Government Operations Committee on Nov. 8th, 2018

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I just want to pull up on that. We discussed the last two times a lack of urgency from the transportation department to address your outstanding items. I'm looking again at your plan. Rail deaths last year were up 35% over the previous year and rail safety goals were not met, and yet we have the minister regally standing in the House and saying that transportation safety is his number one priority.

Obviously it's not, because we have a lot of problems here. Are we running into a problem with funding because the attitude from the government side is that everything is fine, look somewhere else, no need to worry, safety is number one? Clearly, it's not.

[Jean Laporte]

As I've said, we're looking for another $320,000 roughly, more than what's in here, and it's more of an administrative issue with the Treasury Board submission process. That would allow us what we believe is the proper level of investment. In terms of Transport Canada resources to do what their mandate entails, we can't speak on their behalf. We have concerns about their oversight. We've cited them. It is on our Watchlist, so perhaps the committee should ask Transport Canada or the Minister of Transport about their resource levels.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

It's quite concerning. Again, we see deaths are up, and we haven't achieved rail safety. It has become worse for the last three years, and yet the person responsible for it stands to say it's our number one priority when it's not. Unfortunately that message gets out.

I'm looking at your outstanding recommendations. We have a bunch: 20 years older, 15 years older, 10 years older. What is it going to take, a commitment from the Minister of Transport to get these issues cleared up, or again, is it more a lack of funding for TSB?

[Kathleen Fox]

I'll take that question.

We first noted the slow progress in addressing our recommendations on the TSB Watchlist two years ago, in 2016. At that time we had 52 recommendations that were more than 10 years old, of which 39 were more than 20 years old.

In the ensuing two years, working with Transport Canada and largely due to research we did and looking at what industry has done, we were able to reduce 52 down to 34. However, there were quite a few recommendations, older recommendations, when Transport Canada had promised to give us updated information, and they did not meet the deadlines they set for themselves. As a result, we weren't able to close more.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Are those details specifically the ones they haven't provided information for?

[Kathleen Fox]

In our background information, which is available and which we can make available to the committee if you wish, we have provided the specifics on which of the specific recommendations we were referencing.

We also had a number of dormant recommendations. Dormant recommendations are ones that we are not asking the Department of Transport to update periodically, because they've already told us they've done as much as they're going to do. We've thrown those into the mix.

Now we have 62 in all that are more than 10 years old, but this isn't just a Transport Canada issue. This is a Government of Canada issue, because as you may be aware, to get regulations through the system, the Department of Justice is involved, Treasury Board assesses it from the point of view of the regulatory impact and the economic side, and then Privy Council Office is involved as well.

In this edition of the Watchlist we're asking for a number of things, specifically for Transport Canada to work to bring Canada back into line with international standards where we aren't in line—in other words, to address those recommendations—and to reduce the total number of outstanding recommendations, as well as to expedite the inter-ministerial processes that can sometimes cause delays in implementing safety-related regulations.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Over the last couple of years, the percentage of investigations completed within the published time target has been getting better. Right now you're at 15% on aviation, marine 43%, rail 29%. If you get this extra money, will you get to where you need to be, or how much do you need to receive to get to where you have to be?

[Jean Laporte]

Again, with the funds that are included in these supplementary estimates, we think we can get to those targets.

The shortfall is focused on two areas. One area is dealing with putting out more information to the public on the web, so we're asking for more money to invest in that, in translating and publishing material for public disclosure. The second area has to do with occupational health and safety and with meeting Canada Labour Code requirements. That's the money we didn't get that's stuck in this admin process right now.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thanks very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Mr. Blaikie, you have seven minutes.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Shea, this goes back to the spring and the main estimates under the Treasury Board vote 40, the central budget implementation vote. There $745,000 was set aside for a process to develop and implement a new commission for federal election leaders' debates.

Treasury Board had said they were going to be updating the list of allocations every month. To date none of that money has been allocated, but of course a new debates commissioner has been announced. I'm wondering how we got to the point where we announced the debates commissioner without releasing any of the funds meant to develop the process. That would be my first question, and my second question is how do you anticipate using those other funds that have been set aside, and specifically, have you submitted a proposal to Treasury Board?

[Matthew Shea]

We've submitted a draft Treasury Board submission to Treasury Board Secretariat. We hope to get approval in the next month, as soon as we possibly can.

