Agriculture Committee on Dec. 5th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

We're back at it for a truncated panel with the Department of Transport.

Here in the room with us are Tamara Rudge, director general, surface transportation policy, and Stephen Scott, director general of rail safety and security.

I would extend our sympathies for last time. We had a number of votes and had to reschedule you. We're happy to have you back.

I'll let you provide five minutes of opening remarks, if you have anything, from the Department of Transport. Then we are going to turn to questions, probably for the last 30 minutes. There will probably be one round for each party.

Ms. Rudge, would you like to go ahead?

[Tamara Rudge, Director General, Surface Transportation Policy, Department of Transport]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.

I'd like to begin by acknowledging that we're gathered today on the traditional territory of the Algonquin and Anishinabe people.

My name is Tamara Rudge, and I'm the director general of surface transportation policy at Transport Canada.

Thank you to the committee for inviting us to speak about rail challenges and opportunities.

We acknowledge that agricultural companies rely on freight railways for timely and efficient service and that for many, rail remains the only practical and economical means of transporting their products to domestic and international markets.

Canadian railways operate in a complex freight rail network that connects over 400 grain elevators and moves high volumes of grain over long distances. Canada's reputation as a trading nation depends on its railways to meet demand and deliver on time.

The transportation of western grain by rail has generally been operating well. This past crop year, Canadian class I railways transported more than 53 million metric tons across their networks. The car cycle times—the length of time it takes a car to travel from its origin to destination and back—are regularly at or below the five-year average for the major western grain corridors, which are Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Thunder Bay.

The government continues to monitor this system's performance closely. We engage collaboratively with stakeholders to talk about the market dynamics that underpin Canada’s freight rail system. This helps inform and shape how Transport Canada and the government consider which legislative or regulatory changes, if any, are appropriate for ensuring that Canada's freight rail system remains competitive and efficient.

I'll turn to my colleague.

[Stephen Scott, Director General, Rail Safety and Security, Department of Transport]

Good morning, everyone.

Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for having us this morning.

My name is Stephen Scott, and I work as the director general of rail safety and security at Transport Canada. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today about the regulatory regime for safe operation of railway grade crossings in Canada.

In total, there are about 23,000 grade crossings across the country. These comprise about 14,000 public grade crossings on roads that are maintained by a municipal road authority and are designed for public use. The remaining 9,000 are private grade crossings where the adjacent land is owned by private landowners—for example, businesses, farmers and residents—and the crossing is not intended for use by the general public.

In 2014, Transport Canada introduced the grade crossings regulations to improve safety at rail crossings by mandating the standards that govern their design, construction and maintenance. This includes engineering specifications for the crossing surface, the physical barriers, the warning systems and the signage.

Recognizing that a one-size-fits-all approach would not be pragmatic or in the interest of safety, the regulations establish a spectrum of safety measures tailored to the assessed level of risk of each individual crossing, with risk being dependent on several variables, such as volume of traffic, speed, sightlines and geography.

The regulations provided up to 10 years for railways and landowners to make infrastructure upgrades and bring rail crossings into compliance with the new safety standards. Over this period, Transport Canada has extensively engaged with stakeholders on the changes, including with farmer associations, and we are grateful for their continued involvement.

In order to ensure a reasonable regulatory burden and that resources are prioritized to the highest risk areas, the regulations were amended in 2021 to permanently exempt from upgrade requirements about 3,000 of the lowest-risk private grade crossings. The regulations came into full force on November 28, 2024. Information provided to Transport Canada from the railways indicates that over 99% of grade crossings are compliant with the new standards.

Under the regulations, private crossing owners have a shared responsibility for safety at their crossings and have flexible options to ensure compliance with safety standards. Apportionment of financial responsibility is governed by the Canada Transportation Act, which is administered by the Canadian Transportation Agency, an independent, quasi-judicial administrative tribunal with the mandate to regulate and adjudicate economic issues in the transportation sector.

Thank you. I'm happy to take any questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Thank you very much to you both. We'll get right to that.

Mr. Lawrence, I don't know if you remember this committee, but you have lots of agriculture in your riding, so welcome to the committee. It's good to have you here. You have six minutes.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Yes, I spent some time on this committee when I had a PMB asking to exempt farmers from the carbon tax on propane and natural gas, which carries on these days. I'll note that I got a thumbs-up from the chair on that.

It's great to be here.

I want to start by getting some background on this. My understanding is that, as you said, there are about 9,000 private rail crossings, give or take. At those 9,000 private rail crossings, what is the total number, if you have it, of crossings in a year? A ballpark figure is fine.

[Stephen Scott]

Are you asking how many are farm crossings?

