right|thumb|The Nav Canada control tower in Saskatoon
Nav Canada (styled as NAV CANADA) is a privately run, non-profit corporation that owns and operates Canada's civil air navigation system (ANS). It was established by statute in accordance with the Civil Air Navigation Services Commercialization Act (ANS Act).
The company employs approximately 1,900 air traffic controllers (ATCs), 650 flight service specialists (FSSs) and 700 technologists. It has been responsible for the safe, orderly and expeditious flow of air traffic in Canadian airspace since 1 November 1996 when the government transferred the ANS from Transport Canada to Nav Canada. As part of the transfer, or privatization, Nav Canada paid the government CA$1.5 billion.
Nav Canada manages 12 million aircraft movements a year for 40,000 customers in over , making it the world's second-largest air navigation service provider (ANSP) by traffic volume.
Nav Canada, which operates independently of any government funding, It is only allowed to be funded by publicly traded debt and service charges to aircraft operators.
Facilities
Nav Canada's operations consist of various sites across the country. These include:
- About 1,400 ground-based navigation aids
- 55 flight service stations
- 4 flight information centres, one each in:
- Kamloops – British Columbia and Yukon
- Edmonton – all of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta, northeastern BC, Northwest Territories, western Hudson Bay and Nunavut (west of Baffin Island)
- London – all of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, most of Ontario, and New Brunswick
- Quebec City – all of Quebec, southwestern Labrador, tip of eastern Ontario, northern New Brunswick, eastern Hudson Bay, and Baffin Island, Nunavut
- 42 control towers
- 7 area control centres,) was rebranded and sold in 2022 to the Devcore Group
- Flight information centres
- The Winnipeg Flight Information Centre, which was closed in 2022 following the consolidation of services into the Edmonton and London Flight Information Centres.
- The Halifax Flight Information Centre, which was closed in 2020 following the consolidation of services into the London Flight Information Centre.
Corporate governance
As a non-share capital corporation, Nav Canada has no shareholders. The company is governed by a 15-member board of directors representing the four stakeholder groups that founded Nav Canada. The four stakeholders elect 10 members as follows:
{|class=wikitable
!Stakeholders
!Seats
|-
|Air carriers || 4
|-
|General and business aviation || 1
|-
|Federal government || 3
|-
|Bargaining agents (unions) || 2
|}
These 10 directors then elect four independent directors, with no ties to the stakeholder groups. Those 14 directors then appoint the president and chief executive officer who becomes the 15th board member.
This structure ensures that the interests of individual stakeholders do not predominate and no member group could exert undue influence over the remainder of the board. To further ensure that the interests of Nav Canada are served, these board
members cannot be active employees or members of airlines, unions, or government.
History
thumb|Nav Canada control tower at the now closed [[Buttonville Municipal Airport|Buttonville Airport.]]
The company began operations on 1 November 1996, when the government sold and moved the country's air navigation services from Transport Canada to the new not-for-profit private entity for CAD$1.5 billion.
A number of solutions were considered, including forming a crown corporation, but rejected in favour of outright privatization, the new company being formed as a non-share-capital not-for-profit, run by a board of directors who were initially appointed and now elected. The company expects that the non-credit related fair value variances from face value on restructured and non-restructured ABCP (amounting cumulatively to $33 at 30 November 2013) will be recovered by the time the notes mature in fiscal year 2017. By fiscal year end 2013, the company's revenues reached $1,231 million, which exceeded its pre-recession level and fiscal year 2014 saw further revenue growth to $1,272 million. During the period 2005-15, the company held service charge rates steady.
Hudson Bay ADS-B deployment
In the mid-2000s, the company decided to address the lack of radar coverage in the Canadian north, especially in the area of Hudson Bay where airliners transition from the North Atlantic Tracks system to Canadian Domestic Airspace by deploying a ground-based Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast (ADS-B) network. The five station network was operational on 15 January 2009, filling a gap in radar coverage which allowed reduced separation of airline flights by ADS-B tracking over procedural separation. In January 2009, Nav Canada estimated that the ADS-B system would save its customers and reduce and equivalent emissions by per year.
In November 2010, a second set of six ground-based ADS-B transceivers was later deployed along the coast of Labrador and Nunavut, providing an additional . In March 2012 four more stations were added in Greenland, increasing the area covered by .
The joint venture, called Aireon, uses Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast (ADS-B) receivers installed as an additional payload on 66 Iridium NEXT second-generation satellites launched between 2017 and 2019. Nav Canada invested $150 million for a 51% stake in Aireon.
The cross-linked Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites make it possible, for the first time, to track aircraft from pole-to-pole, including oceanic airspace and remote regions, facilitating fuel savings, greenhouse gas emissions reduction, and enhanced safety and efficiency for airspace users.
In December 2013, ANSPs from three additional countries joined Nav Canada as partners in Aireon. ENAV of Italy, the Irish Aviation Authority and Denmark's Naviair signed on for a combined investment of $120 million resulting in a new ownership structure for the company with Nav Canada holding 51 per cent, Iridium with 24.5 per cent, ENAV at 12.5 per cent and the Irish Aviation Authority and Naviair each holding 6%.
thumb|A [[De Havilland Canada Dash 8 (DHC-8-102) formerly used for flight inspection at Cambridge Bay Airport in 2014]]
In September 2014, Aireon announced plans to offer ALERT (Aircraft Locating and Emergency Response Tracking), a free supplementary service for emergency tracking of aircraft in trouble. Aireon's ADS-B receivers on Iridium's satellites will already include ALERT's capabilities and the company has decided to make it available free of charge "as a public service." Aireon ALERT could be activated by any certified air-safety organization to request the last known location and flight path of any aircraft carrying an ADS-B transponder, even if the operator does not subscribe to Aireon.
Fleet
Nav Canada operates a small fleet of aircraft. These aircraft are mainly used for flight inspection of navigation equipment and procedures. , Nav Canada had two Bombardier CRJ 200 registered with Transport Canada and operate as ICAO airline designator NVC, and telephony NAV CAN.
Nav Canada previously operated, for the same purposes, two Bombardier Challenger 601-1A and a Bombardier Dash-8 Series 100 inherited from Transport Canada until April 2019.