The company employs approximately 1,900 air traffic controllers (ATCs), 650[3] flight service specialists (FSSs) and 700 technologists.

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.

[12] The company began operations on November 1, 1996 when the government sold the country's air navigation services from Transport Canada to the new not-for-profit private entity for CAD$1.5 billion.

It also has some smaller sources of income, such as conducting maintenance work for other ANS providers and rentals from the Nav Centre in Cornwall, Ontario.

[13] To address the old infrastructure it purchased from the Canadian government the company has carried out projects such as implementing a wide area multilateration (WAM) system, replacing 95 Instrument Landing System (ILS) installations with new equipment, new control towers in Toronto, Edmonton and Calgary, modernizing the Vancouver Area Control Centre and building a new logistics centre[13] Nav Canada felt the impact of the late-2000s recession in two ways: losses in its investments in third party sponsored asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP) and falling revenues due to reduced air traffic levels.

[14][15][16][17] 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 November 30, 2013) will be recovered by the time the notes mature in fiscal year 2017.

[9][22][23] 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 1,980,000 km2 (760,000 sq mi).

[24] The joint venture, called Aireon LLC, 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.

This will allow more aircraft to fly at optimum altitudes and to benefit from the prevailing winds such as the jet stream, further saving fuel and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Aireon CEO Don Thoma estimated that this would result in an average fuel savings of $400 per flight for the three-and-a-half-hour trip across the North Atlantic.