantees in output. Queuing delays and differences in processing time can ensure the output for each report will not be the same order as the input.

Program highlights

Figure 2: Program process

Figure 2: Program process
Figure 2: Program process This program process begins at the Main Thread and the Output File. The Read Source File box is adjacent to it. From there, a Source Channel arrow points to the next step, which is the Thread Pools Parse Single Line Data via the Multiline Reports Channel. From this point, the process can either loop back to the Main Thread again as a Parsed Single Line Channel or down to the Thread Pools Cache and Parse Multiline Data process. From there, it loops back to the Main Thread via the Parsed Multiline Channel. The option is to either continue in the process or via JSON Serialization, it creates the Output File.

Regular expression can be used to extract human-readable data in the AIS sentence, but additional work has to be done to convert the data from the six-bit payload to a binary string, take slices of the result and convert these slices back to text, floats and integers.

Cargo and version pinning

Rust makes use of a well-thought build system where package dependencies and build directives can be specified in a definition file.


[package]
name = "rustaise"
version = "0.1.0"
edition = "2021"

[dependencies]
crossbeam-channel = "0.5.2"
threadpool = "1.8.1"
num_cpus  = "1.13.1"
hashbrown = "0.12.0"
clap = "3.0.7"
regex = "1.5.4"
bitvec = "1.0.0"
serde = { version = "1.0.136", features = ["derive"] }
serde_json = "1.0.78"

[profile.release]
lto = true

Dependencies called "Crates" can be listed with a specific version. Upgrading to a different release of the crate has to be explicitly done, mitigating errors from moving to different library versions.

The iron fist of variable scoping

One of the methods Rust uses to maintain memory safety, is to tightly control variable scope.


// Let's assign 21 to x
let x = 21;
	{
	// Now let's assign 12 to x
	let x =12;
	}
// Since the scope has ended for the previous assignment
// the value of x is still 21
println!("{}", x);

The code snippet above would print the number "21" because the assignment "x = 12" is only valid between the braces.

This is a powerful way to keep your memory in order, but it can be counter-intuitive. For example, the following doesn't work because the variable -x is descoped at the end of the jf block brace pair.


if y == 1 {
    let x = 21;
} else {
    let x = 0;
}
println!("{}", x);

}

One way to deal with this is to create an anonymous function where the output of the function is assigned to the variable. Variable assignments with nested if and match evaluations are used throughout the program.


let y = 1;
let x = 21;
let x: i8 ={
    if y == 1 {
         67
    }
    else {
        0
    }
};

println!("{}", x);

The rigid control of variable lifetimes and ownership changes the way you structure your program.

Resistance is futile

The compiler is very chatty and will refuse to compile code that transgresses Rust's guard rails.

error[E0308]: mismatched types
 --> src/main.rs:8:10
  |
8 |          67.0
  |          ^^^^ expected `i8`, found floating-point number

For more information about this error, try `rustc --explain E0308`.
error: could not compile `playground` due to previous error

While sometimes frustrating, the compiler's messages are helpful in determining the cause of the error. The mantra "work with the compiler" is often seen in online comments.

The software begins by defining a struct that will hold the raw sentences and extracted data as it passes through the workflow.


#[derive(Serialize, Default, Clone, Debug)]
struct PositionReport {
    pub sentence: String,
    pub landfall_time: String,
    pub group: String,
    pub satellite_acquisition_time: String,
    pub source: String,
    pub channel: String,
    pub raw_payload: String,
    pub message_type: u64,
    pub message_class: String,
    pub mmsi: String,
    pub latitude: f64,
    pub longitude: f64,
    pub call_sign: String,
    pub destination: String,
    pub name: String,
    pub ship_type: String,
    pub eta: String,
    pub draught: String,
    pub imo: String,
    pub course_over_ground: String,
    pub position_accuracy: String,
    pub speed_over_ground: String,
    pub navigation_status: String,
} // end of struct PositionReport

Note the #Derive keyword preceding the struct definition. Although Rust is not an object-oriented language like Java, it allows methods to be shared across structures using a feature called Traits in a way that emulates inheritance.

In the declaration above, the Serialize, Default, Clone and Debug traits are being added to the struct.

Thread Pools

Defining thread pools are quite simple in Rust. The program finds the number of available cores and declares the number of workers for each thread.

For loops are used to launch individual threads.


    // Workers are the number of CPUs.
    let n_workers = num_cpus::get();

    let reading_thread = ThreadPool::new(1);
    let extraction_pool = ThreadPool::new(n_workers);
    let multiline_assembly_thread = ThreadPool::new(n_workers);

    for _a..n_workers: {
        multiline_assembly.execute(move || {
            // Do stuff
        }
    }

    for _b..n_workers: {
        extraction_pool.execute(move || {
            // Do stuff
        }
    }

    reading_thread.execute(move || {
        // Do stuff
    }

For loops control the number of threads launched, while the move keyword passes the current variables to the thread.

Channel Definitions and Flow Control

The relay channels between the threads are defined with a limit to prevent the producing threads from overfilling the channel and exhausting memory. By default, the program sets the upper bound to 500,000 elements, but it can be changed from the command line to best fit the available memory.

Each declaration defines a sending and receiving channel, and the data types that will be running across the message bus.


let (raw_file_tx, raw_file_rx): (Sender<PositionReport>, Receiver<PositionReport>) = bounded(flow_limit);
let (multiline_handling_tx, multiline_handling_rx): ( Sender<PositionReport>, Receiver<PositionReport>) = bounded(flow_limit);
let (ready_for_output_tx, ready_for_output_rx): (Sender<String>, Receiver<String>) =
bounded(flow_limit);

Because of Rust's rules on variable reuse, the channel data type has to be cloned in each thread, but each clone actually refers to the original instance of the message bus.


     extraction_pool.execute(move || {
        let raw_file_rx = raw_file_rx.clone().clone();
        let extract_ready_for_output_tx = extract_ready_for_output_tx.clone();
        let multiline_handling_tx = multiline_handling_tx.clone();
     }

Matching messages

AIS message types determine how ship information is stored in the six-bit payload, so any parsing task has to begin with carving out the type of the current sentence and casting it as an unsigned INT in the appropriate struct field.


line.message_type = pick_u64(&payload, 0, 6);

From there, the message type can be matched against parsing templates and other fields in the struct populated.


match line.message_type {
1 | 2 | 3 => {
// If the message is class A kinetic.
line.mmsi = format!("{}", pick_u64(&payload, 8, 30));
line.latitude = pick_i64(&payload, 89, 27) as f64 / 600_000.0;
line.longitude = pick_i64(&payload, 61, 28) as f64 / 600_000.0;
...
}
5 => {
// If the message is class A static.
line.mmsi = format!("{}", pick_u64(&payload, 8, 30));
line.call_sign = pick_string(&payload, 70, 42);
line.name = pick_string(&payload, 112, 120);
...
}

Arc Mutexes and Hash maps

Assembling multiline messages in multiple threads requires caching sentence fragments in a way that can be shared. This program uses a shared hash-map wrapped in a mutex to hold sentence fragments.


