Transport Committee on April 16th, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

I am going to give Mr. Bell the last word.

[Don Bell, Liberal, North Vancouver, BC]

Thank you.

Just as a comment to Mr. Jean's comment, I hope we don't get into partisanship on this. We're dealing with safety. We should deal with this as a committee.

I have to respond softly to the extent of saying that the reason, I believe, that the number of derailments is down is that the action initiated by the minister under the Liberal government caused these two reports to be done, and I can see the actions taken since then by the current minister to bring pressure on the railways and to give focus.

This is not just the actions of the current minister; this was a process that was started—and was supposed to be made public, and that was part of the concern we had.

What I would like to say is, I have no problem recognizing that we do not want to interfere in a labour relations process or labour negotiations, a strike or lock-out situation. In fairness, to be able to address some of the issues that are here—and they're not, as I understand it, on the basis of the current dispute.... There are areas here where reports or recommendation.... Report G, for example, in the audit says that safety culture improvements initiatives included in the safety management submission of Transport Canada have not been effectively implemented in the mechanical services department, where many employees stated that at three of six locations, a high percentage of mechanical employees stated they were reluctant to report minor injuries because it had resulted in discipline.

Those are the kinds of things. Fifty-three percent of the locomotives have faults, including brake faults. That's a question of maintenance, and maintenance may be related—in fact, obviously is—to issues of having enough staff to do the job.

I'm asking whether you want a motion that we hear the witness now. I'm happy, whether we just have the understanding that you will use your discretion as chair or whether you want to have it formally added to by Mr. Jean's suggestion, on the understanding that we will not in any way attempt to intervene in the current strike and lock-out situation at CN. Some of these issues are inescapably related to decisions made by CN as to staffing levels, inspection levels. That is not what I see as the heart of the current labour dispute, but they are issues that have been addressed here and they are at the basis of the concerns.

When over half the locomotives have minor or major problems, and a more significant number of the rolling stock, and with such things as not having lists—they call them “consists”—of what's in the train, and where in the train it's located.... Mr. Fast has talked about the impact on his community in North Vancouver. I have chlorine tanks running out of my community daily. Speaking as a former municipal politician, they would understand it's important for your hazardous team—your hazardous materials team, your fire department, whoever it is who responds—to know what's in that train and where it is, if there's a derailment or an accident takes place.

Those are the kinds of things I'm concerned about. I would like to have the opportunity to question the witnesses, I would like to question CN, and I'd like to question Transport Canada, all in due order.

I'm prepared to rely on your judgment. I would like to say, as in my comments earlier and as other members of this committee have said, that I have complete confidence in the way you chair the committee. I think the decision you made was not the one I would have liked to see made, and I appreciate your explanation, but I think we need to move forward.

I will make a motion, if you would like, Mr. Chair, that we hear Mr. Rhodes now and that we invite the other witnesses to come back for Wednesday if they are available.

I'll leave it to your discretion on the labour issue. Certainly I think it's the intention of all members on this side that we not interfere in the current labour dispute and ask questions that would do that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Jean.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

He's mentioned that he's not going to accept the friendly amendment, so I would like to move an amendment, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Okay. Basically, then, what I have from Mr. Bell is that the witnesses originally scheduled to appear—we wrote this from your first comments—be invited to appear Wednesday, or if they are in the room, immediately.

[Don Bell, Liberal, North Vancouver, BC]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

That is the motion put forward by Mr. Bell. Is everybody comfortable with it?

Mr. Jean.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

I have listened to Monsieur Bélanger's and Mr. Bell's viewpoints and I have made some amendments to it in that regard. The amendment I would propose is that any question or answer that refers to the ongoing labour dispute issue be ruled out of order unless the chair considers it appropriate.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

I'll just ask whether everybody heard that. If they agree to it, we'll get it written and translated.

Monsieur Bélanger.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

I have a question, Mr. Chairman, if I may. They identify that there are only four Conservatives here. Have they renounced your membership?

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

You're out all by yourself.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

They really appreciate that impartiality.

[Don Bell, Liberal, North Vancouver, BC]

Mr. Chair, I would accept that as a friendly amendment, on the understanding it's about the current labour dispute. If there are labour-related issues, to the locomotives or something, we can talk about that, and if it starts to get into the contract, then we'll walk away from it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

I think everybody understands what has been suggested. If there's agreement, then I think we can move forward.

