Transport Committee on April 8th, 2014

[Denis Pinsonneault]

Our position on the use of inward-facing cameras and voice recordings in the industry so far has been that they should be used within the SMS, not only for investigations conducted by TSB. We believe it's a useful tool to better understand what's going on, on a day-to-day basis. We certainly understand the concerns raised by our unions. They have shared their concerns with us, and we're confident we'll be able to find a way to use voice recordings in such a way that it will improve safety and at the same time address the unions' concerns, which are mainly on privacy.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much. I think it was important to hear that.

Mr. Braid, you have seven minutes.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to our panel of witnesses for being here today.

Mr. Del Bosco, I wanted to start with you if I could with a couple of questions for VIA Rail. You mentioned in your opening remarks that one of the things that VIA Rail does to improve safety, to increase the level of safety, is that you engage in a public education program. Could you just elaborate on what's involved with that program?

[Steve Del Bosco]

Yes I'll ask my colleague, Jean, to elaborate. She's very much involved.

[Jean Tierney]

With pleasure, thank you.

The main avenue that we use to educate the municipalities is through the Operation Lifesaver organization, where we do outreach in various community events and through schools. We work actually closely with our American partners as well to see what are the new avenues, what are new ways to get volunteers to go out and raise rail safety awareness. We participate on the board of directors and the steering committee, the program review committees. We're continuously out.

One of the things that we did when we were able to close all those crossings is that we went and knocked on doors of people who live along the tracks just to raise awareness and to let them know about the Transport Canada program. If you're prepared to close this, it will be safer and you'll get a little bit of money.

We do everything we can. We're a small group of resources but we're out there.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

This important public education, this outreach component, does it receive dedicated resources as part of VIA Rail's budget?

[Jean Tierney]

Yes, it happens through the corporate safety and security team. As well though, we have locomotive engineers who volunteer their time, who go out and meet the people in their communities and let them know they drive the trains along those tracks and to be aware and to heed all of the automatic warning devices.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Okay, thank you.

I also wanted to ask about the work that you've done with respect to improving crossing upgrades or improving rail crossings. You mentioned that you've made a very conscious effort in this regard. You've closed 70 to improve safety. Could you elaborate specifically on what you've done in this area and have you taken advantage of the government's great crossing improvement program in this regard?

[Denis Pinsonneault]

As I mentioned earlier, we've invested in the last couple of years more than $80 million to improve safety on our own infrastructure. Thanks to the economic action plan, a portion of that money has been invested in making sure that all our public crossings on our own infrastructure are equipped with the most modern technology available. So they're fully protected with gates and lights.

We're also investing in what we call CTC, that's centralized traffic control, so there's no dark territory on our own infrastructure. So all the infrastructure is signalled. We've done also a lot of bridge repair, etc., but the work that we've done on our infrastructure to make sure that all our crossings, the public crossings, are fully protected, I think is the main answer.

I'd like to add to what Jean has mentioned on working with the community. For our locomotive engineers, who circulate on the network across the country every day, we have a responsibility. We initiated a program with them that I think is very unique where they identify every day if they see a fence that is broken, if they see a situation around the road that could cause a risk for trespassers who are crossing, and they report that situation to their manager, to the local committee.

Every month Steve and I attend a call and the managers have to report on situations that have been brought to the attention of the locomotive engineers. We take that and we go back to the community, the police, the school, etc., and we inform them about the situation that's been brought to our attention and we try to work with the community to reduce or to eliminate that situation. It's been done across the country.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

So this is an ongoing process, is it? Okay, very good.

Professor Fleming, I have a question for you. You draw a linkage between employee perception and the state of the safety culture within an organization. Could you just expand on that a little bit please.

[Dr. Mark Fleming]

Broadly speaking, when we assess safety culture, we tend to do it from an employee perception perspective. So if we're using a survey, for example, we're measuring employees' perceptions of management commitment to safety. That can give us some insight into the broader culture.

It's more from a measurement perspective than anything else. It's important to remember that it is a perception of something, not a reality, and can be influenced by other factors. That's one of the ways we try to understand what's going on and what we do know about those perceptions is that they're linked to employee behaviour, which is also linked to the likelihood of being involved in an accident.

If I'm an employee and I don't believe my manager is committed to safety, I am more likely to be involved in an accident than if I am an employee who does believe the manager is committed to safety, irrespective of what the manager actually is committed to or not.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Okay.

