Gilles Hudicourt believes Canadian pilots face discrimination from carriers like Sunwing Airlines, which is seeking permission to hire 105 foreign pilots on a temporary basis this winter.

For three years, Hudicourt, a pilot with Air Transat, has been agitating against the hiring of foreign pilots, writing letters, calling up government bureaucrats, and blasting the temporary foreign worker program.

“They can do without a foreign pilot. There are plenty of Canadian pilots,” Hudicourt said, adding he was turning up the pressure now, especially in light of recent layoffs at CanJet of almost 70 pilots.

And given that a federal election is looming in the fall, politicians might want to be seen as cracking down on the program that landed some big companies like RBC and Tim Hortons in hot water.

“When Canadian airlines are operating on a Canadian licence, the person up front has to be a Canadian,” said Hudicourt.

Air Transat doesn’t use foreign pilots, but Hudicourt has taken on this cause at the request of his union back in 2011. That’s because some Transat pilots lost their jobs, at the same time Transat contracted some flying with CanJet, which was using foreign pilots at the time.

He scoffed at the suggestion that Canadian operators wouldn’t be able to find qualified, experienced pilots – arguing companies are merely seeking a temporary option, without incurring expensive training costs, and expanding the workforce on a permanent basis.

Capt. Dan Adamus, Canada Board president of the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents the CanJet pilots, said his union has long been pushing to curb the use of foreign pilots.

As part of sweeping changes to the temporary foreign worker program introduced by the federal government last July, airlines can no longer require pilots to be trained and certified to fly on a specific aircraft – which was one of the requirements that Sunwing had set.

“That’s in place, but it hasn’t been tested yet on whether it will make a difference,” Adamus said, noting airlines had already submitted their temporary foreign worker applications for last winter’s season before the changes went into effect last July.

This year, the difference is the laid-off CanJet pilots fly the Boeing 737 plane – so it would be essentially the same aircraft as Sunwing.

“I believe there are plenty of pilots in Canada that will apply for those positions,” said Adamus, noting some are unemployed or underemployed with short-term contracts, or Canadians who are flying for carriers abroad. “If Sunwing tried hard enough, they will find Canadians.”

Adamus acknowledged that Sunwing has indicated it intends to hire 40 or more pilots on a short-term contract basis for this winter’s peak vacation season, and would give interview priority to those laid-off CanJet pilots.

Employment Minister Pierre Poilievre’s office did not respond to a request for comment on whether foreign pilots are even needed in light of the layoffs, referring the request to Employment and Social Development Canada, which oversees the temporary foreign worker program.

Spokeswoman Marie-France Faucher declined to comment on individual employers.

But she said the program “is intended to be a last and limited resort when employers are facing short-term skills and labour shortages, and only when qualified Canadians are not available.”

She added employers must demonstrate ‎that they made every reasonable effort to hire Canadians before their request to hire temporary foreign workers will be considered.

In 2014, 218 foreign pilot positions for both helicopters and planes were approved, down from 356 positions in 2013.

Mark Williams, president of Sunwing Airlines, said the airline has slowed its use of foreign pilots, but argued a training backlog still makes it a necessity.

During this past winter season, the airline operated 37 aircraft using 272 Canadian pilots and 110 pilots under the temporary foreign worker program – a drop of 25 pilots from two years before.

It expects that for this upcoming winter season, it will have 105 foreign pilots in addition to 316 Canadian pilots.

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“We use the foreign pilots as a last resort,” Williams said, but cited training bottlenecks that make it impossible to wipe out immediately the need for temporary foreign workers.

He said Sunwing received 900 applications this year and interviewed 70 candidates, adding it has already hired at least eight former CanJet pilots.

Sunwing, which is owned in part of by TUI, a large European leisure travel company, uses a system that brings European aircraft and pilots, sometimes under what are known as wet leases, during the busy winter season when Canadians want to head south.

And in the summer, it will sometimes send Canadian pilots and aircraft to fly in Europe, during the peak travel season across the Atlantic.

Williams said it is also slowly curbing its use of wet leases, which includes aircraft and staff, using only three last year.

For new Sunwing hires, pilots undergo about seven weeks of training, from ground school, simulator training as well as monitored flying, which all-in costs about $40,000 per pilot, Williams said

That is in addition to regular recurring training for existing pilots that includes upgrading training, for first officers who move to captains.

“If we could, we would have all Canadian pilots, and we wouldn’t have any foreign workers. It’s a temporary issue,” Williams said, noting the goal is to eliminate the need for foreign pilots altogether, though he couldn’t give any timeline on when that would happen.

“It’s going in the right direction,” he said, noting pilots come under the skilled worker category, unlike in cases of restaurants. “This is exactly what the (TFW) program is meant for.”

Hudicourt disputes the training bottleneck factor, saying if the hiring happened earlier, there would be no such issue and no need for temporary hires.

Ron Smith, director of transportation at Unifor, which represents Sunwing’s pilots, says the union is committed to getting more Canadians hired.

“We are getting that reversed, but it takes time. It’s not something that happens overnight,” he said.

He added the pilots like Hudicourt who complain about Sunwing’s use of foreign pilots work for rival airlines.

“Their goal has been to kill Sunwing. They’re trying to make life difficult for Sunwing,” Smith said.