Evidence of meeting #82 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was bees.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:50 a.m.
Liberal
Leah Taylor Roy Liberal Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON
No, I mean a rest stop like yours, a rest stop for food and water.
I'm not talking about the ones where there might be problems with public image or perception.
9:50 a.m.
President, The Barn Feed & Livestock Co. Inc.
Okay.
We are in the middle of the country, and you can get from Clyde, Alberta, to here in under the 36 hours, with the e-logs, as long as nothing goes wrong.
9:50 a.m.
Liberal
Leah Taylor Roy Liberal Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON
That's right, but we know that things go wrong. They always have, and that hasn't changed. Both of you have talked about many instances in the past of things going wrong. I understand that the truckers and companies are planning for that, but sometimes there are unforeseen circumstances. In the legislation, there is a way to appeal when there are unforeseen circumstances, but it seems that it's still a problem.
The question is this: How do we solve the problem? A number of things have been brought up, like more regional processing plants, better ventilation in the transport vehicles and more rest stops.
Since you're operating a rest stop, I'm asking you about the rest stops and how we could have more of them to try to address the underlying issue here, which is really the facilities for the truckers to be able to safely get rest and make sure that the animals' welfare is taken care of as well.
9:50 a.m.
President, The Barn Feed & Livestock Co. Inc.
If you get rest stops in Manitoba, then you'd have to have another one down in the Ottawa or North Bay type of area, because now all of a sudden we're kicking in the 36-hour rule. It's being brought into play here at the same time. Because of where we're situated, we're right in the middle. From either direction, you can get here in 36 hours if everything goes right.
9:50 a.m.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative John Barlow
Thanks, Mr. Livingston.
Thanks, Ms. Taylor Roy.
Mr. Perron, you have six minutes.
9:50 a.m.
Bloc
Yves Perron Bloc Berthier—Maskinongé, QC
Thank you, Chair.
I thank the witnesses for being here with us.
Mr. Livingston, you explained to Mrs. Taylor Roy that the problems related to the regulations have always existed, but that the electronic logging system has removed the flexibility that came with logging driving hours on paper. You say, for example, that the current demand is to allow for that flexibility again. That seems reasonable to me. I think that the people in the transportation industry were trying to comply with the regulations, even though this was being done on paper and they could, as you said, stop doing that.
Over the course of your career, when driving hours were logged on paper, did you see people try to exceed the maximum allowed for transport by very much?
9:50 a.m.
President, The Barn Feed & Livestock Co. Inc.
Oh, yes, I've seen guys who broke every rule in the book. At the same time, when you break the rules that hard.... The animals need to rest. If you drive for, say, 14 or 15 hours and you stop for four hours and rest, those animals are resting at the same time. If you've been on the road for 14 hours, then standing in the back of that aluminum tin can with the roads as rough as they are, those animals are just vibrating.
When the animals get off the truck here, we can tell the quality of the driver in how the animals arrive. If they arrive here all sweated up, if they arrive here weaving down the chute, it's because they haven't had any rest at all when they were driving. To drive 16, 17 or 18 hours isn't the answer. The answer is to be able to get where you want to get to and not have to stop an hour or two hours away from where you want to be.
That's where all the stuff is coming from.
9:50 a.m.
Bloc
Yves Perron Bloc Berthier—Maskinongé, QC
I understand the point you are trying to make. Thank you very much.
Obviously, we do not want there to be too much abuse. It is good to have regulations, but it is also good to give the transporters the necessary flexibility to get to their destination when they are almost there. That is what I understand from your intervention.
Essentially, what you said to Mrs. Taylor Roy is that your company, located in the middle of the country, is accessible to almost everyone, if all goes well. However, if something does not go well, it would be good to be able to add one or two rest areas. You even mentioned some locations.
Did I understand you correctly?
9:55 a.m.
President, The Barn Feed & Livestock Co. Inc.
