Transport Committee on April 25th, 2007

[Peter Marshall]

Again, others can speak.

I'm sorry, Mr. Jean, you didn't refer to me, but I'll speak.

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

It just shows bad faith, and you can hear it around the table, and I think you can feel it and sense it. Indeed, you waited until the very last day that you were supposed to submit a detailed action plan and then you appealed that order. It seems bad faith all the way around.

[Peter Marshall]

I think we followed the process. Unfortunately, there were some great exceptions on our part to how the report was being, first of all, put together, relative to some of these aspects. We were in contact all the time. There were deadlines, yes, but we felt strongly that it was important for our view and our facts to be brought forward. It came to the deadline and they weren't incorporated to our satisfaction, so the process was invoked. I don't think I would view it as bad faith; I think the process was allowed to unfold.

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

With all due respect, my understanding is that you weren't in contact with the department about that order until after the August 14 deadline.

Nevertheless, do you have an emergency response team for CN?

[Peter Marshall]

We have an emergency preparedness and response plan.

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

So you don't have a team that will go to a site and remediate the site or deal with an emergency situation.

[Peter Marshall]

Across the network we have people who are trained. We do not have a central team specifically assigned to go to any location. We have people across the country who are skilled in this. We also have resources available to us in head office in Montreal, depending on the severity, that will come out and help.

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

Could you provide to the committee a list of those people and their qualifications for responding to an emergency situation?

[Peter Marshall]

Sure.

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

So you don't have some sort of team to deal with environmental hazards, cleanups, and things like that.

[Peter Marshall]

We have a director of dangerous goods--which Mr. Creel referred to in his opening remarks--who is specifically assigned to dangerous commodities. There are dangerous commodity officers throughout the network who are highly skilled and trained in dangerous commodities specifically.

In essence, a team could be pulled together, but most of our employees at the field level have different levels of qualifications. We also use outside experts, because often two heads are better than one.

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

Could you also provide a list of the experts you've utilized in the past?

[Peter Marshall]

I think we could certainly provide that.

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

I think it's important.

I come from a culture in northern Alberta where zero incidents is the key.

Mr. Marshall, you were with Imperial Oil for a while, which is now operating on one of the plant sites in that area, and there is a culture of safety. Quite frankly, I don't think any of us see that culture within CN. If it is there, it's certainly below the surface.

My next question deals with the definition. I looked at the million train mile accidents, and I was curious why there were three times as many accidents in the United States per million train miles. I saw that in Canada you have to report serious injuries, but in the United States they have to report any injury. Isn't that correct?

[Peter Marshall]

Keith has more experience in that than I do.

[Keith E. Creel]

Are you speaking about injuries and not derailments?

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

I'm talking about the FRA and how any incident, including death, injury, or occupational illness, is required to be reported.

[Keith E. Creel]

The key difference in reportability between FRA regulations and Canadian regulations is that when it comes to injuries, the FRA is much more stringent to a point.

In the FRA, for instance, if an employee chips a tooth at work, because it's technically a broken bone it is a reportable injury. That person can chip their tooth and continue working, but there is a responsibility and an obligation to report that to the FRA. Issues like that are included in the numbers. If they had a bee sting, went to a medical facility for a shot to counteract it, and got any type of prescription for an injury, they could go back to work but it would still be reportable because there was a prescription.

So the FRA standards on reportability are much more stringent than the Canadian standards.

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

The conclusion seems to be that Canada is safer than the United States, but the truth is that the definition of safety and the definition of incident are much different between the two countries.

[Keith E. Creel]

There is a huge difference. Let me go back quickly, while we have time, to address the issue of the ministerial order that we appealed.

As I understand it, the reason we appealed that order was more for CN to be able to contact the appropriate agencies in Transport Canada to get clarification and express our viewpoints. At the time the submission was required, those individuals were on vacation and on holiday, so it was absolutely mandatory for us to be able to request additional time so we could make those contacts.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Cullen has generously given his time to Mr. Volpe and Mr. Bell. You have five minutes.

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

I'm only going to take a moment.

Mr. Marshall and Mr. Creel, I have just an observation, and then you can comment.