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

No. How many individuals cross at those private rail crossings?

[Stephen Scott]

It really depends. Of the 9,000, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, the bottom 3,000 were scoped out.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

I'm sorry, but I think we're missing something here. There would be hundreds of thousands of crossings at those private rail crossings. There would be tractors and cars going across. How many incidents occur at those private rail crossings?

[Stephen Scott]

I have stats on accidents.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

That's perfect.

[Stephen Scott]

Transport Canada uses the same data as the Transportation Safety Board, and it's publicly available. The trend line in accidents and fatalities over the last 10 years is down, which is positive. In 2023, there were 149 crossing accidents in Canada. Thirty-three of those were at private crossings and two were at farm crossings.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Okay. Of the hundreds of thousands of crossings that occur every year at private rail crossings, we have 33, and two at farm crossings. In the two that occurred at the farm crossings, were there fatalities? What was the total number of injuries? Do you know?

[Stephen Scott]

The fatalities in total for last year, 2023, were 13.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Was that over all crossings?

[Stephen Scott]

That was over all crossings. There were 13. That was down from the 10-year average—which, again, is a positive—and there were none at farm crossings.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

First of all, I want to thank you. You're one of the few folks from this government who has actually had numbers at hand. That's some awesome work.

[Lianne Rood, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Yes. Thank you for that.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Obviously, safety is always of extreme importance, and we appreciate the work you do, but we have a finite amount of resources. We want to make sure those resources are put in places where you get maximum results.

We have two incidents and zero fatalities at farm crossings. We're hearing from the Ontario Federation of Agriculture—feel free to dispute this—that some of these crossings, to bring them up to the new standards, will cost farmers between $600,000 and $2 million, and then $10,000 a year in an annual maintenance fee. This will put farms out of business.

If we're not accomplishing anything, or we're accomplishing very little, from a safety perspective, but we are putting farmers out of business, you can see where that is an issue. At the very least, as per a letter that we are sending out, perhaps a delay and further study before we start shutting down railways might be in order.

Could you comment on that?

[Stephen Scott]

I would share a couple of thoughts. The regulations do put in place a risk-based approach. It's not a one-size-fits-all approach. We recognize that. I think this is where you're going.

On the whole, private grade crossings, which farm crossings are part of, generally speaking tend to be of lower risk than the public crossings in cities, with their high traffic, but that doesn't mean that all private crossings are low-risk. Some are of medium- and high-risk. Those are the remaining 6,000 of the 9,000 that remain as part of the regulations.

The regulations set a spectrum-based approach. There are five levels of risk. Where a crossing falls in that spectrum determines the mitigation measures required to bring risk down to a tolerable level. I think in the vast majority of cases, because we're at a 99% compliance rate, the measures put in place are financially reasonable.

For a small number—the representative from CN in the first hour spoke to it being down to eight—there are cost-prohibitive budgets or estimated costs of between $600,000 and $2 million. They're working with landowners to find practical solutions for those eight. CPKC testified that they're in full compliance.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

I'll just end with this. We have a situation where at farm crossings, we have two incidents and zero fatalities. We also have an affordability crisis. The cost of food has never been higher in this country. My strong suggestion and recommendation to your department is to indeed take a flexible approach. Don't just arbitrarily close private rail crossings, which will cut off farmland, increase the cost of food and perhaps drive farms out of business, where very little, if anything, will be gained from a safety perspective.

Once again, thank you for being so prepared. I appreciate it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Ms. Rood, you wanted to very quickly ask about a tabling of information. Go ahead.

[Lianne Rood, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Thank you.

I'm just wondering about the statistics you gave with regard to the fatalities. I'd be interested to know how many of those fatalities involved a collision with a train and how many of them were just accidents or collisions that happened around a railroad track. You can table that with the committee if you don't have that answer.

[Stephen Scott]

My initial reaction is that most of them, if not all, involve a train. That's the subset of data I have, but I'll check that and table it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Thank you very much.

I'll now take the first three minutes. Mr. Louis will take the next three.

I know that a lot of the first round of questioning for our officials was on crossings. It was refreshing and important to hear a few things on that in the first panel. One is that we're down to only about seven or eight cases in the country. At least CPKC talked about the fact that they are completely compliant, and CN is very close. We have a flexible approach. Certainly, this process started under the Conservative government and has been continuing on for quite some time.

I want to ask about interswitching. That is an important piece. We just heard from the two major railroads, which were not able to share the number of times interswitching has been used under the pilot. I presume that you have that information.

Are you able, Ms. Rudge, to share how often it has been utilized so far in the time that it's been in place?