// Initiate Hashmaps for multisentence AIS messages
// These are wrapped by ARC and Mutexes for use under multithreading.
let mut payload_cache: Arc<Mutex<HashMap<String, String>>> =
Arc::new(Mutex::new(HashMap::new()));
let mut source_cache: Arc<Mutex<HashMap<String, String>>> =
Arc::new(Mutex::new(HashMap::new()));
let mut sat_time_cache: Arc<Mutex<HashMap<String, String>>> =
Arc::new(Mutex::new(HashMap::new()));

Like the interprocess channels, the hash-maps must be cloned in each thread instance.


// Initiate Hashmaps for multisentence AIS messages
let payload_cache = Arc::clone(&mut payload_cache);
let source_cache = Arc::clone(&mut source_cache);
let sat_time_cache = Arc::clone(&mut sat_time_cache);

Each hash-map needs a lock defined in each thread to deconflict the reads and delete from multiple threads.


    let mut payload_lock = payload_cache.lock().unwrap();
    let mut source_lock = source_cache.lock().unwrap();
    let mut sat_time_lock = sat_time_cache.lock().unwrap();

    // insert into time cache if struct field is not empty
    if line.satellite_acquisition_time.len() > 0 {
        sat_time_lock.insert(line.group.clone(), line.satellite_acquisition_time);
        }

JSON serialization

The SERDE crate offers a convenient way to serialize a struct to a JSON string. At the end of the parsing cycle, each thread converts the populated struct to JSON for writing to file.


ready_for_output_tx.send(serde_json::to_string(&line).unwrap());

The output of the program can be loaded in Pandas with the following command:


import pandas as pd
df=pd.read_json("output.json", lines=True)

It can also be converted to a compressed Parquet file using use Dominik Moritz's json2parquet program.


json2parquet -c brotli norway.json norway.parquet

Running the program

Executing the program without parameters will output the following:


error: The following required arguments were not provided:
		<INPUT>
		<OUTPUT>

    USAGE:
		rustaise <INPUT> <OUTPUT> [FLOW_LIMIT]
	For more information try --help
	With the --help flag.

    AIS parsing program 1.0
	Scott Syms <ezrapound1967@gmail.com>
	Does selective parsing of a raw AIS stream

	USAGE:
	rustaise <INPUT> <OUTPUT> [ARGS]
	ARGS:
		<INPUT>                Sets the input file to use
		<OUTPUT>               Sets a custom output file
		<FLOW_LIMIT>           Sets a limit on the number of objects in memory at one time (default: 500000)
		<PARSE_THREADS>        Sets the number of threads to use for parsing (default: number of CPUs)
		<MULTILINE_THREADS>    Sets the number of threads to use for multiline parsing (default: number of CPUs)
  	OPTIONS:
		-h, --help       Print help information
		-V, --version    Print version information

Uncompressing the norway.7z program and running the following will generate a JSON file with parsed contents.


rustaise norway.nmea norway.json

The FLOW LIMIT parameter allows you to limit the data held in the message channels. In some memory constrained systems, capping in-flight messages prevents out-of-memory issues. The PARSE_THREADS and MULTILINE_THREADS are optional parameters that provide control over the number of threads created for the single and multiple line parsing threads.

Speed results

Rust lives up to its reputation as a blazingly fast language.

The execution results in the timing table below are obtained from a MacBook 2.3 GHz 8-Core Intel i9 with 32Gb of memory. In the timing table, the row indicates the number of lines in the input file. The first column shows the processing time required to process the sample, and the final column forecasts how much data could be processed in a day at the sample rate.

Figure 3: Timing table - Sample Size, Processing time and Forecasted Volume/Day
Sample Size Timing Forecasted Volume per Day
1 million 7s 12,342,857,142
25 million 65s 33,230,769,230
174 million 435s 34,560,000,000

These figures suggest that the software would be able to process a 50-billion row AIS archive in just under two days, on a single laptop.

Last thoughts

This is my first attempt to do serious programming in Rust and even from a novice's vantage point, there's room for improvement.

  • First, because I have imperfect knowledge of the language, the solution may not be idiomatic, i.e. making the best use of what Rust offers to solve the problem.
  • The program largely ignores Rust's error handling framework. Initializing the struct with default values may unnecessarily consume memory. Leveraging struct methods and custom traits may offer some advantages.
  • Refactoring the code into Rust's library and module format would be a step toward code readability.
  • Finally, Rust offers unit-testing framework that would make the code more maintainable.

Generally, the "juice is worth the squeeze" here. Even with the code's drawbacks, Rust works as advertised and the effort in learning the language is worthwhile in situations where the code will be reused or where execution time is a concern.

Alternatively, developers who want to take advantage of Rust's performance while staying in the
Python ecosystem could use the PyO3Footnote 13 project to create native Python extensions in Rust.

Getting the code

All code is available at Github - ScottSyms/RustAISe.

Please feel free to use it and I'd appreciate any feedback you might have.

Licenses

The software is made available under an Apache 2.0 license.

The archive includes a 7zip compressed sample of AIS data from the government of Norway. It's made available under the Norwegian License for Open Government Data (NLOD) 2.0.Footnote 14

Some of the bitvec manipulation code is taken from Timo Saarinen's nmea-parser packageFootnote 15 which is provided under an Apache 2.0 license.

Scott Syms is a Technical Advisor with Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, a part of SSC's Chief Technology Officer Branch.

Date modified:

Integrated Business Statistics Program (IBSP)

Reporting Guide

This guide is designed to assist you as you complete the 2021 Annual Civil Aviation Survey - Level IV. If you need more information, please call the Statistics Canada Help Line at the number below.

Help Line: 1-877-949-9492

Your answers are confidential.

Statistics Canada is prohibited by law from releasing any information it collects which could identify any person, business, or organization, unless consent has been given by the respondent or as permitted by the Statistics Act.

Statistics Canada will use information from this survey for statistical purposes.

