At 13:00 EDT yesterday, June 28th in Ottawa Transport Canada (TC) convened a meeting of UAV Stakeholders to provide an update on the policy and regulatory framework resulting from analysis of the comments received during the consultation period of the Notice of Proposed Amendment (NPA) to the Civil Aviation Regulations concerning the operation of Unmanned Aircraft under 25 kg within Visual Line of Sight.
In their opening remarks TC praised the UAV Program Design Working group, which is co-chaired by USC, for their valuable contributions to the regulatory framework, as well as the stakeholders who submitted comments on the NPA either in writing or during stakeholder meetings. During the two hour meeting TC briefed the audience of approximately 50 stakeholders regarding their current thinking on proposed changes to policy originally outlined in the NPA. Some of the notable highlights are listed below:
- The proposed regulation is expected to go to Canada Gazette 1 in spring 2017
- The formal consultation period and actual text of the proposed regulations will be communicated to all stakeholders for comment at that time
- The distinction between recreational and non-recreational use will be removed, however members of modelling associations with safety guidelines will have an exclusion
- The ‘very small’ category weight threshold has been changed from 2kg to 1 kg
- An ‘unregulated’ category with a weight threshold of 250g or less will be introduced
- Marking and registration will be required only for the ‘complex’ category
- Compliance with a design standard will only be required for the ‘complex’ category
- A pilot permit will be required for the ‘complex’, whereas knowledge requirements will be required for ‘limited’, and ‘very small’ operations, and will be commensurate to the category
- Liability insurance will be required for all categories of unmanned aircraft
It should be noted that at this time these are only proposed changes. Further detail is contained in the e-mail message sent to CARAC UAV stakeholders, available to download.
Mark Aruja
Chairman
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