Evidence of meeting #7 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was track.
A recording is available from Parliament.
10 a.m.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
If 90% of all derailments are as a result of track condition, then we know where we're going to have to focus our efforts.
10 a.m.
Director General, Rail Safety, Department of Transport
Historically, the number one cause of train derailment has usually been the human factor, followed by track and equipment.
December 11th, 2007 / 10 a.m.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
I think we need to know that.
I would like to follow up on what Monsieur Laframboise and Mr. Carrier raised, which is the whole issue of safety management systems. I, too, am disappointed by the lack of rigour with which safety management systems have been implemented within the railway system.
We've had a lot of evidence on, I believe, Bill C-6, when it dealt with aviation safety. I think there was a general consensus, in fact an overwhelming consensus, that safety management systems, first of all, were good, that they were very helpful in improving safety within aviation, and secondly, they were actually working; they were achieving the results they were intended to achieve.
For example, the evidence before this committee was that the number of reported incidents went up by 400% to 500%. That's good news; it's not bad news, because we have more front-line workers reporting problems right where they're starting, rather than waiting until we have a huge incident like a derailment.
I didn't hear that from the testimony we heard on rail safety. I want to know why that is. I'm a little concerned about the fact that the only whistle-blower protection right now is under the auspices of the TSB. With the aviation safety management system, it was very clear there was immunity for the front-line workers when they reported matters that could lead to safety issues. I'm not hearing that in this review.
Perhaps you could respond.
10:05 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security, Department of Transport
First of all, this kind of protection is not in the present Aeronautics Act but rather in the amendment to the Aeronautics Act. Hopefully, if this act is promulgated, we will have this protection in aeronautics.
But it's fundamental to the philosophy of safety management systems. As you said, we want to see a significant increase in the number of problems reported by employees. Generally speaking, where this has been implemented successfully it has resulted in better morale within the employee workforce. It has also resulted in monetary savings at the end of the line. If problems are reported before incidents or accidents occur, then there can be significant savings. Many airlines have demonstrated that.
There is no whistle-blower protection in the Aeronautics Act as proposed. There is protection, but it's not what we call whistle-blower protection per se.
Why don't we see that in rail? We don't have the same legislative framework. Definitely this is what we would like to see. When and if the legislation is open for debate, this is certainly something we will look into, but it's not there now.
You mentioned you were disappointed that some employees have told you they don't feel protected. That's true. In the first intervention with Mr. Zed we talked about accountable executives in the aeronautics environment. What we have put forth is the commitment and the accountability of what we call the accountable executive.
We don't have that in rail right now. But when you talk about safety management systems, you're talking about a massive culture change in an organization that can take many years. We can see that now. In rail we started to implement SMS in October 2001, if I remember correctly. It has been six years and it is still not implemented as we would like to see.
10:05 a.m.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
I think you're saying you need the legislative structure to make SMS work. Is that correct?
10:05 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security, Department of Transport
We need it to make it stronger and give it more teeth. We've already talked about some of the things that would be useful.
10:05 a.m.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
I've spoken to CN workers in my community, and they speak of very poor morale within the culture of CN. You're probably correct in saying that a big part of the problem here is that within certain of our railways we don't have the culture that enables SMS to work properly.
The evidence from our aviation safety review was very clear. The main airlines in Canada started implementing safety management systems well ahead of time, before the legislative structure was even in place, and it was actually working. But that's not the case with rail. I think that's going to be part of the final report we have coming out of this review. Some legislative changes will probably be needed to make sure that SMS actually does the job for which it was intended.
10:10 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security, Department of Transport
In the meantime, we are doing audits on SMS in the rail environment. We did a detailed audit of SMS in CN. We interviewed hundreds of workers and found deficiencies that we required CN to address. It ended up with the minister ordering CN to give us an action plan, which they did. Now we're following up on the implementation of that action plan.
To tell you today it is fixed and perfect--I don't think so. But we've seen improvements from the company, and hopefully they will continue over the coming years.
10:10 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Merv Tweed
Thank you, Mr. Fast.
Mr. Zed has agreed to share his time with Mr. Bell.
10:10 a.m.
Liberal
Don Bell Liberal North Vancouver, BC
To follow up on that question, when we got that audit report my recollection was--and you might correct the figures for me--that something like 50% of the locomotives and 30% of the rolling stock had some kind of fault.