Table of contents

Business or organization and contact information

This section verifies or requests basic identifying information of the business or organization such as legal name, operating name (if applicable), contact information of the designated contact person, current operational status, and main activity(ies).

1. Legal name and Operating name

Legal Name

The legal name is one recognized by law, thus it is the name liable for pursuit or for debts incurred by the business or organization. In the case of a corporation, it is the legal name as fixed by its charter or the statute by which the corporation was created.

Modifications to the legal name should only be done to correct a spelling error or typo.

To indicate a legal name of another legal entity you should instead indicate it in question 3 by selecting 'Not currently operational' and then choosing the applicable reason and providing the legal name of this other entity along with any other requested information.

Operating Name

The operating name is a name the business or organization is commonly known as if different from its legal name. The operating name is synonymous with trade name.

2. Designated contact person

Verify or provide the requested contact information of the designated business or organization contact person. The designated contact person is the person who should receive this questionnaire. The designated contact person may not always be the one who actually completes the questionnaire. If different than the designated contact person, the contact information of the person completing the questionnaire can be indicated later in the questionnaire.

3. Current operational status

Verify or provide the current operational status of the business or organization identified by the legal and operating name in question 1. If indicating the operational status of the business or organization is 'Not currently operational' then indicate an applicable reason and provide the requested information.

4. Main activity

This question verifies the business or organization's current main activity as classified by the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) is an industry classification system developed by the statistical agencies of Canada, Mexico and the United States. Created against the background of the North American Free Trade Agreement, it is designed to provide common definitions of the industrial structure of the three countries and a common statistical framework to facilitate the analysis of the three economies. NAICS is based on supply-side or production-oriented principles, to ensure that industrial data, classified to NAICS , are suitable for the analysis of production-related issues such as industrial performance.

The target entity for which NAICS is designed are businesses and other organizations engaged in the production of goods and services. They include farms, incorporated and unincorporated businesses and government business enterprises. They also include government institutions and agencies engaged in the production of marketed and non-marketed services, as well as organizations such as professional associations and unions and charitable or non-profit organizations and the employees of households.

The associated NAICS should reflect those activities conducted by the business or organizational units targeted by this questionnaire only, as identified in the 'Answering this questionnaire' section and which can be identified by the specified legal and operating name. The main activity is the activity which most defines the targeted business or organization's main purpose or reason for existence. For a business or organization that is for-profit, it is normally the activity that generates the majority of the revenue for the entity.

The NAICS classification contains a limited number of activity classifications; the associated classification might be applicable for this business or organization even if it is not exactly how you would describe this business or organization's main activity.

Please note that any modifications to the main activity through your response to this question might not necessarily be reflected prior to the transmitting of subsequent questionnaires and as a result they may not contain this updated information.

If the current NAICS associated with this business or organizations is not correct, please provide a brief description of the main activity and provide any additional information as requested.

Statement of Revenues, Annual - Statement 21 (IV)

Scheduled services

Transportation of passengers or goods, or both, by an aircraft provided by an air carrier that operates the air service and that, directly or indirectly, sells some or all of its seats or part or all of its cargo space to the public on a price per seat, price per unit of mass or price per volume of cargo basis.

Charter services

Transportation of passengers or goods, or both, by aircraft pursuant to a contract under which a person, other than the air carrier that operates the air service, or its agent, reserves a block of seats or part of the cargo space of an aircraft for the person's use or for resale to the public.

Include air ambulance service and the movement of people and goods to logging or heli-logging sites.

Exclude firefighting and heli-logging activities and the movement of people and goods to a firefighting site. (The former Transport Canada TP 8880 document "Starting a Commercial Air Service" outlining a list of activities which are specialty has been replaced with a new document TP 4711 "Air Operator Certification Manual" as of December 2020. A PDF version of volumes of this manual can be requested at: Air Operator Certification Manual – TP 4711)

Fixed wing

Means a power-driven, heavier-than-air aircraft, deriving its lift in flight chiefly from aerodynamic reactions on surfaces which remain fixed. An aircraft having wings fixed to the airplane fuselage and outspread in flight – that is non-rotating wings.

Helicopter

Means a rotary wing, heavier-than-air aircraft, supported in flight chiefly by the reactions of the air on one or more power-driven rotors on substantially vertical axes. A helicopter does not have conventional fixed wings, nor is it provided with a conventional propeller for forward thrust.

Total operating revenue

Include revenue from air transportation services (for example, transportation of passengers, transportation of goods and other flight-related revenue [such as flying training, recreational flying and other specialty flying]) and all other sources.

Updates to the Canadian Housing Statistics Program (46220002)

The Canadian Housing Statistics Program (CHSP) is an innovative data project that provides Canadians with wide-ranging housing statistics by leveraging existing data sources. Key indicators from the CHSP include characteristics of residential properties (assessment value, property type, period of construction, living area) and of their owners (income, age, residency, and immigration status). This webinar will cover updates to the CHSP, including new information on home buyers and expanded geographies.

English webinar:

French webinar:

Wholesale Trade Survey (monthly): CVs for total sales by geography - February 2022

Wholesale Trade Survey (monthly): CVs for total sales by geography - February 2022
Geography Month
202102 202103 202104 202105 202106 202107 202108 202109 202110 202111 202112 202201 202202
percentage
Canada 0.7 0.6 0.7 0.9 0.8 0.6 0.6 0.7 0.6 0.6 1.0 0.8 0.7
Newfoundland and Labrador 0.5 0.2 1.2 2.3 0.3 0.3 0.4 0.4 0.3 0.4 0.4 1.0 0.6
Prince Edward Island 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
Nova Scotia 1.7 2.6 4.8 8.1 3.0 2.3 2.5 3.1 2.3 2.2 5.8 2.9 1.7
New Brunswick 2.6 1.1 1.1 1.9 3.4 2.1 1.9 2.4 2.1 4.0 1.4 3.1 0.7
Quebec 1.8 1.9 1.8 3.1 2.9 1.6 1.7 1.6 1.7 1.7 1.9 2.2 1.4
Ontario 1.1 0.9 1.1 1.2 0.9 0.8 1.0 1.0 1.0 0.9 1.7 1.3 1.2
Manitoba 2.4 1.8 2.8 5.3 1.7 0.8 1.1 1.6 1.7 1.3 1.5 1.7 1.5
Saskatchewan 1.6 1.2 0.8 0.7 0.8 0.5 1.3 1.7 1.0 0.8 2.1 0.9 0.3
Alberta 1.2 1.1 1.2 1.4 1.2 1.5 1.1 1.0 1.4 2.1 1.0 1.8 1.6
British Columbia 1.4 1.5 1.3 1.4 1.4 1.5 1.4 1.9 1.2 1.7 1.2 1.5 2.1
Yukon Territory 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
Northwest Territories 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
Nunavut 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

Disaggregated data standards

The Disaggregated Data Action Plan (DDAP) supports intersectional data and representative data collection efforts. Its guiding principles indicate that data and analysis should be at the lowest level of population detail possible and that Statistics Canada approved standards should be used for disaggregation across all platforms. Disaggregated data standards are distinguished by employment equity groups, also known as essential disaggregation groups, and by additional disaggregation priorities.

