Demand for more drone regulation unfounded, experts say

The proliferation of drones for personal and commercial use is irking regulators and policymakers. In April, widespread use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), colloquially known as drones, spurred Toronto city councillor James Pasternak to raise the issue at city hall, calling on city staff to develop a strategy and regulations.

Pasternak’s goal is to examine current policies that can be leveraged to ensure the safety of the city’s airspace. He also wants to investigate possible restrictions to keep drones from snapping photographs above city parks.

But Diana Cooper, head of law firm LaBarge Weinstein LLP’s Unmanned Aerial Systems and Robotics practice group, argues there are already rules in place that protect citizens and regulate both hobbyists and commercial drone users.

“I think there’s always a tendency with new technology to freak out and want to regulate it,” she says. “But they don’t realize that we’ve already got regulations that actually cover a lot of what the technology is doing.”

One of Pasternak’s concerns is the use of drones with cameras attached to them and invasion of privacy. While homemade spy drones like the one spotted hovering outside of a Vancouver condo last summer exist, they are by no means the norm, says Klever Freire, CEO and founder of Toronto-based drone maker DreamQii.

“There’s a ridiculous amount of easier ways to be able to invade someone’s privacy then using a drone,” he says. “They’re noisy, they’re very high profile – you know when they’re close by – and you have to be close in order to capture the image.”

Not to mention that a drone capable of lifting a GoPro camera could only hover up to 35 minutes, max.

“It’s really not a long range thing, I can’t send [one] from North York to downtown and be able to spy on somebody in a condo building,” he says. “It would be extremely challenging even for the most sophisticated user, drones are much less capable right now then you’re average PC or laptop.”

That’s why Transport Canada, the federal department tasked with regulating the UAV sphere, only keeps tabs on recreational users flying drones weighing more than 25 kilograms.

“That’s a pretty heavy-duty vehicle, it’d be pretty expensive to buy something of that weight which generally means you’re not going to be flying it recreational,” says Cooper.

Otherwise, the drone is considered on par with a toy helicopter or model airplane. But the criminal code and privacy laws still apply. So, for instance, if you decided to fix a camera to your drone and spy into someone’s condo window, you’d face similar charges to hiding out with a pair of binoculars.

Where you can and can’t fly is a different story, says Freire.

“In municipalities and cities with high populations that are densely packed with a lot of buildings, skyscrapers [and] airports, it’s definitely a point of contention,” he says, adding that local regulations are based on a case-by-case scenario.

“Is there an airport nearby? What is the social impact of using them? Is there a benefit, a reduced production in cost, creation of jobs? The debates going on around that right now are very interesting.”

Flying drones near airports is of particular interest at the moment. In 2014, there were 38 incidents reported to Transport Canada’s Civil Aviation Daily Occurrence Reporting System (CADORS) database involving drone aircraft, according to Global News. It’s a major spike from the few incidents a year reported between 2002 and 2013.

Recreational users are bound to Canadian Aviation Regulations, which say no one should fly a model aircraft in a way that endangers aviation safety.

Transport Canada has a laundry list of unenforceable guidelines for recreational drone users, including keeping the drone within sight, flying under 90 metres, keeping a 150-metre buffer between the drone and people, buildings and vehicles and flying the drone nine kilometres away from an airport – a near-impossibility in Toronto where several airports are within that limit.

Commercial operators, on the other hand, have much more stringent standards, says Cooper.

“They’ve been in place since 1996 and we’ve had commercial drones for almost a decade in the national airspace with no big disaster yet so they’re probably working okay,” she adds.

But whether you’re a photographer looking to snap stylized photos using a drone at wedding or a farmer hoping to check on the crops, you need a Special Flight Operation Certificate (SSOC) from Transport Canada. It’s an operating certificate that governs the restrictions and permissions.

It identifies elements like which operator is allowed to fly the drone, which type of drone they can operate, the airspace, the altitude, the speed at which you can go, whether you can operate beyond the visual line of sight.

“These are all things that you would describe in your application and then Transport Canada would look at everything you’re asking for,” she says adding that they’d make a yes or no decision based on your ability to mitigate risk to an acceptable level. “Generally first time applicants would receive a fairly narrow SFOC – they would only be able to conduct operations in remote areas.”

But over time they can boost their good standing and access broader certificates, not unlike the flight training process itself.

“A good standing operating certificate would be something along the lines of completing agricultural operations with a specific type of vehicle anywhere in Canada for the period of three years,” says Cooper. “You would have to have a good track record before it gets to the stage where it becomes just an administrative process to re-file every three years.”

In November, Transport Canada amended the rules, offering exemptions from getting SFOCs for drones under two kilograms that meet requirements like having cushy liability insurance and ensuring the drones won’t effect or be effected by radio transmissions. UAVs between 2.1 and 25 kilograms can skip the SFOC if they meet a slightly lengthier list of requirements.

“The new exceptions are pretty stringent and the main goal is to take the super-low risk operations out of the SFOC system,” says Cooper. City-based companies will likely find it difficult meeting all the standards and will need to get the SFOC but agricultural-based operations or use in remote areas will be able to take advantage of the new exemptions.

Freire points out that despite the fears of invasion of privacy are fuelled by the unknown, Canada is actually one of the frontrunners in world in terms of progressive drone regulation. The current regulations are the byproduct of years of trial and error.

“There was a lot of similar concerns from the public when airplanes first started flying, people were worried about reconnaissance and spying,” says Freire. “It just takes awhile for the authorities to first understand what the use cases are, what the central risks are and then be able to find a way to make it safer.”