I'm always impressed with locomotives, with trains, and with the technology of today. So I was really surprised that the weather would play such a role in the accident and incident rates that you referred to. It would have been my understanding that you would have already factored in the weather when considering, technically, how to address that variable. You'll forgive me if I come away with a sense that perhaps you hadn't taken those measures.

Secondly, Mr. Creel, you gave me a detailed response on the non-compliance of employees. I think initially all three of you agreed that if there's a safety management system in place, one that you helped to put in place, you'd buy into it, and then everybody would buy into it. So if someone deliberately does not comply with an order, a regulation, or an indication that's geared to safety, that person is negligent, at the very least.

Are you suggesting to me, Mr. Creel, that your employees were negligent before, or were not negligent until you made them aware that they were being negligent, and that there is no consequence to negligence and that's why we have this continued high rate of accident? And does that negligence go all the way up the line to you and to, I dare say, Transport Canada through the minister?

We all know what was going on. The audit tells us. You knew. The minister knew. Your employees knew. What's missing?

[Keith E. Creel]

Let me elaborate a bit.

First and foremost, let's go back to the question, do we consider and take into account severe winter weather? We have processes in place that effectively do that.

When we have extreme winter weather, when we drop below certain temperatures, especially in the areas where we operate north of the lakes, in very extreme cold climates, we reduce our train speed. We have much more restrictive policies for these detectors that we talk about, these impact detectors.

When steel hits steel and you have cold as a multiplier, the likelihood that you're going to have a break in the rail increases—in cold weather. Effectively, for these machines, the tolerances, which they measure in kips, the measure of the steel hitting the steel, those systems are turned to a point that the standard in the wintertime is much more stringent than the standard in normal operating temperatures. So, effectively, we have more bad orders during extreme winter weather in an attempt for us, proactively, to take these cars out of trains that could potentially break a rail, which would ultimately end in a track-related derailment. So yes, we do take that into account, but still, the best system cannot predict each and every one of them.

On the other issue, about accountability and about efficiency testing, we have human beings who are required to comply with the rules. Unfortunately, human beings at times rationalize. Some employees, through experience, may have taken a shortcut, or they may have not gotten off a piece of equipment. We may have employees who are out there who get off equipment at six miles an hour, and in their mind they're convinced they can safely do that, but the reality is that the rules say you can't detrain at any speed greater than four miles an hour.

Through these tests, we go out in the field and validate that what they're doing versus what they should be doing is the same. And yes, that's what causes a lot of the frustration with the employees. When we find a difference, we do hold employees accountable. We do have statements. Unfortunately, we do have to implement corrective measures through discipline.

If you stepped back into this company 10 years ago, the occurrence or the chance that an employee would have been disciplined for violating an operating rule was not there, certainly not to the level that it is today.

So I participate in these efficiency tests—and Mr. Vena, Mr. Marshall, and our general managers. We're at a very senior level in this company. We go out and we ride trains. We go out and we efficiency test with our operating officers. We go out and we interact with the running trades employees who are required to comply with these rules. So absolutely there are checks and balances, and absolutely there's a consequence, but as much as we implement those consequences, I can't guarantee that I'm always going to have 100% rules compliance. That's my standard and that's what I'm striving for, but the reality is that as long as I'm depending on a human being to comply with a rule, there are going to be times when they make a mental error, either consciously or unconsciously. They're not going to comply with the rule and we're going to have a derailment, we're going to have an injury, or we're going to have a death.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Watson.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses here. I'm sizing up the full scope of your testimony. I'm glad these hearings are a couple of hours long, because what I seem to hear more than anything else in your testimony is that, well, it's somebody else's fault here. You've essentially slammed BC Rail. You've discredited an employee of yours, Mr. Rhodes. You've blamed the weather. You've blamed your predecessors. You've blamed workers. You've explained away train speed in an accident in Montmagny. You've said that Transport Canada inspectors are wrong.

The net effect of all of that is that your early sincerity in your opening comments and in the initial part of your testimony has disappeared into a bunch of excuses.

Now, we've sort of danced around the issue of trust a little bit here. I'm going to ask a very direct question and I'd like a yes or no answer, if I could get one. Do you acknowledge that CN has broken trust with Canadians?