Employment Equity group standards

Disability status

Standard unchanged/not requiring updates

Standard in developmentFootnote 2

  • Disability type of person with a disability
  • Severity of disability of person with a disability

Ethnocultural diversity

Standard updated for Census 2021

New standard developed for Census 20211

Gender

Standard updated for Census 2021

New standard developed for Census 20211

Indigenous peoples

Standard updated for Census 2021

New standard developed for Census 20211

Standard unchanged/not requiring updates

Additional standards

Business ownership

Standard in developmentFootnote 2

  • Business majority ownership

Children

Standard updated for Census 2021

Standard unchanged/not requiring updates

No specific definition as a standard but classified under 'age of person'

Geography

Standard updated for Census 2021

Immigration

Standard updated for Census 2021

Standard unchanged/not requiring updates

New standard developed for Census 20211

Standard in developmentFootnote 2

  • Non-permanent resident type of non-permanent resident

Low-income

Standard updated for Census 2021

Standard unchanged/not requiring updates

New standard developed for Census 20211

Official languages

Standard updated for Census 2021

New standard developed for Census 20211

Seniors

Standard updated for Census 2021

Standard unchanged/not requiring updates

No specific definition as a standard but classified under 'age of person'

Sexual orientation

New standard developedFootnote

Standard in development2

  • 2SLGBTQ+ status of person

Veterans

New standard developed for Census 20211

Integrated Business Statistics Program (IBSP)

Reporting Guide

This guide is designed to assist you as you complete the 2021 Annual Civil Aviation Survey - Level III. If you need more information, please call the Statistics Canada Help Line at the number below.

Help Line: 1-877-949-9492

Your answers are confidential.

Statistics Canada is prohibited by law from releasing any information it collects which could identify any person, business, or organization, unless consent has been given by the respondent or as permitted by the Statistics Act.

Statistics Canada will use information from this survey for statistical purposes.

Table of contents

Business or organization and contact information

This section verifies or requests basic identifying information of the business or organization such as legal name, operating name (if applicable), contact information of the designated contact person, current operational status, and main activity(ies).

1. Legal name and Operating name

Legal Name

The legal name is one recognized by law, thus it is the name liable for pursuit or for debts incurred by the business or organization. In the case of a corporation, it is the legal name as fixed by its charter or the statute by which the corporation was created.

Modifications to the legal name should only be done to correct a spelling error or typo.

To indicate a legal name of another legal entity you should instead indicate it in question 3 by selecting 'Not currently operational' and then choosing the applicable reason and providing the legal name of this other entity along with any other requested information.

Operating Name

The operating name is a name the business or organization is commonly known as if different from its legal name. The operating name is synonymous with trade name.

2. Designated contact person

Verify or provide the requested contact information of the designated business or organization contact person. The designated contact person is the person who should receive this questionnaire. The designated contact person may not always be the one who actually completes the questionnaire. If different than the designated contact person, the contact information of the person completing the questionnaire can be indicated later in the questionnaire.

3. Current operational status

Verify or provide the current operational status of the business or organization identified by the legal and operating name in question 1. If indicating the operational status of the business or organization is 'Not currently operational' then indicate an applicable reason and provide the requested information.

4. Main activity

This question verifies the business or organization's current main activity as classified by the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) is an industry classification system developed by the statistical agencies of Canada, Mexico and the United States. Created against the background of the North American Free Trade Agreement, it is designed to provide common definitions of the industrial structure of the three countries and a common statistical framework to facilitate the analysis of the three economies. NAICS is based on supply-side or production-oriented principles, to ensure that industrial data, classified to NAICS , are suitable for the analysis of production-related issues such as industrial performance.

The target entity for which NAICS is designed are businesses and other organizations engaged in the production of goods and services. They include farms, incorporated and unincorporated businesses and government business enterprises. They also include government institutions and agencies engaged in the production of marketed and non-marketed services, as well as organizations such as professional associations and unions and charitable or non-profit organizations and the employees of households.

The associated NAICS should reflect those activities conducted by the business or organizational units targeted by this questionnaire only, as identified in the 'Answering this questionnaire' section and which can be identified by the specified legal and operating name. The main activity is the activity which most defines the targeted business or organization's main purpose or reason for existence. For a business or organization that is for-profit, it is normally the activity that generates the majority of the revenue for the entity.

The NAICS classification contains a limited number of activity classifications; the associated classification might be applicable for this business or organization even if it is not exactly how you would describe this business or organization's main activity.

Please note that any modifications to the main activity through your response to this question might not necessarily be reflected prior to the transmitting of subsequent questionnaires and as a result they may not contain this updated information.

If the current NAICS associated with this business or organizations is not correct, please provide a brief description of the main activity and provide any additional information as requested.

Balance Sheet, Annual - Statement 20 (II, III)

Financial assets

Current assets

Include:

  • cash, bank balances (including deposits in transit, special deposits for the payments of debts, and so on) and short-term investments due within one year from the date of the balance sheet;
  • current accounts and notes receivable as well as other current assets such as inventories, charges to subscribers on transportation contracts, interests and dividends receivable, and so on.

All other financial assets – (Include investments and special funds.)

Include investments in associated companies, other investments such as investments in stocks, bonds, and so on, and special funds such as equipment purchase funds, funds set aside for such special purposes as contractual deposits, pension funds, self-insurance funds, and so on.

Property and equipment

Operating - property and equipment – (Include capital leases.)

Include:

  • ground property and equipment (including flight equipment) owned and/or under capital leases;
  • the cost of aircraft (airframes), aircraft engines, propellers, components (aircraft communication and navigational equipment) and spare parts that have been purchased outright;
  • the cost of non-airborne communication and meteorological equipment, ramp equipment, maintenance and engineering equipment, surface transport vehicles and equipment, furniture, fixtures and office equipment, buildings and land as well as miscellaneous ground equipment such as medical equipment, airport and lighting equipment, passenger service equipment, hotel, restaurant and food service equipment, storage and distribution equipment. Property and equipment under capital leases includes the cost of property and equipment under a capital or finance lease, in other words, a lease for a period considered to be the whole or nearly the whole life of the property or equipment.