10:10 a.m.
Director General, Rail Safety, Department of Transport
If I remember correctly, it was about 27% of the cars and 56% of the locomotives, something like that.
10:10 a.m.
Liberal
Don Bell Liberal North Vancouver, BC
And about 14% of the consists were either in error or missing.
What have you done to address that? That's a pretty alarming figure, and I recognize that the range varied.
10:10 a.m.
Director General, Rail Safety, Department of Transport
For the consists, CN was prosecuted and pleaded guilty yesterday. They were prosecuted for inaccurate consists, so that's what we've done with this.
A lot of the defects on the locomotive were pretty minor, though, and they were considered safety defects that could not lead to derailments, such as a first aid kit that was missing a seal or an extinguisher that may have been used and was not recharged or something like that. We followed up after the audit with a section 32, and now we're following that section 32 to make sure that every area has been addressed by CN. What we're doing basically is focused audits, going back in those areas, doing more inspections, and seeing how it applies.
10:10 a.m.
Liberal
Don Bell Liberal North Vancouver, BC
Will you be able to report back to us with an interim report, a follow-up to that audit we have?
10:10 a.m.
Liberal
Don Bell Liberal North Vancouver, BC
With regard to my next question, Mr. Jean made reference to the problems of crossings, track, and suicides, and he dwelt on the issue of track. My understanding is that there were different standards, that the act itself—and I don't know what section, but it's section 10, 11, or somewhere in there—makes reference to engineering standards.
10:10 a.m.
Liberal
Don Bell Liberal North Vancouver, BC
But they seem to be pretty vague. What can we do to help define what is the standard? Are there international standards, engineering standards, that we are not applying?
10:10 a.m.
Director General, Rail Safety, Department of Transport
There are, and we're using them--ARIMA.
10:10 a.m.
Director General, Rail Safety, Department of Transport
This is one of the things, which is part of our submission, that we're hoping will be addressed. We need to flesh that out. It has to be more specific. As far as we're concerned, section 11 is a shortfall in the act right now. It's not specific enough.
10:10 a.m.
Liberal
Don Bell Liberal North Vancouver, BC
Earlier you had commented on the status of the panel report. You made recommendations or suggestions to them. What is your understanding of the process of where that's going to go next, relative to our work?
10:10 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security, Department of Transport
The minister will receive the report, will make it public, and then we will meet with the minister. You will look at the report, obviously. You may want to make your own recommendations. For each and every recommendation, the department itself will look at those recommendations and provide our own advice to the minister as to whether or not we should implement the recommendation. Is it going to require a legislative change? Is it going to require investment and money? Is it going to require changes in procedure, processes, organization, or whatever? We'll look at those one by one when we have the report, and then presumably the minister will make announcements on his decision as to where he wants to go. This is what happened with the previous act review.
10:10 a.m.
Liberal
Don Bell Liberal North Vancouver, BC
I'd like to go back to the issue of inspectors, and I'm thinking of the CN audit in particular, but it would apply to others. On the number of inspectors, I think you say we have 86 inspectors, which is a number that doesn't seem to vary, and we seem to have about 20 or 25 office people to support those 86, as I gather. If with a consistent number of inspectors, if with that number of people, these kinds of problems still resulted, do we have an adequate number of inspectors on the ground and out in the regions?
10:15 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security, Department of Transport
The reason we're embarking on the safety management system—it goes back about 10 years now, a little more than 10 years—is we did a lot of analysis in Transport Canada. We compared the safety records in all the modes of transportation. We looked at the accident ratio in aviation, marine, and rail, for instance, and these ratios were very low compared to what we found around the world.
We have asked some very renowned safety experts around the world what we should do, and I remember one who was very interesting, Dr. James Reason, a safety management risk expert who came to us. We had a conference with him and asked him if it would be safer in Canada if we put one inspector on board every plane, ship, and train. His answer was no, absolutely not, it wouldn't be. The only way to make it safer is to get in the heads of the CEOs and the operators. You have to make safety part of the thinking of the decision-makers in the industry, and if you're not there, you could be on board and you could have five times or ten times more inspectors and it wouldn't be safer. That's how we decided to embark on the safety management journey, because it's a cultural change, and we need the CEOs of this world, in all modes, to commit to safety and to make safety an integral part of all of their operations.