Bill C-33 (Historical)

Safer Railways Act

An Act to amend the Railway Safety Act and to make consequential amendments to the Canada Transportation Act

These amendments amend the Railway Safety Act to, among other things,
(a) improve the oversight capacity of the Department of Transport by, for example, requiring railway companies to obtain a safety-based railway operating certificate indicating compliance with regulatory requirements;
(b) strengthen that Department’s enforcement powers by introducing administrative monetary penalties and increasing court-enforced penalties;
(c) enhance the role of safety management systems by including a provision for a railway executive accountable for safety and a non-punitive reporting system for employees of railway companies;
(d) clarify the authority and responsibilities of the Minister of Transport with respect to railway matters; and
(e) expand regulation-making authorities and clarify the process for rule making by railway companies.

Safer Railways Act

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Madam Speaker, that is an excellent question and extremely relevant. It is amazing how the relevance goes from the rail to air safety. Just yesterday we saw the implications with respect to the Concorde crash and the finding of liability on the part of Continental Airlines. The liability was not only with respect to the Continental Airlines generally, but with respect to the individual mechanic who was charged with responsibility. Through professional oversight, he or she did not see a problem that could have been disastrous.

The member has related to what the minister of state has said in a way, that the legislation also has fines for individuals who see a functional problem with equipment and who do not take action. To answer the member's question, in that case, I do not know whether the accountability loop has been closed. However, the legislation with respect to that tanker spill would in fact be instrumental in continuing the investigation, finding fault and then taking whatever remedial action required.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I was surprised by the Teamsters Canada press release of June 2. It indicates that there have been, over the last 10 years, 10,000 train collisions and derailments, an average of 3 a day. I was certainly not aware of that.

In terms of loss of life in railway accidents, the largest loss of life was the Dugald accident in Manitoba in 1947. I think most people here would be familiar with the Hinton, Alberta train crash which killed 23 people.

This is a long-standing problem. We have been aware of it for quite some time. Other countries in the world are running high-speed trains. Imagine the money that would have to be put into our railway system to upgrade to the level of the Japanese railway system, where trains run at 200 or 300 miles per hour.

Even in our lifetime, we have seen the speed of the trains increase a lot. There are no cabooses. There are mile-long trains. We have seen the results of a poor roadbed and poor track system.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in my experience, in Europe and Japan the dedicated rights of way for passenger traffic and the transport of goods are separated. For the most part, we have integrated systems where the sharing of the subdivisions is an implicating factor with respect to how careful we have to be on safety. There are different safety standards for tunnelling with respect to the transfer of chemicals and goods as opposed to transporting people. In other countries they have separated those functions.

The safety factor only gets worse, but we are very fortunate we are now starting to address these issues and building our railways accordingly.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Madam Speaker, I understand that I will have 10 rather than 20 minutes. I will try and squeeze my remarks into the time allowed. There is much to say about rail safety, however.

Bill C-33 is very important, in our view, and we will soon vote on it at second reading. The bill will then be considered in committee, amended and improved, despite having an already solid foundation.

Everyone wants rail safety improved, but it is also important to talk about disturbances caused by trains and railways. As it happens, there are often hazards lurking behind these disturbances. I will speak about noise, particularly rattling of the railways, vibrations, obstruction of inbound municipal tracks and the speed of trains.

This legislation was enacted in 1989 and amended in 1998. It was improved somewhat on each occasion, but the time has come to take into account the work done by the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, which has made a number of observations and recommendations.

After considering the work done by the individuals and organizations that appeared before the committee, we can conclude that rail companies, such as VIA Rail and Canadian Pacific, are doing quite well when it comes to hazard management. It is CN's conduct in this area, however, that warrants particular attention.

On the heels of this introduction, and right from the outset, I would like to indicate that the Bloc Québécois intends to put forward a number of proposals in the House.

The Bloc Québécois would first like to see the safety management systems of all rail companies enhanced to make them more effective and fail-proof.

The Bloc also believes that safety management systems cannot replace inspections and suggests that there be increased monitoring by Transport Canada.

Furthermore, Transport Canada must improve the inspection system for land occupied by rail tracks and also obtain the financial and human resources that are required.