Accumulated depreciation and amortization - property and equipment

Include:

  • accumulated depreciation and amortization of ground property and equipment (including flight equipment) owned and/or under capital leases;
  • accrued charges representing losses, not replaced by current repairs, occurring in physical property and suffered through current lessening of service value due to wear and tear from use and the action of time and the elements; and losses occurring through obsolescence, supersession, new technological developments, changes in popular demand and the requirements of public authority.

Non-operating property and equipment – (Include capital leases.)

Include the cost of all non-operating property and equipment, in other words, all property and equipment not included in the "operating" category above.

Accumulated depreciation and amortization - non-operating property and equipment

Include accumulated depreciation and amortization of the non-operating property and equipment.

All other assets

Include long-term prepayments, developmental and pre-operating costs such as the cost of extraordinary training, unamortized discounts and expenses on the issue of long-term debt securities, property acquisition adjustments, other intangibles such as payments made for patents, copyrights, and so on, and other deferred charges.

Total assets

The sum of the assets above less the accumulated depreciation and amortization.

Liabilities and capital

Current liabilities

Include:

  • current accounts and traffic balances payable, including balances subject to current settlement and payable to associated companies and/or shareholders, and notes payable on demand or within one year from the date of the balance sheet;
  • the current portion of long-term debt and the current obligations under capital leases;
  • air traffic liabilities (unearned transportation revenue), which includes the value of passenger tickets sold but not used or refunded as of the date of the balance sheet, and pre-paid amounts for the transportation of baggage, freight and mail for which the transportation has not occurred as of the date of the balance sheet;
  • salaries and wages accrued and unpaid, taxes accrued and unpaid, dividends payable, deposits by subscribers on transportation contracts (air travel plan liabilities, in other words, deposits received under air travel plan contracts) and other current and accrued liabilities.

Advances from associated companies and/or shareholders

Include the net amount from associated companies and/or shareholders for notes, loans or advances which are not currently settled.

Long-term debt and other non-current liabilities – (Include capital leases.)

Include:

  • the face value or principal amount of debt securities (for example, bonds, trust certificates, debentures, notes) issued and assumed by the air carrier and in the hands of others, which is not payable within twelve months of the balance sheet date;
  • long-term obligations under capital leases, which refers to the present value of unexpired contracts for the acquisition of aircraft under such lease arrangements.

Deferred income taxes

Include taxes that will be owed on income, but that have not yet been assessed.

All other liabilities

Include:

  • deferred credits which correspond to unamortized premiums on all classes of long-term debt, and other deferred credits such as securities issued or assumed by the air carrier, and other unadjusted accounts that cannot be cleared as of the date of the balance sheet;
  • provisions for major overhauls such as for flight equipment (in other words, liabilities of uncertain value or timing associated with the complete disassembly and inspection or repair of an aircraft, engine or other component of an aircraft) and other provisions such as liabilities of uncertain value or timing.

Shareholders' equity

Capital stock

Include the equity capital invested in a business through the purchase of various classes of common and preferred shares.

Retained earnings

Include the portion of after-tax profits left over, after dividends have been paid to shareholders, for reinvestment into the company. If this account is negative, then the amount indicated for this item should be shown with a negative (-) sign.

All other items

Include other paid-in capital and reserves. Other paid-in capital or contributed surplus includes the premiums or discounts that have resulted from selling stock, and stock received from donations. Reserves include any reserve fund such as reserve for self-insurance, reserve for pension, reserves against potential future losses, and so on. Also, include proprietorship or partnership accounts (balance year-end).

Total liabilities and capital

The sum of liabilities and capital plus the sum of shareholders' equity which should equal total assets.

Statement of Revenues and Expenses, Annual - Statement 21 (III)

Operating revenue

Scheduled services

Transportation of passengers or goods, or both, by an aircraft provided by an air carrier that operates the air service and that, directly or indirectly, sells some or all of its seats or part or all of its cargo space to the public on a price per seat, price per unit of mass or price per volume of cargo basis.

Charter services

Transportation of passengers or goods, or both, by aircraft pursuant to a contract under which a person, other than the air carrier that operates the air service, or its agent, reserves a block of seats or part of the cargo space of an aircraft for the person's use or for resale to the public.

Include air ambulance service and the movement of people and goods to logging or heli-logging sites.

Exclude firefighting and heli-logging activities and the movement of people and goods to a firefighting site. (The former Transport Canada TP 8880 document "Starting a Commercial Air Service" outlining a list of activities which are specialty has been replaced with a new document TP 4711 "Air Operator Certification Manual" as of December 2020. A PDF version of volumes of this manual can be requested at: Air Operator Certification Manual – TP 4711)

Passenger revenue

Refers to the revenue earned from the transportation of passengers on scheduled and charter services. Include revenue from all surcharges (baggage, fuel, seat selection, changing or cancelling flights, and so on) that are retained by the air carrier. Exclude amounts such as taxes, navigation fees, security fees, and so on that are collected but passed on to other entities.

Goods revenue

Refers to the revenue earned from the transportation of goods on scheduled and charter services. Exclude taxes such as the Goods and Services Tax (GST), Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) or Provincial Sales Tax (PST).

All other flight - related revenue

Refers to the revenue earned from air transport activities not included in passenger revenue or goods revenue. Include revenue from other flying services such as flying training, recreational flying and other specialty flying.

All other revenue

Include subsidies and revenue earned from all other sources (including contra revenue, revenue of a corporate nature (leasing revenue, third party ground-handling, and so on), ancillary passenger revenue not easily allocated by operating flight (customs brokerage, and so on), revenue from in-flight sales (beverages, food, entertainment and wireless Internet access, and so on)).

Total operating revenue

The sum of passenger revenue, goods revenue, other flight-related revenue and revenue from all other sources.

Operating expenses

Maintenance - ground property and equipment

Expenses incurred in the repair and upkeep of ground property and equipment. Include employee wages, salaries and benefits (including employer contributions to pensions, medical benefits, insurance, and so on), expenses for materials and supplies, purchased repair services and all other related expenses.

Aircraft operations

Expenses incurred directly for the in-flight operation of aircraft or in the holding of aircraft and aircraft personnel in readiness for assignment to an in-flight status.