Mr. Dias, from Unifor's perspective, I'm interested in your perspective, your comments on Professor Fleming's analysis, his work with respect to the importance of a safety culture, employee perception, etc.

[Jerry Dias]

There's no question that for the safety culture, everybody has to be involved in it, whether you're running the company or you work for the company.

I'm not sure I share the same sentiment that somehow the employees' input as it relates to safety, or their version of events, is somehow skewed. I'm not sure I agree with the terminology that somehow our perception may be based on a variety of different factors. I would suggest to you that whether or not it's safety as it relates to the individual employee's job that is performed that day, or the issue of safety as it relates to the running of VIA or CN or CP, or safety related to the community, the employees who do this 40 hours a week have a much broader understanding than consultants and people who may sit in offices as opposed to working in that environment day in and day out.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

This is my final question for you, Mr. Dias. If you could do three things to improve rail safety in this country, Mr. Dias, or if Unifor could do three things, what would those three things be?

[Jerry Dias]

Both of us are going to answer that question.

Number one, I think the regulations have to be very specific. I believe that in an industry that's profit driven—and I'm not suggesting, by the way, that “profit” is a nasty word. I'm not suggesting that at all. But what I am suggesting is that companies, like MMA, which have opportunities because the larger players have spun off the non-profitable routes, are therefore looking to cut corners in order to make a profit. The only way that those issues can be resolved is by very strict regulation. An example, and I talked about it earlier on, is two-person inspections. I would suggest to you that the regulation would be the key piece.

[Brian Stevens]

Deal with the DOT-111As. Eliminate the uncertainty. Deal with that. That has to be dealt with. Public confidence is being shattered because of this indecision on DOT-111As. That's one.

Put an end to the exemptions to the railways. We have a regulatory regime, and then there's a back door to walk themselves out of the exemptions. That's two.

In terms of our mechanics, license our mechanics in a similar fashion to how they are in the airline industry. When our mechanic says, “Our locomotive or that freight car is not safe to go; there's a maintenance issue, there's a safety issue”, that freight car or tank car or locomotive should be repaired, and it's not in this industry.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you.

We'll now move to Mr. Sullivan for five minutes.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses.

For VIA Rail, the issue of positive train control was expressly referred to in the report on the Burlington collision. It sounds as though you're down the road a little bit towards positive train control, but you have a long way to go. CN and CP are implementing positive train control, but only in the United States. There is no regulation yet in Canada with regard to positive train control. Do you think there should be?

[Denis Pinsonneault]

That's a good question. Whether there should be a regulation or not, VIA Rail decided two years ago to work on the implementation of technologies that will achieve a good proportion of what a PTC system could bring at a much lower cost. We're in that route right now. We expect that within, let's say, probably four years we'll be able to put in place technologies that not only will help us understand the accidents but will mainly facilitate the job of our locomotive engineers by providing them with more information on what's going down on the track, and provide us with information on the reaction of locomotive engineers so that the system has the capacity to intervene if there's a reaction that is not in line with what it's supposed to be.

If there's a regulation, that's fine. But right now VIA Rail is not waiting for a regulation. We're working on implementing some technology that we believe will have a significant impact on safety in the short term.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Dias, you suggested that for the public interest three things need to happen. We need to reclassify crude oil, we need to immediately ban the DOT-111s, and we need to lower the speed that dangerous goods are travelling at through municipalities.

Last week CP suggested that lowering the speeds was not something they would consider, but the Transportation Safety Board told us that even at 20 miles an hour the DOT-111s will break, will fracture. It sounds like there's going to be a conflict between what the railroads want and what the public wants. You're recommending therefore that, like we did after the Mississauga train derailment, we lower speeds in urban areas.

[Jerry Dias]

That is correct.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

With regard to the DOT-111s you're recommending that we make a decision and just do it, get rid of them.

[Jerry Dias]

That is correct. You will find even Hunter Harrison is saying they should be eliminated.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

This is the first time I heard that we used to have one in five crude car inspections. Now we have 1 in 4,000. That is an astounding number.

Coming back to the issue of risk assessment do you suggest, Mr. Dias, that the risk assessments conducted by the railroads are kind of after the fact? They make a decision and then they do a risk assessment and put it in a drawer somewhere.

[Jerry Dias]

Correct.