Transport Committee on April 16th, 2007

[Don Bell, Liberal, North Vancouver, BC]

Do you think if these audits had come out earlier, it would have made a difference, for example, in terms of--and it may be an unfair question, but you can choose to answer it or not--offsetting, maybe, the accident you were involved in?

[Gordon Rhodes]

I don't think the audits should be tied into the company and having them say it's okay to release them or not okay to release them. That's a fault in the Railway Act, and I was surprised when I read it. I understand they're involved, and it's greatly embarrassing to them, but the reality is that public safety should be number one. Since we pay for these audits, we should decide what we do with them, not a company. And yes, it may have prevented some accidents from happening if it had been released earlier.

[Don Bell, Liberal, North Vancouver, BC]

One other thing that I noticed—and we'll have a chance to ask CN about it when they come—comes from your experience. There was the suggestion that there are, to some degree, adequate reporting processes in place for reporting incidents, whether or not they're done on the basis of the U.S. system, which has a lower standard. Nevertheless, there are these incidents reported, and derailments. When these are reported, it seems there is a question of the follow-up in terms of whether it's in the safety management system or in the actual.... There seems to be a disconnect between the adequate reporting system—it's challenged sometimes in this report, but at least it's there—and the follow-up to make sure corrective action is taken.

[Gordon Rhodes]

I find that's true. There doesn't appear to be. If it wasn't true, accidents like the one I was in wouldn't have happened. I still don't understand. Those are questions that need to be asked.

There are three questions to which I personally would like answers, but I've never had an answer. I asked the superintendent who was at my hearing a question, off the record. I said to him, “How is it that those engines were removed from our terminal? What criteria did they use to do that? What criteria did they base things on to bring in the engines that they brought in off the prairies, in order to give them to us?”

Those questions need to be answered. I think you'll find a lot of interesting problems that come out of the replies, because anybody who has any sort of knowledge of mountain railroading knows those weren't the right units for the area. They were prairie units. They were supposed to be on high-speed passenger service.

[Don Bell, Liberal, North Vancouver, BC]

Thank you. I appreciate your testimony very much.

I agree with Mr. Fast about the concern that was related to the culture of fear—if you want call it that—that seemed to be there among some of the employees. In the report, I made reference to the threat that if you reported too many bad orders or defects, you would in fact get penalized by virtue of your bonus or promotion, and to the fact that the risk of dismissal was ultimately there. I think that's something we'll have a chance to question the company on.

Thank you very much again.

[Gordon Rhodes]

There's one other thing I wanted to point out. CN is a big company, and B.C. Rail is a branch line. It's not a main line from their perspective. My experience with branch lines within CN is that they get all the junk.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Watson.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My thanks to the witness for compelling testimony today.

Just for the record, there's a difference between an incident and an accident. You seem to indicate that there's a very fine line between the two sometimes, but you didn't illustrate with anything specific. Could you perhaps illustrate what would still be regarded as an incident, but is so breathtakingly close to an accident?

[Gordon Rhodes]

There's what happened on the mountain just about two months ago. A boulder came down. It smashed the rail. It broke the rail, shattered ties, and moved the track over. The train came down, with no patrols.

Because they don't have patrols on that mountain, the crew was bringing the train down more slowly. They came upon this broken rail. Rather than throwing the train into emergency, which means you put all the brakes on, but which can risk causing the rail to shift and lead you to end up going all over the place and derailing, the engineman handled the train and brought it to a stop with dynamic breaking. Because there were two units on it that had dynamic breaking, he was able to bring the train to a stop, but not until they went over the broken rail by 24 cars.

They had to separate the train and rebuild the track, and then the train moved on. Since then CN has put patrols on that mountain again. That was never reported to Transport Canada, because it was only an incident.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Volpe, final question.

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

Actually, we could probably be here a lot longer.

I'm intrigued by some of the things you've said, Mr. Rhodes. I take you completely at your word. It sounds to me as though you are genuinely distressed that an authority, whether it be the company or Transport Canada, would be aware of what needed to be done, was told what needed to be done, and then would refuse, essentially, to do it.

[Gordon Rhodes]

Well, I can't say that Transport Canada would refuse. They're aware of some things, but it's....

I brought this incident up to Transport Canada, and that's how I found out it wasn't reportable. He says that under the Railway Act, they're not required to report it. That's the underlying issue, I've found, with a lot of different things at Transport Canada.

As for the management, they don't want to hear it.

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

I guess the question I'm leading to--from my perspective, it's a very heavy question and one I'm loath to utter--is that if people don't want to hear about it, or they are unable to do anything about it even when they are told what must be done, then we're no longer talking about accountability, we're talking about liability. We're talking about negligence.

[Gordon Rhodes]

I would hate to say that, but it certainly could be looked into.

In Lillooet right now there's a serious problem going on with this shuttle that we have. They got rid of our passenger service. We used to have what we called the “baby buggy”, a unit and one coach. I used to run it out to a place called D'Arcy, along a lake. The lake is extremely treacherous, at rock-wall, always with stuff coming down. Basically we were a school bus. We'd go out there, pick up all the kids at these different little stops, and bring them into town every day.

The Government of British Columbia decided they didn't want that. They got rid of it. They replaced it with.... I don't even know what you'd call it. I don't even know how it got certified to be out there. It's a homemade--I'm serious, homemade--shuttle. They have two of these shuttles out there shunting people from one point to another along one of the most treacherous pieces of rail you could possibly go on. And they're using section people, maintenance-of-way people, to run it.

As I said to the MLA at the time, they should be using the most qualified people. Wouldn't you want the most qualified people operating something that's handling people?

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

Children in particular.

[Gordon Rhodes]

You now have maintenance of way people running it, which is problematic in a lot of ways. First of all, their standard of training isn't there. They're not anywhere near as qualified as I am. Second of all, when it comes to the culture of railroading, they're the least trained people, so the most vulnerable. If they lost their job, they would have a hard time finding another one, right? As the most vulnerable, they're the least likely to stand up and say anything. They'll just do as they're told.

And they're running these things. One time, backing up across a bridge, they knocked a woman into the river. She's never been seen since.

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

You're not going to be able to answer this question, but you can see what I was leading to. If there's a deliberate effort to keep going in an environment where the kindest thing one can say is that somebody is negligent, I think the line of questioning this committee probably will pursue--and if it won't, I will--is whether the word “criminal” should come in front of the word “negligence”.

[Gordon Rhodes]

That's for you guys to decide. You need to ask some tough questions with the superintendent of Prince George.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you, Mr. Rhodes.

I suggested to the committee that I would ask if we could defer the two motions before us to the next meeting's agenda.

I want to thank you for your frank and open debate. The discussion has been very valuable. It's been wonderful. I again apologize for the confusion.

[Gordon Rhodes]

I appreciate that you people did this, because for me to come back out here would be very challenging. It's going to be challenging for me to go home. I can't even begin to explain to you how it feels. I hope that no one here ever has to go through what I go through. I have faith that you are going to do a good job, because.... I just believe that you will.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

That's very much appreciated. Thank you.

Monsieur Laframboise.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Given that the testimony we were supposed to hear on Monday will be postponed until Wednesday, are we going to get in touch with the people who were supposed to have appeared on Wednesday? We have to let them know. I know that some of them were coming from Quebec. We have to make sure that that is done.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

We're going to notify the people who were unable to be here today because of my decision. We also have the mayor, and a couple of other people have been added who we're going to try to contact. We'll have a full squad on Wednesday.

The meeting is adjourned.