Transport Committee on April 8th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

You have a few minutes left, if you want.

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

I do have one other question for VIA Rail and that is on the other recommendation of the Transportation Safety Board, coming out of the Burlington incident, to create survivable locomotives. Is VIA Rail moving on that recommendation or is the federal government helping you move on that recommendation?

[Denis Pinsonneault]

We are currently examining the issue. Our locomotives were renovated thanks to a recent program. We obviously believe that they are very safe. We are looking at how we can make sure the locomotives comply with the recommendations, at the feasibility of the procedure, and when we would be able to start using them. We are currently looking at that very seriously. A decision has not yet been made, but we are looking at it very seriously.

Bear in mind as well that the incident with train 92 occurred in a specific environment. I am not an expert in the field. I do not know to what extent the measures advocated by the TSB would have reduced or minimized the risk of death, because the accident occurred in a very specific environment. It is certainly in our interest to examine the matter.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Mr. Fleming, you mentioned that the regulator needs to have all of the information in order to make good rules and things like that.

We know from the auditor general that Transport Canada is not getting the internal risk assessments conducted by railway companies. Aren't those important for us to understand what's happening and make better rules?

[Dr. Mark Fleming]

I don't necessarily know about their rules. What I was actually referring to, particularly when we're talking about safety culture, was that the regulator needs some people internally who actually have some competence and some knowledge in that domain. Also, if we think safety culture is important and we think SMS is important, they need the capacity to deal with that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Okay, thank you very much.

Mr. McGuinty, you have five minutes.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Folks, I want to go back to the Auditor General's report, and I want to go back to the human capacity, the capacity challenges inside the department. Here's what the Auditor General says, and it's in stark contrast with some of the things I'm hearing.

First, the Auditor General said that in 2009 Transport Canada estimated it needed 20 system auditors to audit each railway once every three years. Then the Auditor General says they have 10 qualified inspectors, on top of which they now have to oversee 39 additional non-federal railways. The Auditor General then says that Transport Canada doesn't know whether its current staff of inspectors—get this—“has the required skills and competencies” to do their jobs.

Then the Auditor General says, and I quote, “Inspectors and managers were not trained on a timely basis”. Then the Auditor General says that Transport Canada can't even warrant that inspectors are objective and independent, that they come mainly from federal railways. So what are Canadians to make of this very detailed, brutal report on the state of rail safety? VIA Rail, as I said earlier—I'd like to get a response from VIA—was not audited once in three fiscal years and carries four million passengers a year.

I'm no fan of the Republican administration, but I like one line from the United States, which is “trust but verify”. At the end of the day, most Canadians believe the ultimate responsibility for rail safety is with the federal government, not the partnership between the regulator and the regulated manifested in SMS, not the regulated body, not VIA Rail, not CN, not CP, not any of these other railways. I think most Canadians believe it is the responsibility of the Government of Canada to regulate and make sure that rail is safe.

What are Canadians to make of this factual, objective third-party report?

Maybe we can start with VIA Rail.

[Denis Pinsonneault]

We've taken this very seriously. We welcome any inspections that are being made on top of the audits made by Transport Canada. There is one actually going on right now, and as we mentioned earlier, we believe that inspection audit verification and the involvement of all employees is the key success factor for us in addition to everything that's being done by the regulator.

I don't know if I answered your questions on the capacity to—

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Would you say, Mr. Pinsonneault, that in the SMS structure it's a partnership between two groups here, the regulated and the regulator? It's a partnership.

Aren't you concerned that your partner isn't living up to their obligations?

[Denis Pinsonneault]

I feel that I work as though I would be inspected every day, every week.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

But you're not.

[Denis Pinsonneault]

I know, but the way we work at VIA Rail is that we don't wait for inspections. We work as though we were to be inspected without any notice every week, every month.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Fair enough.

Mr. Dias.

[Jerry Dias]

Look, you're not going to get any disagreement with us on the role of the government as it relates to regulations, inspections. Think about it. I live in Milton. I live about two miles from a government truck inspection station. Sprinkled right across the country in every province we have inspection stations. People can't drive a truck without going by an inspection station.

