Thank you very much for the question.
The Transportation Safety Board in June of last year issued their report on the investigation into the Burlington VIA crash and had three recommendations for Transport Canada: one was to implement physical fail-safe train controls; the second was to require that mainline operations be equipped with the in-cab video cameras; the third one was to require that “crashworthiness standards” for new locomotives apply to rebuilt passenger and freight locomotives. I tell you these things in detail because we are working on all three of these things.
I wrote back to the Transportation Safety Board in my capacity as minister on September 3, and I gave our response to them. We accepted all of these recommendations. I guess what the Transportation Safety Board reported in November was that they're acknowledging our progress on these three items. With respect to crashworthiness, they're optimistic. With respect to the in-cab video cameras, they acknowledge the fact that VIA Rail is putting these in place voluntarily, but they would prefer to have it as a regulatory measure.
I can tell you that I have spoken with CN and CP and with the Teamsters—all—on the matter of in-cab video cameras. I wish it were as simple as it's stated there in the recommendation. It is not an easy situation. I encourage you to talk to your colleagues involved with the Teamsters on the issue of putting cameras into cabs, because it is a specific issue and we're trying to work through the nature of it in order to satisfy the concern of the Transportation Safety Board.
On the third one with respect to physical fail-safe train controls, I think it's important to note as well that in their report in June the Transportation Safety Board actually referred to this as a “fundamental” change. Fundamental changes are difficult to make at any given time, let alone in the wake of an accident such as the accident in Lac-Mégantic, but what we said was that we would put together a serious working group, including the union, the rail industry, and officials from Transport Canada, to take a look and report and make recommendations with respect to this matter. A hard deadline of April 30, 2014, was applied.
Fundamental changes need to have time to be discussed at all levels, and that's exactly what's happening. If they don't report back by April 30, 2014, they'll hear from me, because we take the matter of serious deadlines very seriously. We expect and anticipate that the people involved will come to us and will tell us the right path forward.