There's another place here, about 50 kilometres east of us. There's another place over at Hearst that does the same thing. They're smaller in size than we are. I think the Hearst barn can handle two or three loads of cattle or about six loads of pigs.
9:55 a.m.
Bloc
Yves Perron Bloc Berthier—Maskinongé, QC
Okay.
From what I understand, there is no other location equivalent to yours. Maybe it would not be a bad idea for there to be others, a certain distance away, to try to give the transporters room to manouevre.
Is that right?
9:55 a.m.
Bloc
Yves Perron Bloc Berthier—Maskinongé, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Livingston.
Mr. Greidanus, you transport something else. You transport bees. We know that unplanned stops can cause problems. If you have to stop in the middle of the day, you might lose some of your cargo, if I may put it that way. It might also weaken the hives or the nucleus colony.
Is that right?
9:55 a.m.
Canadian Honey Council Delegate and Director, Alberta Beekeepers Commission
Bees like to fly. They don't like to stay inside the hive, especially when the sun is shining. If you're driving down the road and have hives on the back of the truck, even if they're netted, you get escapes. They want to get out. In the back of the truck, they get hot and want to ventilate. When you park the truck, you can't sit there, whistle and have all the bees come back. They fly around. The only option you have is taking off. You leave a cloud of bees behind.
If you're driving down the road on a hot sunny day and stop, it's not uncommon to see, where you stop, a small swarm of bees hanging off one of the little reflectors on the side of the road, or from a tree or whatever. That's because their home has disappeared. The first thing they do is get out and make an orientation flight. Any other traffic there.... Anyone who stops in that particular area is quite likely to get stung.
I've listened to the conversation. It's not a simple problem with the ELDs. I'm pretty sure you guys have all heard the song Convoy by Paul Brandt. It has a line that says:
We tore up all of our swindle sheets
And left 'em sittin' on the scales
That's not how truckers operate. Logbooks and ELDs have a place, and there's a reason we need to have something like that in place. You have to balance paying the bills with taking care of yourself. Everyone driving a truck is doing it because they want to earn an income. However, you have to take care of yourself. When unforeseen circumstances happen on the road.... The driver being tired is not the only risk; it's not the only danger out there. When hauling bees, and when an unforeseen circumstance happens on the road, my first thought is, “What about the other cars around me? I'm parked here. I'm stopped, but what's going to happen with these bees? Are they going to fly off?”
I remember that years ago, I wanted to expand my business. There's a beekeeper in Keremeos who had a bunch of hives he wanted to sell. I thought, “Okay, I'll buy them.” I went to Keremeos to pick up the bees. It was mid-May. The snow melt was going on. The rains were there and whatnot. The plan was this: I would show up at the bee location where the hives were. We would load them up starting at six o'clock in the evening, early evening. I would try to leave before eight o'clock and get down to Sicamous, which is about a three-hour drive away—
9:55 a.m.
Conservative
9:55 a.m.
Canadian Honey Council Delegate and Director, Alberta Beekeepers Commission
I do apologize.
9:55 a.m.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative John Barlow
I know you want to finish your anecdote. I'll welcome Mr. Bachrach, who is subbing in for Alastair. Maybe he will allow you some time to finish your story, but I will leave that up to Mr. Bachrach during his six minutes.
9:55 a.m.
NDP
Taylor Bachrach NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm subbing in for Ms. Mathyssen, who is subbing in for Mr. MacGregor. We're covering a lot of bases today.
I would be happy, Mr. Chair, to give the witness a few more moments to finish that thought.
9:55 a.m.
Canadian Honey Council Delegate and Director, Alberta Beekeepers Commission
Thank you very much. You're very kind. I'll be brief.
The plan was, load the hives, start around six or seven o'clock in the evening, be on the road by eight o'clock, get to Sicamous, try to get six hours of sleep in, refuel, and then make the jump from Sicamous back to Stettler, which is under that 12-hour mark.