The Bloc Québécois also recommends that railway companies appoint heads of safety who, on behalf of their respective companies, would be required, for the reasons that I outlined a little earlier, to report annually to Transport Canada regarding safety management. I will come back to this.

The Bloc Québécois recommends adding provisions to encourage railway company staff to voluntarily share their safety concerns without fear of prosecution and disciplinary measures.

Those are five measures we would like to see in this bill.

I indicated earlier that some behaviour is unacceptable. If the behaviour is repeated, this means there is a lack of monitoring and a lack of means to do that monitoring. In a question I asked my colleague earlier, I announced the examples I was going to give.

One of those examples happened less than a year ago in Dugald, Manitoba. A tank car containing 51,500 litres of flammable liquid propylene separated from the rest of the train before coming to a stop. The problem was a faulty stub sill.

A stub sill is part of the frame which connects the tank cars. There was a problem. The other thing the Transportation Safety Board indicated is that approximately 41,000 cars within the North American tank car fleet are equipped with this model of stub sills, and approximately 35,000 of them are in dangerous goods service. There is still cause to take action in order to prevent the worst from happening.

I would like to remind hon. members that in my own riding of Chambly—Borduas, more specifically in Mont-Saint-Hilaire, on December 30, 1999, a train derailed. Roughly 2.7 million litres of hydrocarbons burned; 350 families were temporarily evacuated. If that had happened in Saint-Basile, which has a population of 16,000, then almost the entire town would have been evacuated. It is a neighbouring town, barely 6 km away, with a train track running through it from one end to the other. On one side there are schools and family developments nearby. Over time, urban settlements have developed near railroads, which means that we cannot look at safety the way we used to. Trains used to approach the stations only and therefore stayed fairly far away from densely populated areas.

So we have to look at this differently now. We have to pay more attention to the towns and the citizens too—the people who are directly affected by the emerging danger. The towns in my riding of Chambly—Borduas are experiencing a lot of nuisance problems that point as well to the emerging danger. The MRC and a number of towns, including Mont-Saint-Hilaire, McMasterville, Otterburn Park, and Saint-Basile-le-Grand, have gone so far as to make representations to CN and VIA Rail to try to find out what is making the new noises we did not used to hear. They are coming from somewhere. Why is it that two or three years ago, these noises did not exist? There are new sounds now and vibrations that are very disturbing because they cause houses and the furniture in them to shake. People are awakened by the shaking of their beds, and not because of something they were doing. That is what we are being told.

There is the blockage as well. The trains are so long that when they stop, they block both entrances to the town of Saint-Basile-le-Grand. Sometimes they wait 30 to 45 minutes or even an hour to allow other trains to pass.

There is something new going on here. The railway companies say that if there are vibrations, it is because of the clay soil. This soil is a relic of the old Champlain Sea and has always been there. Why did it not used to shake but it does now? The answer is in a statement made by Mr. Bob Robinson of the Transportation Safety Board. He says that, in addition to these risks, there is the fact that trains are longer and heavier than ever and therefore harder to manage.

We need to remember that.

Not more than three months ago, CN was telling our municipal officials, through one of its representatives, Ms. Julie Sénécal, that the maintenance of the tracks was up to standard and the length and weight of the trains had not changed over the last few years. That is totally false according to what the Transportation Safety Board of Canada is telling us.

I would have more to say, but—

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

Questions and comments. The hon. member for York South—Weston.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Madam Speaker, I have a question for my colleague. He actually talked about some of the same issues that are facing residents in my constituency of York South--Weston where the Georgetown corridor will be expanded with not only new traffic with respect to serving the airport, but also with the GO Transit expansion. The same kinds of concerns have been coming back through my office.

My question is related to the safety aspects. He wanted to know whether there would be a closing of the accountability loop where there are malfunctions, switching issues or whatever. This bill is designed to try to close that accountability loop. He has described his community. Does he feel more convinced that rail is an answer and does this bill help to assuage some of the concerns that people might have with respect to noise, safety, air pollution and those kinds of issues?

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my fellow member for his question. We believe that it is possible as long as we designate authorities who are in a position to take action. They must also be given the means to do so or, in other words, they must be given a budget and competent employees. Every report of a potential risk must be looked into.