You're not going to have a quarrel with us relating to regulations, the role of government, and the desire of government to implement the regulations. So if we're talking about inspections, then there is no question, inspections have to be done. The question becomes how are we going to make sure they are done.

There is no question, we spend a lot of time in the railway industry related to health and safety, related to a preoccupation with safety, but there have to be checks and balances in every system.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you.

Ms. Young, you have five minutes.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Thank you very much.

I find it interesting that we've heard from different organizations, obviously. Is there a safety fund set aside for the railway system that communities also feed into? If they do developments across tracks, and so on, everybody needs to organize and fund their little piece of that. Or is that just too “pie in the sky” and it's never going to happen?

It sounds to me as though there are some very distinct, great initiatives happening, because, as you can see in your charts, safety has increased, which is excellent. However, there still seem to be a number of gaps you've identified today, and thank you very much. I would strongly encourage each of you to go back and submit to us...because we are very serious about this study. We want to see results, suggestions, and solid recommendations that we can implement. So, please go back—because there's always a time problem here—and submit something in writing to us to further explore and expand on some of the comments you've made today.

There seems to be a real gap between the owners of the cars and the people who identify some of the issues, as both Mr. Dias and Mr. Stevens were saying. The inspections happen but then they're not followed up on, or because you don't own the cars, you're not going to do the actual safety or fix those cars. There seems to be this loose system in place, but nobody is actually, at the end of the day, fixing those cars; or, there's not enough money to fix those cars, because you rent them or you're on the rail system but you don't own the system. As for the ties or the railroad lines themselves, then you're going through communities that want access, and who's paying for that?

There seem to be a lot of players. I would say, to build on Mr. McGuinty's concept, that it's really not just the railroads and the unions. It's the communities and the owners taking a look at the whole infrastructure to see where the weaknesses are and where there can be improvements. Would you say that's true?

[Jerry Dias]

Let me give you a correlation. I just participated in a settlement for the port of Vancouver in which there were 180 owners, 1,200 or 1,300 non-union truckers, 350 unionized truckers, the provincial government, the federal government, and the port of Vancouver. Now, try to find a solution.

Just as we are here, we were spending a lot of time talking about who owns what and who's responsible for what. If you're really looking to resolve the numerous issues, you have to take a look at how things have changed in 20 years. You spend a lot of time talking about the community, as you should, but you need to also understand that with deregulation and privatization, a lot of the lines that went around the communities have been eliminated through contracting, leaving the option of going through the middle of the town.

We can talk about how communities are being built around the tracks, but because of a shift from having railways that serve the country serving communities that assist them based on profitability, a lot of the solutions that were in place are now not in place. So you need to look at that piece as well.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

I have just one final comment. That's exactly my point—

[Jerry Dias]

I know.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

—and that's exactly my concern, because we are sort of on this cusp of.... I'm from Vancouver, actually, so thank you very much for helping—

[Jerry Dias]

Not a problem. I rent out my services cheap.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

—with that strike.

The point is that we need to look at this total picture and resolve that, because the strike in itself, I think, emphasized to Canadians across the country how important our rail systems are and how integral they are to our economy and to people's homes and lives and all of that.

You are the experts here. Please help us with this.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

You're taking the last five-minute round, as well, Ms. Young.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Oh, am I? Excellent. Thank you.

I see some hands here, so I'm going to let you guys speak.

Brian, do you want to start?

[Brian Stevens]

Just to top off on the contraction, when that started back in 1995-96 and all of these rail lines got converted into walking paths, what happened then was that the issue of grade separation increased because we had more trains going through these high-density areas. So that automatically increased. Then the issue becomes—and it goes to the point that the railways aren't interested in slowing down the trains. The reason they're not interested in slowing down the trains is that now they're running longer trains through these communities and the last thing they want is to have the communities up in arms because they're split. The fire station is on one side of the track and the fire's on the other side of the track and they can't get across because they have a 10,000-foot train. So it all kind of melds together.

So if there was anything about a risk assessment.... The thing about doing risk assessments in New Brunswick and those areas is that the risk assessment probably should have been done in 1995 or at least in 2005 to say, what are we doing as a country here in terms of our infrastructure? That's part of the task of this committee. But in terms of infrastructure we're not building it. We've been facilitating a system that allows abandonments and tearing down.