Agriculture Committee on Dec. 5th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Unfortunately, you have only 10 seconds left, Mr. Perron.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Okay.

You'll be more generous next time, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

That's perfect.

Mr. Cannings, you now have the floor for six minutes.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you.

Thank you both for being here today.

I'm going to start with one question on crossings, and then I might expand things a bit.

Recently, the government spent a lot of money, a billion dollars or so, getting new trains for Via Rail to help speed up service along the corridor. Now CN is requiring Via Rail to slow its trains to 70 kilometres per hour at every crossing in the corridor. Does Transport Canada agree that this is a safety issue?

[Stephen Scott]

I'm appearing at the transportation committee next week on this issue.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Stephen Scott]

Yes, it is something we're monitoring. It's an important point, so it's important that you raised it.

We are aware that CN is imposing some additional restrictions at grade crossings for Via Rail Venture trains in the corridor. This affects about 300 crossings. The net result is that Via Rail trains need to slow down when they cross these crossings. That's adding time on Via Rail's route travel times in the corridor.

We're monitoring the situation. We're requesting more empirical data from the parties to assess it ourselves and do our own due diligence review. Following the conclusion of that, if there are additional measures from a safety perspective we need to take as the regulator, we have the existing tools to do that.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

I just want to expand this a bit.

A couple of years ago, the transportation committee prepared a report on railway safety. It had 33 recommendations in it. Then we came along with Bill C-33, not to be confused with the 33 recommendations. This was the big chance the government had—the one chance—to update transport in Canada, yet none of the 33 recommendations in that rail safety report were acted on.

I'm just wondering if you could comment on why that was. I could go through some of them. We have fatigue regulations. We have the number of inspections that Transport Canada does, when those inspections occur, whether they are random and whether there is a risk. You do a risk analysis of dangerous goods. Is that public? There were all of these recommendations for rail safety.

I don't have to add in why we need this. We had Lac-Mégantic. We had the horrific runaway train incident in the Rockies at Field a couple of years ago.

I'm surprised that the government had this opportunity. I know you're not the government specifically, but you should be giving it advice on why none of these recommendations were implemented.

[Stephen Scott]

First, thank you for raising the issue. It's an important issue.

The parliamentary transportation committee report from 2022 was a very important report, and it was helpful input into our continuous cycle of regulatory and policy modernization. The vast majority of the 33 recommendations have been completed or have actions under way to complete.

The reason you didn't see more of those in Bill C-33 is that Transport Canada as the safety regulator already has quite extensive legislative powers to move forward with an agenda, so additional legislative changes were not needed to push forward the vast majority of the actions in the report. There are a few that I think we're still studying, but the vast majority are under way.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

You're saying that you're doing this through regulation within existing legislation, I assume, yet we had a rail disruption last summer where the unions were claiming that most of their big issues were about safety and much of them about fatigue. They claimed, for instance, that CPKC was going to gut the safety conditions for their workers around fatigue. They claimed that CN was going to force workers to move across the country for months at a time.

These are things that affect rail safety, and I'm wondering what Transport Canada has done to update and strengthen safety regulations so that railway workers and the people in communities along the tracks can be assured that things will be safe.

[Stephen Scott]

Transport Canada is not involved in the labour negotiations between the railways and unions, so I can't comment on that.

Part of our regulatory modernization agenda over the last number of years has been to bring in new duty and rest period rules. They took effect in 2022 for freight and just last month for passenger railways. Those I would call transformative in the sense that they introduced a series of duty restrictions and fatigue management requirements in regulation for railways. The key feature there is to set a weekly and monthly cap on the number of hours worked for employees in safety-critical positions, which was new. That didn't exist before. We feel that's a big step forward for advancing the safety agenda.

Fatigue continues to be an issue. It's on the Transportation Safety Board's watch-list, and we continue to look at what other measures need to be taken. The rules that we brought in over the last couple of years I would characterize as a positive step forward.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

I'll get on your Christmas card list, I hope, Richard. I gave you seven minutes, but it was a good line of questioning. Thank you.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

I have one in my bag right here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Oh, good. Yes, I do want one. I want to put it on my my fridge at home.

Colleagues, that brings us to the end of our meeting today.

I'd like to thank Mr. Scott and Madam Rudge for your work on behalf of the good folks at Transport Canada. Thank you again for being well prepared for our committee. There was lots of really important information.

I have one quick bit on interswitching. Of course, notwithstanding what the railroads have said about not extending the pilot, if members of Parliament were persuaded that some form of a pilot should be extended beyond March 2025, does that require legislation? Is it an order in council? What would the minister have to do in a legislative sense to extend a pilot if that was the decision of the government?

[Tamara Rudge]

It would require legislation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

There's not much of that happening right now in the House, but we'll see. There's an incentive.

Colleagues, just before we break, I'll note that this will probably be the last public session we have before Christmas, so I want to wish everyone a merry Christmas and happy holidays.

Happy holidays.

We will obviously see each other next week, but to everyone who follows the committee and to the stakeholders who come, I hope you guys have a great break.

Here's what I want you to know. We are scheduled for Tuesday next week. Votes on estimates are lurking. In the interest of trying to make sure we can get the work done that we want to get done before we break for Christmas, I have asked the clerk to look into a potential meeting on a Monday as opposed to a Tuesday. We don't know if that's even possible yet. I will be connecting with all of the vice-chairs and representatives on the committee to make sure we can make it work.

What I would like to avoid is a situation where the votes start and we're not able to get our work done. I know we had wanted to end on Tuesday and let people focus on their constituency work leading into the holidays. I will be in touch with you, but just be prepared that we might be looking at a Monday date. I'll work with you guys accordingly. If it's not possible, we'll adjust accordingly.

Thank you, everyone.

The meeting is adjourned.