The people who are in the best position to inform us of potential risks are the employees. When employees report dangerous situations, they are often reprimanded and even punished by the company they work for, which is completely illogical. We have to protect these people and give the authority to a competent organization such as the Transportation Safety Board of Canada.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Madam Speaker, I noted what my colleague said about the change in the way that the municipalities have developed around railway lines. I am very interested in his reaction to how those municipalities are dealing with the issues surrounding trespassing and whether there is an effort made through those communities to fence off the railway lines so they are safer for people generally. Is that something that is taking place in the communities that he represents? Is that going ahead in a good fashion?

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Madam Speaker, the question is extremely relevant. It is very concrete and practical. For example, there are very long fences near the railway tracks in Mont-Saint-Hilaire, Saint-Basile-le-Grand and McMasterville. In Mont-Saint-Hilaire in particular, the fence is so long and there are so few places to cross on foot or by bicycle that people have been breaking the fence to get through. Some will say that this is not good and that people should not do such things but, at the same time, it shows that we did not adapt the new reality to the needs of the people living close to railways. Why was construction allowed in these areas?

As soon as the regulations permit, all necessary accommodations must be made so that the trains can run without putting people at risk or making things more complicated for them.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-33, An Act to amend the Railway Safety Act and to make consequential amendments to the Canada Transportation Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to have an opportunity to speak to Bill C-33, Safer Railways Act, which has been brought forward today by the government. It represents the government's thinking on moving forward with railway safety in this country.

I certainly agree with most of the speakers here that the railway system in this country is one that is under pressure. We need to ensure that it is operated in the safest and most complete fashion for all those who live near it or are involved in it.

There are some deficiencies in the current safety act that are in need of fixing, but I think this bill takes on some elements that are perhaps redundant. These may not move so much forward on safety but rather increase the bureaucracy around the railways.

This bill corrects some minor errors that have been identified in existing acts and creates a certification process for railroads to show that they are safe. Also, it creates a ticketing process for enforcement and tweaks certain elements within the safety management system for railways. That is all good and proper.

However, there are problems, such as using a ticket system of fines for enforcement. The U.S. has a system of tickets but now uses it only in the most serious and egregious violations. The U.S. has learned that tickets do not actually work to improve safety. There are reports throughout the United States that the tickets were sometimes paid by the railways rather than go ahead with required improvements and fix-ups. In some cases, the U.S. Federal Railroad Administration prefers to issue compliance orders, special notices for repair, disqualification orders, injunctions, and emergency orders so that things actually are done on the system. If there is a point in the system where problems are occurring, they get fixed with these types of orders.

We can talk about the certification process, but once a railway starts operating, it has already complied with the Railway Safety Act. By starting up it goes through a process of ensuring that its system is well set up and within the rules that it is guided by. Therefore, the extra process of certification is something that we would like to understand better. Perhaps at committee we will see how this certification process would improve safety. That is something we must leave to witnesses and those people who will know about that in committee.

What Bill C-33 does not do is dramatically increase railway safety. According to “Stronger Ties”, the 2007 review of the Railway Safety Act, the major cause of death comes from accidents at level crossings and trespassing.

Since 2001, an average of 84 people have been killed or seriously injured annually as a result of crossing accidents and an average of 79 people have been killed or seriously injured due to trespassing. These are very large numbers. These are real issues of concern when we talk about railway safety. Many Canadians are dying around our railways. In 2006, 142 people were killed or seriously injured as a result of crossing and trespassing accidents. The railway industry considers these collisions to be a major problem. The greater tragedy is that perhaps many of these incidents could have been avoided.

Rail collisions are in fact one of the most predictable of all transportation hazards. Trains and motor vehicles are alike in that both travel on hundreds of thousands of kilometres of rail or highway and urban road networks. Similarly, aircraft have millions of kilometres of airspace in which to fly.

However, a highway railway crossing has a precise location. The intersection of the highway and the railway track is where a collision between a motor vehicle and a train is most likely to occur. We have a very defined area within the rail system where these accidents are occurring.

