Transport Committee on April 29th, 2014

[Paul Boissonneault]

The easy answer is that the emergency management process is all-encompassing. The transportation of dangerous goods may be identified as one of the key elements within a municipality because what they do is that they go through a HIRA process, the hazard identification and risk assessment process, and they identify probability and frequency of various issues. Depending on location, flooding may be included in that, tornadoes, hurricanes, and of course, the man-made ones.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Right now I am talking about the transport of dangerous goods in Lachine.

[Paul Boissonneault]

Yes. What I'm getting to is that the authority having jurisdiction of a municipality determines what is the priority of that area.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Okay.

[Paul Boissonneault]

If some of the information is not getting out to citizens or within a specific region or riding, then there needs to be a greater focus on ensuring that if a major rail line goes through a municipality, testing the emergency planning and ensuring it gets bolstered certainly needs to take place specifically within a municipality.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Thank you very much.

I will now move to another subject.

Mr. Benson, you spoke to us about employee fatigue. I was very surprised to learn under which conditions employees must work. They sometimes work for 12 hours without knowing when they will need to return to work.

That said, I did not hear you make any recommendations on this subject. In your opinion what should be done? How can we regulate these conditions? How can we ensure that this will no longer happen?

Mr. Ballantyne has told us that as long as there are humans, there will be accidents. Fatigue is certainly a major factor that we must try to avoid. What are your recommendations? What could the government do to ensure that there are better working conditions and to prevent employee fatigue?

[Phil Benson]

Thank you for the question.

First of all, the current work-rest rules came out of the Hinton disaster. It always comes out of a disaster in rail. They were very, should we say, inadequate. The rest being left to collective bargaining, to allow companies to have unique features. Of course, as you know, the company's method of collective bargaining is to have a back-to-work law—and it doesn't matter if it's Conservatives or Liberals—it's what happens. Every time we go to collective bargaining, that's the issue and it isn’t dealt with.

Parliament has dealt with it. In the amendments to the Rail Safety Act, the requirement is to have a fatigue management system based on science. I congratulate the government for supporting and passing it because it's the most definitive statement I've ever seen on fatigue management in Canada. That's why we're urging to move it quicker.

On the second part, we are working with the department now. A team has been put together, at the behest of the minister, to try to address the worst components of the current work-rest rules. I'm hopeful that they won't in fact eliminate some of these 18- to 20-hour days and get something totally unreasonable at 16, which violates fatigue science, but the minister is moving this forward and we hope that will be in place.

In a funny way, Parliament has acted. You understood. You did your job, and we thank you for doing it. Delays are just unacceptable. So, first the committee here could perhaps recommend that it happens. Second, another amendment put forward by myself and supported by all the parties, was to give the committee a chance to review, at its own behest, all regulations regarding safety, and the committee read that as security as well.

I suggest that in a couple of years or 18 months, you have us all back and ask us specifically how it is going. That's your ability, to actually keep a finger on the pulse.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

That is a very good idea.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much.

We'll now move to Ms. Young for five minutes.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Thank you again for being here this morning, gentlemen. It was certainly very interesting and enlightening to hear your testimony.

Just following up on the safety management systems, frankly I'm very shocked about what we heard today about the management of fatigue. The fact that the employees and certainly the people working on the railroads for generations do not feel like they have a part in ensuring the safety of the railroads, and of course the communities and all of that going through....

I wanted to just say this for the record. In our situation and in our general culture, if I phone somewhere to get service there's a recording made. Certainly on the airplane, there are the black boxes and recordings are made. Why is there a stress on voice recordings to ensure safety?

[Rex Beatty]

I think it's within the processes that we're talking about. If it's designed to discipline employees and move in that direction then we're absolutely against it. If it's designed to assist for example the TSB in assessing safety concerns, we support that. That's the divide and somewhere in between there's a solution to this. We're not against this.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Just to be clear and for the record then, it's not so much that you're against voice recordings for the purposes of safety, but you are against their use for discipline?

[Rex Beatty]

The answer is absolutely yes to that.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

So there is middle ground there that you have not achieved so far with this particular technology and the use of it.

[Rex Beatty]

I think we're going through the process right now. I think very shortly we're going to be starting to deal with substance on these issues.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Moving on, because I know that time is always an issue here, what I'm hearing from you on protective direction no. 31 is that it is a positive thing. As well, thank you so much for your accolades for the Minister of Transport and the fact that we as a government are moving forward on assuring the safety of communities and the railway system.

Is that correct?

[Phil Benson]

Having been around for a long time, I'll say this publicly. I think Ms. Raitt is probably the most qualified transport minister I've seen. She has an open-door policy with us. She takes our advice...she certainly looks at it very closely.

Yes, on the new directives, the first part we've had a briefing on we're very happy with. I'll be having another briefing with TDG on Friday and I'm sure it will also be positive.

To go back to your comments on the safety management system, it isn't video on a car cab. The safety management system isn't as it is in the air, because we helped develop it in the air as well. It's about the complete...how a company works, where everybody is part of a team, where we constantly get feedback, learn from mistakes, fix them and correct them, and move forward in a non-punitive manner.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

What's surprising the members of the committee is the fact that we have looked at this from the air perspective, the intermodal, and I am very shocked about the fact that this does not exist in the rail culture, given how old our rail culture is.

[Phil Benson]

I can tell you a story. As I say, I'm a storyteller. When they were bringing it in for air I met with one of the senior bureaucrats. He's a good friend, a wonderful person, and he does a great job. I asked him, why are you doing this in the air when rail is such a disaster? His response was, but we'll get it right here. In a funny way they have. It's a much better process.

Again you've actually rectified it. We're talking about the past here. What we see today is the past. What I'm very hopeful for is the future.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

What I'm asking you here today, and I think that the committee members are all very concerned, especially following Lac-Mégantic, is this. Why aren't we moving forward on this faster? Why aren't these things in place now?

[Phil Benson]

Thank you.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

I think that your comment about coming back in 6 or 18 months, or whatever the timeframe is, to see where exactly this is at is certainly something we need to consider as a committee.

[Phil Benson]

Thank you. I really appreciate that because that's clearly what a recommendation is. It's to start that process. Don't wait until the regulations come back in 15, because these companies will have to be forced. We're ready to sit at any time. It's to have the companies and the unions come together now to go through the SMS, to start the fatigue management process, to bring the scientists in, to say let's start now, so that just maybe instead of two years after the regulations come in, six months after we'll actually have them in place. So thank you very much.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Exactly. Thank you.

What kind of timeline, Mr. Chair...? Do I have time for one more quick question?

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

A quick question.