Include:

  • the wages, salaries and benefits (including employer contributions to pensions, medical benefits, insurance, and so on and layover expenses such as hotels and meals) for flight crews (pilot, co-pilot, navigator, and so on);
  • expenses for turbo fuel, gasoline and all other fuel and oil consumed such as turbine oil and piston oil (including throughput charges, non-refundable duties and taxes);
  • airport landing fees paid both in Canada and outside of Canada;
  • navigation fees remitted to NAV CANADA or other international suppliers for the provision of air navigation services (air navigation services include aeronautical communication services, aeronautical information services, aeronautical radio navigation services, air traffic control services, aviation weather services, emergency assistance services and flight information services);
  • expenses for insurance against accidental damage to flight equipment while in flight or on the ground and for insurance against liability occurring from the operation of aircraft or, in the case of non-insurance, the resulting expenses for which the carrier is liable;
  • expenses incurred for the rental of aircraft (and crew) from other carriers, such as in chartering, interchange and operating or lease agreements;
  • all other aircraft operation expenses incurred directly for the in-flight operation and related standby time of aircraft.

Maintenance - flight equipment

Expenses incurred in the repair and upkeep of flight equipment. Include employee wages, salaries and benefits (including employer contributions to pensions, medical benefits, insurance, and so on), expenses for materials and supplies, purchased repair services and all other related expenses.

General administration

Expenses incurred for in-flight service, aircraft and traffic servicing, promotion and sales and general administration.

Include:

  • the wages, salaries and benefits (including employer contributions to pensions, medical benefits, insurance, and so on and layover expenses such as hotels and meals) paid to cabin crews (flight attendants, and so on), ground personnel, staff engaged in reservations, ticketing, sales and promotional activities and all other employees (including the personnel performing the general and administrative functions of the air carrier);
  • expenses for in-flight service such as passenger food and supplies (in-flight meals, complimentary drinks, and so on and the cost of supplies and personal services furnished to passengers), passenger liability insurance (premiums for passenger liability and accident insurance) and all other in-flight service expenses (including passenger-related expenses incurred due to interrupted flights, including hotels, meals, taxi fares and other expense items, the cost of other services provided to passengers, such as pay, allowances and the cost of passenger service personnel, and all other services provided for the comfort of passengers in transit);
  • expenses for aircraft and traffic servicing purchased from outside suppliers, expenses incurred on the ground for scheduling or preparing aircraft for arrival and takeoff, expenses incurred in enplaning and deplaning passenger and cargo traffic, and expenses involved in servicing and handling individual aircraft and traffic on the ground, in preparing aircraft crews for flight assignment, in controlling the in-flight movements of aircraft and the in-flight expenses of handling all traffic including baggage;
  • all promotion and sales expenses such as passenger and cargo commission expenses (the net commission payable to others for the sale of transportation on the reporting carrier's service less the commission receivable from the reporting carrier's sale of transportation on other carriers' services), advertising and publicity expenses and any related expenses, accommodation costs, agency fees for outside services, expenses associated with reservations, city ticket offices and other sales expenses;
  • general administration expenses such as those for financial accounting activities, supplementary labour income, property taxes, building rentals, communications purchased, purchasing activities, representation at law, and all other operational administration expenses not directly applicable to a particular function that are not included in the previous operating expenses categories;
  • expenses such as incidental air transport-related expenses associated with revenue reported as "all other revenue";
  • staff reduction expenses.

Depreciation

Include:

  • provisions for the depreciation of ground property and equipment (including flight equipment);
  • all charges incurred in normal wear and tear on property and equipment which have not been replaced by current year repair, as well as losses in service ability;
  • charges for the amortization of capitalized development and other intangible assets.

All other expenses

Include any and all miscellaneous operating expenses not reported elsewhere.

Total operating expenses

The sum of the previous six expense items.

Operating income

Net operating income (a loss should be a negative number)

Total operating revenue less total operating expenses – calculated from the previous questions.

Non-operating income/expenses

Interest and discount income

Include interest income from all sources and cash discounts on the purchase of materials and supplies.

Interest expenses

Include interest on unpaid taxes and all classes of debt including premiums, discounts and expenses on short-term obligations, amortization of premiums, discounts and expenses on short-term and long-term obligations.

All other net non-operating income (enter a negative number for a loss)

Include:

  • capital gains (or losses) from retiring operating property and equipment, aircraft equipment, expendable parts, miscellaneous materials and supplies and other assets, when they are sold or otherwise retired from service as part of a general program and not as incidental sales performed as a service to others;
  • gains or losses made on investments in securities;
  • net miscellaneous non-operating income or loss, which refers to revenue and expenses attributable to financing or other activities that are not an integral part of the air transportation activities undertaken by the carrier, or its incidental services. These could include dividend income, the balance of all income or losses from affiliated companies reimbursed to the carrier, foreign exchange adjustments and special items, such as restructuring expenses, which do not occur on a regular basis.

Exclude staff reduction expenses which should be included under all other expenses.

Net non-operating income (a loss should be a negative number)

The sum of the previous three income or expense items.

Provision for income taxes

Include the provision for taxes payable on net income for the accounting period and adjustments of income taxes relating to previous years, including provisions for deferred income taxes resulting from differences between accounting income and taxable income that arise when the time of including items of revenue and expense in the computation of accounting income and taxable income do not coincide. . If the net amount is negative, then the amount indicated for this item should be shown with a negative (-) sign.

Net income (a loss should be a negative number)

Net operating income plus net non-operating income less the provision for income taxes.

Fuel and oil consumed

Turbo fuel consumed

Include fuel used in both turboprop and jet aircraft.

Provide the quantity and expenses for turbo fuel consumed. Turbo fuel includes the turbine fuel uplifted for all aircraft in the carrier's fleet. Fuel uplift can be determined based on delivery notes or invoices, aircraft onboard measurement systems or, if the fuel was supplied by a customer, estimated based on hours flown. Report the quantity of turbo fuel consumed in litres.

Include turbo fuel consumed for all scheduled and/or charter operations, regardless of where purchased. The expenses for turbo fuel consumed should be reported in Canadian dollars, regardless of where purchased. Include throughput charges, non-refundable duties and taxes. If the fuel was supplied by a customer, an approximate value may be provided based on prevailing market rates.

Conversion factor

To convert gallons (imperial) into litres (l), multiply by 4.546092.