I believe a nominee for the position of debates commissioner has been named; it's not formally concluded, and we will do our best to time the Treasury Board approval to coincide with the formal start of that work.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

How do we come to have a nominee if we haven't spent a dime on developing the process?

[Matthew Shea]

We spent none of the actual money set aside for the commission. On the process itself, the work to set up the debates commission, PCO is funding that internally as far as any workload that happens behind the scenes is concerned. All of the money that's in the federal budget is related to the work that the debates commissioner will do, and it's reserved specifically for them, but not for PCO.

Once again, independence—

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Then the language in the budget is mistaken when it says that the money is to develop and implement; it's actually just to implement the process.

[Matthew Shea]

It's to implement the process. It's to implement the actual debates commission itself, with a debates commissioner, and so we are working behind the scenes to make sure that can get up and running as quickly as possible. Similar to the commission of inquiry, similar to NSICOP, PCO will provide arm's-length support from a corporate perspective. My team is already working with the potential debates commissioner to make sure that everything is set up, that we can make this work.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

If we now only have a nominee, and you're anticipating, if I understood you correctly, that the nominee won't actually be officially in the job until the proposal goes through Treasury Board, is it not prejudicial to have the nominee working with PCO before we know that they're officially the debates commissioner, providing input on the Treasury Board submission for how the money's going to get spent?

[Matthew Shea]

Just to be very clear, the nominee has no role whatsoever in the Treasury Board submission. It's no different from other independent areas. We're simply seeking the funding.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Then the funding proposal would be complete before we have a debates commissioner.

[Matthew Shea]

The funding proposal is an “up to” amount that would be available for the debates commissioner to use. We have a general idea of what that dollar value is. You saw the amount in the budget this year. I can say that the intent would be for around $5 million next year. That coincides a bit with part of your first question, which was around how we are going to spend the money. The money that's set aside is for a very small fraction of the year. When you can extrapolate that out, it makes sense that it's a smaller amount this year and a larger amount next year, as we go into an election season.

We are setting that up behind the scenes. There is no input whatsoever from any nominee on how we actually set it up. However, once that money is made available, they will have complete independence to spend that money as they see fit.

However, I think the nominee spoke at a parliamentary committee this week and explained generally that it's going to be salaries and contracting and communications and those engagement types of roles if he is the debates commissioner.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

I won't press the point any further, but I do find it somewhat odd that we would have the funding proposal in place without having a commissioner who could provide input, and there was the possibility of using some of that money to develop a process that might lead to legitimately having a commissioner and then developing a proposal for the balance of those funds.

I do have a question for our witnesses from the Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board. This comes back to some of the issues around rail safety.

I'm from Transcona. Transcona's a rail town. I know a lot of people who drive trains for a living and who express a lot of frustration at the process for dealing with complaints, especially around fatigue management. Sometimes those incidents then lead to a case involving a TSB investigation.

If I'm somebody who works at CN and lives in Transcona, what can I expect as a result from the additional funds that you're requesting today? I'm concerned about people who are being called up without enough time between shifts or being forced to stay on the road longer than they should be. They've been complaining to Transport Canada. They're not seeing results. What can they hope to see changed as a result of this additional funding?

[Kathleen Fox]

I don't think you can take $3 million of additional funding and say, “This will do this in this specific rail mode.” What we're saying is if we don't get this money, we don't have enough money to cover our salaries till the end of the year. We would have to reduce our workforce by up to 10%, more now because we're already well into the year.

What this is going to allow us to do is maintain our mandate, to continue to do what we do every day, which is to investigate incidents and accidents, prepare reports, identify safety deficiencies, and make recommendations to ministers and to stakeholders to reduce those safety deficiencies.

Our Watchlist specifically mentions fatigue in the rail industry. We added that in 2016. We've expanded it to include air and marine this year. We have some very specific suggestions to the department and to the industry as to what they need to do in rail. For example, railways are required, by regulation, to have fatigue management plans. Those often rely on schedules that are negotiated between the railway companies and the unions, so it's very important that they work collaboratively to negotiate the best schedules, not from a monetary perspective or an efficiency perspective, but from a safety perspective as well.

Certainly, if we've received a number of confidential safety reports from employees at different operators who are concerned about working while fatigued and we pass those on to Transport Canada, to the operator, we expect to receive a response on what they're doing. We're just going to be able to continue to do that and advocate for the changes that need to happen so that safety's not put at risk because people work when they're fatigued.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Majid Jowhari, you have seven minutes, please.