Is everybody in favour of that motion and amendment?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

(Motion agreed to) [See Minutes of Proceedings]

If there are guests in the room who were invited to attend and were shorted by my cancellation of the meeting, I apologize for the inconvenience.

If you would like to join us, you're more than welcome to. Maybe you don't want to after hearing all this.

Mr. Rhodes, I appreciate you being here. Normally we have a seven- or eight-minute presentation and then we do a round of questioning.

I will give the committee a heads-up. We do have two motions. I'm going to allocate 10 or 15 minutes at the end of this meeting. Is that sufficient?

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Could you delay them until Wednesday?

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Probably. With your permission, we could delay them until Wednesday. As we get closer to that time, I'll ask for that. I'm certainly not going to cut him short.

Mr. Rhodes, again, thank you, and I apologize for the inconvenience.

[Gordon Rhodes, Locomotive Engineer, Lillooet Terminal, Canadian National Railway Company]

We have rectified it.

I'm Gordon Rhodes. I'll give you a brief history of my knowledge on railroading. I started out in 1977 as a steel gang labourer back in British Columbia, from Jasper to Kamloops. Then I quit, and I started again in 1984 in section, and I worked section for a couple of years. Then I worked on maintenance as a track welder and production welder, and that I did from Jasper to Vancouver, and then from northern and southern Ontario.

After that, in 1988 I started in as a trainman, a yardman, in Toronto. I did that for two years in Toronto, and then I worked in northern Ontario in about nine different terminals from Toronto to Vancouver for CN, on the main line and off the main line. In 1992 I quit CN, and for some reason I decided to go back to railroading in 1993, and went to the wonderful little railroad of British Columbia, B.C. Rail, and it was like stepping back in time. I've worked there for the last 14 years, since 1993, and I started driving trains in 1994.

Based on my experience, when I say this, I have a fairly good idea. I know it. As far as the track in British Columbia from Vancouver to Clinton goes--and there are other areas up in the north--there is nothing like it anywhere in British Columbia, anywhere in Canada, that is as treacherous as it is and as challenging as it is to run a train through. I have great difficulty now that I have survived this accident even trying to even get back on a train. Right now it's a big challenge. I don't trust the equipment. I don't trust the management. I don't trust them.

I don't want to get this confused with union stuff, because--forget it--this has got nothing to do with unions. I just don't trust them, and there are reasons. Governments don't want to put more people out there to do more enforcement. They don't want to be the police for railways or for businesses. They want the businesses to do their job, right? Because they know what they're supposed to be doing, right?

Well, there's a problem here. The problem is that the Railway Act isn't making these people--and when I say “these people”, I mean CN and CP Railways--accountable for when they do not do things properly. Derailments don't just happen. There are reasons behind those derailments, and I've been in lots of them. I've been in some where I've been riding the car, and the car has jumped the track. I've been in ones where we've hit the side of another train. I've been in ones where switches broke, and we went everywhere. And then I was on the last one, which will probably be my last one. I don't know how I survived that one.

The point I'm trying to make is that there are a lot of questions that need to be asked to Transport Canada, and there are a lot of questions that need to be asked to the railways. The first question is where the regulations are. Where are the rules to make these people accountable?

I'm accountable. A doctor is accountable. A lawyer is accountable. They all have certifications and tickets. I have a ticket. My conductor has a ticket. If we are found to be incompetent in any way, shape, or form, that ticket is taken away from us. We cannot do our job. Why does an online supervisor who makes safety-critical decisions at two o'clock in the morning or at one in the afternoon.... What kinds of qualifications does he have? What kind of accountability does he have to Transport Canada and to the people of this country?

What about the next person up the line, to the superintendent of a terminal who makes many decisions on safety-critical things, everything from the handling of chlorine to the handling of containers, going through people's backyards? And they go through a lot of people's backyards.

How can these people be made accountable? Because I don't see anybody being made accountable. And I don't mean to sound vindictive or angry or anything like that. I know I'm coming across that way, but that's not how I'm feeling. I'm feeling frustrated, because this isn't the first accident and it's not going to be the last one. There are going to be more. And people need to be made accountable for these things.

When you start cutting your bottom line, you start cutting your maintenance, you start cutting back on the number of people you have out there doing the jobs to the point that they are right now, you are in a dangerous situation. And that's what we've reached here. We've reached a threshold.