Gasoline consumed

Provide the quantity and expenses for gasoline consumed. If the gasoline was supplied by a customer, it may be estimated based on hours flown. Report the quantity of gasoline consumed in litres.

Include gasoline consumed for all scheduled and/or charter operations, regardless of where purchased. The expenses for gasoline consumed should be reported in Canadian dollars, regardless of where purchased. Include throughput charges, non-refundable duties and taxes. If the gasoline was supplied by a customer, an approximate value may be provided based on prevailing market rates.

Conversion factor

To convert gallons (imperial) into litres (l), multiply by 4.546092.

All other fuel and oil consumed

Provide the quantity and expenses for all other fuel and oil consumed. Report the quantity of all other fuel and oil consumed in litres.

The quantity should include turbine oil, piston oil and all other types of fuel and oil consumed for all scheduled and/or charter operations, regardless of where purchased. The expenses for all other fuel and oil consumed should be reported in Canadian dollars, regardless of where purchased. Include throughput charges, non-refundable duties and taxes.

Conversion factor

To convert gallons (imperial) into litres (l), multiply by 4.546092.

Total fuel and oil consumed

The sum of the quantities and expenses reported in the previous three items.

Employment

Average number of employees

Refers to the average number of people employed for each of the six categories of personnel.

Include all employees, temporary or permanent, on the payroll of the air carrier during the reporting period. Include part-time employees, prorated to the amount of time worked when compared to full-time employees (for example, two part-time employees working half-time are equivalent to one full-time employee).

Wages and salaries expenses

Include a breakdown of the wages and salaries paid for each of the six categories of personnel.

Exclude all benefits, in other words, employer contributions to pensions, medical benefits, insurance, and so on or layover expenses, such as hotels and meals, for flight and cabin crews.

Employment category

Include:

  • Pilots and co-pilots. Self-explanatory;
  • Other flight personnel. Flight crew (including flight engineers, navigators, and so on) and cabin crew (including flight attendants, and so on);
  • General management and administration employees (including the personnel performing the general and administrative functions such as administrative personnel at headquarters, comptrollers and assistants, directors and assistants (operations, passenger service, public relations, sales), and so on);
  • Maintenance personnel (including the personnel performing the ground property and equipment maintenance such as the carpenters, cleaners, and so on and including the personnel performing the flight equipment maintenance such as the aircraft maintenance engineers and the inspectors of flight equipment);
  • Aircraft and traffic servicing personnel (including supervisory personnel, assigned to ground activities, engaged directly in protecting and controlling aircraft in flight (flight dispatch personnel, flight planning staff), in scheduling and preparing flight crews for flight assignment, in parking and servicing aircraft incidental to line operations and including baggage handlers, aircraft fuelers, and so on);
  • All other employees (including air ambulance attendants, accountants, economists, statisticians, lawyers, purchasing personnel, publicity representatives, and so on).

Total employees

The sum of the number and the wages and salaries expenses for the six categories of personnel.

Revenue and expenses by area of operation

Passenger revenue

Include a breakdown of the revenue earned from the transportation of passengers for each province, territory and outside of Canada based on where the transportation service was provided. Total passenger revenue should equal the sum of passenger revenue from scheduled services and charter services previously reported.

Goods revenue

Include a breakdown of the revenue earned from the transportation of goods for each province, territory and outside of Canada based on where the transportation service was provided. Total goods revenue should equal the sum of goods revenue from scheduled services and charter services previously reported.

Employee wages and salaries

Include a breakdown of employee wages and salaries for each province, territory and outside of Canada based on where the employees are located. Total employee wages and salaries should equal the total wages and salaries expenses reported in the "Employment" section above.

Scheduled Services, Revenue Operating Statistics, Annual - Statement 10 (III)

Scheduled services - operating statistics

Include fixed wing and helicopter services.

Sector of operation

Refers to the regions where carriers provide transportation services. There are three breakdowns – domestic, transborder (Canada-US) and other international.

Domestic

Includes operations between points in Canada.

Transborder (Canada-US)

Includes operations between points in Canada and points in the United States (including Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico).

Other international

Includes all other operations (including between points outside of Canada).

Data reported must include both fixed wing and helicopter services, where:

Fixed wing

Means a power-driven, heavier-than-air aircraft, deriving its lift in flight chiefly from aerodynamic reactions on surfaces which remain fixed. An aircraft having wings fixed to the airplane fuselage and outspread in flight – that is non-rotating wings.

Helicopter

Means a rotary wing, heavier-than-air aircraft, supported in flight chiefly by the reactions of the air on one or more power-driven rotors on substantially vertical axes. A helicopter does not have conventional fixed wings, nor is it provided with a conventional propeller for forward thrust.

Scheduled services

Transportation of passengers or goods, or both, by an aircraft provided by an air carrier that operates the air service and that, directly or indirectly, sells some or all of its seats or part or all of its cargo space to the public on a price per seat, price per unit of mass or price per volume of cargo basis.

Enplaned passengers

Refers to revenue passengers1 who board aircraft and surrender one or more flight coupons or other documents good for transportation over the itinerary specified in these coupons or documents.

1Revenue passengers correspond to passengers for which an air carrier receives remuneration and who are travelling with tickets purchased (a) under a publicly available promotional offer; (b) through a loyalty program or through the redemption of loyalty points or miles; (c) with a corporate discount or at a preferential fare; or obtained (d) as compensation for denied boarding. It excludes (a) passengers travelling for free, at a fare available only to persons who are employees or agents of an air carrier or are travelling on the business of an air carrier; and (b) persons, such as infants, who do not occupy seats.

Passenger-kilometres

Represents the carriage of one revenue passenger on each flight stage multiplied by the number of kilometres flown on that stage. Passenger-kilometres are obtained by totalling the number of kilometres flown by all passengers.

Let's take an example with two flight stages, where:

Flight stage A to B
Number of passengers = 5
Distance between points (km) = 161
Passenger-kilometres = 805

Flight stage B to C
Number of passengers = 4
Distance between points (km) = 322
Passenger-kilometres = 1,288

The total number of passenger-kilometres for the flights covering A to B and B to C is 2,093.

Conversion factor

To convert nautical miles (6 080 feet) into kilometres (km), multiply by 1.852.

To convert statute miles (5 280 feet) into kilometres (km), multiply by 1.609344.

Hours flown

Represents the block hours, in other words, the number of hours which elapsed between the time the aircraft started to move to commence a flight and the time the aircraft came to its final stop after the conclusion of a flight. Report the total number of block hours flown to the nearest hour.