The way it actually went is that we started loading the bees at the time we said, but because of the rains and the snowmelt, the river in Keremeos was flooding, and in the farmer's field where the bees were, the river water came up high enough that it was blocking our egress out of the field. The beekeeper had to get all of his hives out of that field or else he wouldn't be able to get into them, so we had to load three trucks that night: a drop-deck; my truck, which is a tandem axle with a 32-foot deck on the back; and then another truck as well.
We got them all loaded, but when we tried to leave, the drop-deck tractor-trailer unit got stuck in the mud that was created by the river flowing through the field, and we were stuck there until three o'clock in the morning waiting for a trackhoe to come and pull us all out. That's how we finally got out.
At three o'clock in the morning, now I'm way behind. I'm still in Keremeos. I don't have the option of unloading my truck again, because then I have to wait until the next night to reload again to keep going. It wasn't likely that the river was going down, so I got up, got out of the field, drove down the road a little ways to the first gas station I could come to, refuelled, slept in my truck for an hour and a half, and then hit the road.
On the way home, we hit construction in the Kicking Horse Pass, but because I had bees on the back, I stopped about half a mile back behind the rest of the cars and turned my flashers on. I ran to the front of the line. I can't be stopped on the side of the road for very long because I'm going to have a cloud of bees flying around, and for anyone who has their windows open, there's a high probability they're going to get stung. There's 10% of the population who will go into an anaphylactic reaction if they get stung by bees.
The construction company realized that, so they radioed in and they gave me special permission to drive through the construction zone, passing all the other traffic that was stopped there.
For a well-planned trip, what should have been well within the requirements for hours of operation, I ended up putting in a 16-hour day to finally get home back to Stettler. It's not fun.
Again, the point is that we're hauling bees. I only do three or four runs like that a year. I can have a log in my truck, but for three or four runs.... The rest of it is all under provincial guidelines. The danger is not necessarily just the tired driver; there are other dangers and other things that need to be taken into consideration when you're looking at hours of service.
With the bees, we have to take into consideration that when we're driving, even if our loads are netted, we have escapes. What's going to happen when you stop for even two or three minutes during daylight hours? What other dangers are we going to present to the travelling public?
10 a.m.
NDP
Taylor Bachrach NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Thank you very much, Mr. Greidanus.
I think you've really highlighted one of the key questions here, which is around balancing these different aspects of safety.
I know that I'm dropping into this committee partway through the conversation, but it's certainly an issue that is pertinent to farmers and ranchers in the Bulkley Valley where I live up in northwest B.C. We're fortunate to have a thriving agricultural sector, partly because people are able to get their animals to locations in Alberta within a certain shipping time.
In the past, they've been able to get them there within the parameters. The new parameters are going to make that very challenging. It's only within a couple of hours, but it makes a big difference. They don't want to get to within an hour or two of their destination for shipping their cattle and then have to stop to let the cattle out. It creates all kinds of problems, both on the cost side and on the animal welfare side. Resolving this challenge is really key to the viability of the agricultural sector in the Bulkley Valley.
The point around the bees is an interesting one, because here's another safety issue that could potentially affect the safety of other members of the public in the vicinity who get stung by the bees. Most of the time, we're talking about animal welfare versus the safety issues of having fatigued drivers on the road. I think in those circumstances, most people would say we have to prioritize the safety of the travelling public, the people who are sharing our highways with professional drivers. I think the bee situation is a bit of a unique example. It's an example of a public safety issue that doesn't happen when you're shipping cattle, for instance.
When we're talking about animal welfare and costs for farmers versus the safety of the travelling public on our highways, how do we strike the right balance? I'd welcome thoughts from either of our witnesses.
10:05 a.m.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative John Barlow
I'm sorry, Mr. Greidanus. Go ahead. We have 15 seconds, so we'll maybe have a quick response from each.
10:05 a.m.