And the threshold is obviously in British Columbia. The reason you're having so many accidents in British Columbia is because the thresholds in British Columbia for railway standards.... Before it was taken over by the federal government and as far as standards go, they were higher. They were higher standards. We are now working at lower standards than we had originally. Those higher standards are what we need in the mountains, for what we run through. We run through 12-degree, 13-degree curves. We're on 2.2% grades. They don't have that anywhere else. So these standards are therefore a reason, and they need to be maintained.

I have suggestions for questions. Those are a few of them. Here are some other ones. How is it that we have a situation of a labour dispute that nobody wants to talk about? I understand that, okay. I am not concerned about who is right and who is wrong in a labour dispute. I am concerned about safety. There is a safety issue that's looming right now, and everybody around doesn't seem to be aware of it.

There are conductors who are not working. Am I correct that they are all out now? I haven't been watching the news.

The last time they were out.... I can give you this, knowing this, and I'm saying this is true. There were supervisors who have an A-card qualification, which is what a conductor is required to have. My experience with CN this time around is that getting that A card is an open-book exam. To me, that is unacceptable, but that's the way they do it. So we have supervisors out there, running trains, working safety-critical positions, with zero to five days' experience. Some of these people have zero. Now, how can they be in a safety-critical position, operating or taking the responsibility of moving thousands of tonnes of equipment around, and not have any experience at all? How can that be considered safe? It's not, in my book.

There's a time when you have to go for experience. Everybody has to get out there. When I was in Toronto as a trainman, starting off, three weeks in a rules class--three weeks, intensive. When I did my signals, you had to write it out, word-for-word, 100%. You had to know the signals. Three people didn't make it just because of that. You had to have 90% on your exams to get your rules. And that's just the first step.

And then the next step was 65 tours of duty, we call them, when you go out and you work. Sixty-five tours of duty on different jobs, in different types of environments, before you were allowed to “cut loose”, which is what we call it in our trade, to go and do the job yourself.

And here we have people going out there, right now, today, with zero to five days' training. How is that safe?

I know that's not everywhere and that's not all the jobs, but they do do it. They have it. And those people are terrified. I know some of them, and they're terrified to speak out because they will lose their jobs if they do.

There's something wrong with this Transportation Act if that can happen. There need to be standards set so that when the railways have these kinds of problems, they ensure that the people they're putting on these trains are capable of doing the job.

Another issue is derailments. We're not hearing the whole story on derailments. They're only reporting derailments. Then there are the ones called incidents. An incident is a close call. They're not being reported, and if they are being reported, they certainly aren't taking them and learning anything from them. That's in phase two of that report. Everything that the person who wrote the assessment said, in the first two pages of the phase two report on the management end of it, in my opinion, is pretty bang on. The stuff in the phase one--I could only get through the first five pages, and I couldn't read it. It made me sick. I felt sick, because I felt like I was so set up. I work in that area that had the worst ratio of equipment. It just sickened me. We all knew something was wrong. We all knew that things weren't right. Nobody was listening.

I've got more to say, but I think maybe it's more constructive if I let you ask me any questions you want. I'm more than willing to say something.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you, Mr. Rhodes.

Mr. Bell.

[Don Bell, Liberal, North Vancouver, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Rhodes for coming, and thank you for being here and having this opportunity.

I understand in what you've said there are two things. First of all, we're talking about increased derailments--2005 being a spike year, in which there was a particularly high number, in two areas that we've seen. One is generally across Canada, for a variety of reasons, perhaps indicating that there isn't adequate attention to rail track maintenance and equipment maintenance across Canada. The second area is British Columbia, in particular, following the CN takeover of B.C. Rail.

As I understand it, the term that's used is GOI--general operating instructions--which is sort of the manual, the way they operate the railway system. The term that's used for most of Canada, with relatively flat land, is either “flatland” or “water grade”, I think.

[Gordon Rhodes]

It's water grade railways.

[Don Bell, Liberal, North Vancouver, BC]

Water grade railways are more or less flatland operations. Anybody who's tried to set up a model railroad for their kids would know the difference. If you try to suddenly ramp the track up too high, what happens?

I guess the difference was that in British Columbia, B.C. Rail had a lot of experience dealing with the unusual terrain, with the steep grades--the one from Clinton coming west is 13 kilometres, I think--

[Gordon Rhodes]

No, it's 32 miles.

[Don Bell, Liberal, North Vancouver, BC]

It's 32 miles in excess of 2.5 degree grade, and all B.C. Rail engines that operated in those areas had dynamic braking, which is--