Enplaned goods

Refers to all types of non-passenger traffic. It includes priority freight, freight, mail and excess baggage for which revenue is obtained. Enplaned goods should be reported to the nearest kilogram.

Conversion factor

To convert pounds (lbs.) into kilograms (kg), multiply by 0.453592.

Goods tonne-kilometres

Represents the carriage of one tonne of goods on each flight stage multiplied by the number of kilometres flown on that stage. Goods tonne-kilometres are obtained by totalling the number of kilometres flown with all tonnes of goods.

Let's take an example with two flight stages, where:

Flight stage A to B
Tonnes of goods = 5
Distance between points (km) = 161
Goods tonne-kilometres = 805

Flight stage B to C
Tonnes of goods = 4
Distance between points (km) = 322
Goods tonne-kilometres = 1,288

The total number of goods tonne-kilometres for the flights covering A to B and B to C is 2,093.

Conversion factor

To convert nautical miles (6 080 feet) into kilometres (km), multiply by 1.852.

To convert statute miles (5 280 feet) into kilometres (km), multiply by 1.609344.

Scheduled services - revenue

Include fixed wing and helicopter services.

Passenger revenue

Refers to the revenue earned from the transportation of passengers on scheduled services. Include revenue from all surcharges (baggage, fuel, seat selection, and so on) that are retained by the air carrier. Exclude amounts such as taxes, navigation fees, security fees, and so on that are collected but passed on to other entities.

Goods revenue

Refers to the revenue earned from the transportation of goods on scheduled services. Exclude taxes such as the Goods and Services Tax (GST), Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) or Provincial Sales Tax (PST).

Charter Services, Revenue Operating Statistics, Annual - Statement 12 (III)

Charter services - operating statistics

Include fixed wing and helicopter services.

Sector of operation

Refers to the regions where carriers provide transportation services. There are three breakdowns – domestic, transborder (Canada-US) and other international.

Domestic

Includes operations between points in Canada.

Transborder (Canada-US)

Includes operations between points in Canada and points in the United States (including Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico).

Other international

Includes all other operations (including between points outside of Canada).

Data reported must include both fixed wing and helicopter services, where:

Fixed wing

Means a power-driven, heavier-than-air aircraft, deriving its lift in flight chiefly from aerodynamic reactions on surfaces which remain fixed. An aircraft having wings fixed to the airplane fuselage and outspread in flight – that is non-rotating wings.

Helicopter

Means a rotary wing, heavier-than-air aircraft, supported in flight chiefly by the reactions of the air on one or more power-driven rotors on substantially vertical axes. A helicopter does not have conventional fixed wings, nor is it provided with a conventional propeller for forward thrust.

Charter services

Transportation of passengers or goods, or both, by aircraft pursuant to a contract under which a person, other than the air carrier that operates the air service, or its agent, reserves a block of seats or part of the cargo space of an aircraft for the person's use or for resale to the public.

Include air ambulance service and the movement of people and goods to logging or heli-logging sites.

Exclude firefighting and heli-logging activities and the movement of people and goods to a firefighting site. (The former Transport Canada TP 8880 document "Starting a Commercial Air Service" outlining a list of activities which are specialty has been replaced with a new document TP 4711 "Air Operator Certification Manual" as of December 2020. A PDF version of volumes of this manual can be requested at: Air Operator Certification Manual – TP 4711)

Enplaned passengers

Refers to revenue passengers1 who board aircraft and surrender one or more flight coupons or other documents good for transportation over the itinerary specified in these coupons or documents.

1Revenue passengers correspond to passengers for which an air carrier receives remuneration and who are travelling with tickets purchased (a) under a publicly available promotional offer; (b) through a loyalty program or through the redemption of loyalty points or miles; (c) with a corporate discount or at a preferential fare; or obtained (d) as compensation for denied boarding. It excludes (a) passengers travelling for free, at a fare available only to persons who are employees or agents of an air carrier or are travelling on the business of an air carrier; and (b) persons, such as infants, who do not occupy seats.

Passenger-kilometres

Represents the carriage of one revenue passenger on each flight stage multiplied by the number of kilometres flown on that stage. Passenger-kilometres are obtained by totalling the number of kilometres flown by all passengers.

Let's take an example with two flight stages, where:

Flight stage A to B
Number of passengers = 5
Distance between points (km) = 161
Passenger-kilometres = 805

Flight stage B to C
Number of passengers = 4
Distance between points (km) = 322
Passenger-kilometres = 1,288

The total number of passenger-kilometres for the flights covering A to B and B to C is 2,093.

Conversion factor

To convert nautical miles (6 080 feet) into kilometres (km), multiply by 1.852.

To convert statute miles (5 280 feet) into kilometres (km), multiply by 1.609344.

Hours flown

Represents the block hours, in other words, the number of hours which elapsed between the time the aircraft started to move to commence a flight and the time the aircraft came to its final stop after the conclusion of a flight. Report the total number of block hours flown to the nearest hour.

Enplaned goods

Refers to all types of non-passenger traffic. It includes priority freight, freight, mail and excess baggage for which revenue is obtained. Enplaned goods should be reported to the nearest kilogram.

Conversion factor

To convert pounds (lbs.) into kilograms (kg), multiply by 0.453592.

Goods tonne-kilometres

Represents the carriage of one tonne of goods on each flight stage multiplied by the number of kilometres flown on that stage. Goods tonne-kilometres are obtained by totalling the number of kilometres flown with all tonnes of goods.

Let's take an example with two flight stages, where:

Flight stage A to B
Tonnes of goods = 5
Distance between points (km) = 161
Goods tonne-kilometres = 805

Flight stage B to C
Tonnes of goods = 4
Distance between points (km) = 322
Goods tonne-kilometres = 1,288

The total number of goods tonne-kilometres for the flights covering A to B and B to C is 2,093.

Conversion factor

To convert nautical miles (6 080 feet) into kilometres (km), multiply by 1.852.

To convert statute miles (5 280 feet) into kilometres (km), multiply by 1.609344.

Charter services - revenue

Include fixed wing and helicopter services.

Passenger revenue

Refers to the revenue earned from the transportation of passengers on charter services. Include revenue from all surcharges (baggage, fuel, seat selection, and so on) that are retained by the air carrier. Exclude amounts such as taxes, navigation fees, security fees, and so on that are collected but passed on to other entities.

Goods revenue

Refers to the revenue earned from the transportation of goods on charter services. Exclude taxes such as the Goods and Services Tax (GST), Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) or Provincial Sales Tax (PST).