Investigation reports reveal that in most circumstances motorists are responsible for these collisions. They disregard the horn and bell warnings of approaching trains. They ignore light and bell warnings at crossings and sometimes they even drive around lowered gates. There is nothing in the bill that will decrease those numbers.

How could we do this? Perhaps we could begin a larger, federal, education campaign. Working in partnership with the Railway Association, Transport Canada could lead the effort to bring together people who can deal with the education required for motorists to better deal with rail crossings, to not be impatient when the gates go down, and to be observant.

There are about 43,000 federally and provincially regulated public and private level crossings in Canada, so when the minister talks about the dollars that the government has invested over the past number of years on railways crossings, he is not talking about a huge sum of money in comparison to the issues before us.

In “Stronger Ties”, the railway safety advisory panel recommended the government develop a program to identify which crossings can be closed, limit the number of new crossings, and improve the safety at existing crossings.

Many of the European countries do different things with rail or level crossings that allow high-speed trains to move through rail crossings with a great degree of safety. They have automated systems that detect metal in the level crossing and stop the train on an automatic basis. We have to train Canadians to wait for this to occur, because if we stop a train because somebody is in the level crossing, we have to close the crossing earlier for that to occur.

We know that trespassing accidents can never be completely eliminated, but what about the requirement for fencing? Where can we do better on that particular requirement so that we reduce the number of incidents of trespassing and reduce the number of deaths that are occurring? These are serious problems with railway safety, problems that need to be addressed, and perhaps as we take this bill forward to committee, we could look at some things there. Once again, the bill is directed in a more bureaucratic fashion to deal with penalties and to deal with other issues, but really we need to look at some of the basic precepts of railway safety.

Another area would be to have regulations that ensure that trains respect signals. In many countries, if there is a red signal, the train automatically slows down or stops. In Canada that is not the case. We do not have those fail-safe systems and that can lead to more accidents. Once again, the issues are sometimes technical in nature, but they are also things that this federal government has a responsibility to legislate.

Actions do not come from nothing. It is not a simple job to improve railway safety. It is an investment. It is regulations. It is certainly enforcement, but it certainly speaks to the need for more than what is in the bill here today. The bill may do something, but we really need to look at the overall picture of railway safety and fix the things that need to be fixed to ensure the Canadian public is protected.

We need to ensure that our standards for some of the problems we have are raised to the point that they match up to other countries and the rest of the world.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker, my question for the member for Western Arctic, and through him to the government, is in the context of studying rail safety. Is it not a good time to study the larger issue of rail relocation altogether?

In many cities, especially in western Canada, in the 1880s the rail ran right down the main drag of these cities and, in many cases, like in the city of Winnipeg, it cut the city in half. The great thundering marshalling yards of the CPR created a tale of two cities in terms of north Winnipeg and south Winnipeg. Our whole social development has been affected by that intrusion into the city of Winnipeg.

I raise that in the context of safety because there have been explosions, chemical spills, oil spills and ongoing degradation of the environment by virtue of the rails running through the city.

The Railway Relocation and Crossing Act used to pay for 50% of the rail relocation if a municipality applied to the federal government saying that it did not want the railway in its municipality anymore. Does the member not believe, in the context of rail safety, that the federal government must recommit to the Railway Relocation and Crossing Act?

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Madam Speaker, after listening to the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre, I do not really want to respond because he raised some excellent points that should be addressed in this particular discussion that we will be having going forward, perhaps in committee where we can see some of these issues brought out. We can bring witnesses forward to talk about this particular aspect of railway safety.

It is commendable that the member has raised this issue now and I will certainly carry that message forward.

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have several communities in my riding where there are problems with the length of trains today. The trains are so long that if an accident were to occur in a community it could be landlocked.

I have s a CNR community in my riding called Capreol. If a serious accident were to happen at the right place, this community would be landlocked possibly for days. I am just wondering if this bill, when it goes to committee, would look after a situation like this?

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I would say once again that these issues are part of what will need to be examined at committee. I think the bill opens up a number of doors that people want to see into in terms of railway safety. However, there is not one simple answer.

To understand whether this bill would actually improve railway safety in this country would be to understand how some of those questions will be answered by the regulations and the changes to the safety act that have been put in place.