Canadian Honey Council Delegate and Director, Alberta Beekeepers Commission
How to balance public safety, animal safety and driver fatigue is a really hard question to answer. This is where the law is an ass. It's a hard, arbitrary line, and once you cross it.... Being prevented from doing the right thing in whatever situation you're in, because each situation is slightly different and sometimes it needs a unique and specific resolution for that particular thing....
What you don't want to have happen is having the hard, blunt instrument of the law dictate what's going to happen, because the repercussions of not obeying the law over doing what's right is going to lead to bad decisions. Doing what's right is what should be done in situations when you have unforeseen circumstances arising, and that might be different this time from what it is next time, or it might be different if I'm doing it here or down there or whatnot.
A driver wants to be able to have the flexibility to know that when he's faced with unforeseen circumstances, he can make decisions to do the right thing without being punished because he did the right thing by breaking a hard, arbitrary law. That's where we're coming from.
10:05 a.m.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative John Barlow
Thanks, Mr. Greidanus.
Colleagues, looking at the clock here, we have a little bit of committee business to deal with before we adjourn at a quarter after, so that gives us just over five minutes here.
We have the Conservatives and the Liberals with their next round. We'll go four minutes each, and that should give us the little bit of time. Then if there are some lingering questions at the end, we can try to do that. I'm just going to cut everybody's time down. I'm going to stick really close to four minutes.
We'll go to Mr. Shields for four minutes, please.
10:05 a.m.
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
Mr. Greidanus, in the sense of interprovincial movement—you mentioned this earlier—what in this particular legislation and rules do you see that needs to be fixed for the interprovincial movement in your industry?
10:05 a.m.
Canadian Honey Council Delegate and Director, Alberta Beekeepers Commission
There are a couple of things that I would like to change. If I could rewrite the regulations, I would rewrite a couple of portions of it.
Number one, if you go to application section 2, it says:
(1) These Regulations apply to all commercial vehicles other than the following:
(a) a two or three-axle commercial vehicle being used for
(i) transporting the primary products of a farm....
I would extend that definition to be “a two or three-axle commercial vehicle and tractor-trailer units”, and also have some inclusion for big vehicles that are pulling trailers.
The reality is that the days of farmers just using two-axle or three-axle trucks and not going beyond that are far beyond us. The reality of agriculture today is that we're using far bigger equipment.
The other one I would change is the definition of “adverse conditions” that's in the regulations. It says that it:
“means snow, sleet, fog or other adverse weather or road conditions that were not known to a driver or a motor carrier dispatching a driver...”
Adverse conditions can be that you have a fire along the road, and the smoke is so thick that you have to slow down. It can be a rock slide on the mountain that has blocked the road, or there was an accident.
There is no definition for an emergency in the definitions in the regulations. I'm not going to sit here and say how an emergency should be defined, but there should be some work put into what would constitute an emergency, and that definition should be in a guidance document for enforcement officers and for drivers so they have some clarity that they're not going to get hammered because they went over time because these conditions happened.
The other change would be to subsections 76(1) and 76(2) regarding the use of electronic logs, which say:
The requirements of these Regulations in respect of driving time, on-duty time and off-duty time do not apply to a driver who, in an emergency, requires more driving time to reach a destination that provides safety for the occupants of the commercial vehicle and for other users of the road...
I would extend that to be similar to what we have in the States, where, if you're within 150 miles of where you're going and you have live animals on board or you're carrying an agricultural product, you have the leeway to be able to make it to where you're going so that you're not stressing yourself out. Go that last little bit and finish the trip. It's in the best interest of the cargo and the driver. I would make accommodations for aligning our regulations with the States that way.
10:10 a.m.
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
Thank you. I think we've heard this before.
Some of the changes you were talking about involve a number of different agencies in Canada. Is it simpler to make the match to the U.S. or to change the number of different departments to work with this in Canada? Which do you think is easier to do?