Government Operations Committee on Feb. 24th, 2026

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Are you going to examine the road aspect enough? I'm asking since the focus of your investigations is, first and foremost, rail. That's where your expertise lies. Whether we like it or not, we suspect that the company involved in this accident was also involved in other serious accidents, one of which, I believe, led to some deaths.

Since the company is already known to us, we wonder whether the Transportation Safety Board of Canada will also look at the road component. Whether we like it or not, what's happening on the roads right now is dire.

[Yoan Marier]

I don't want to speculate on the investigation's scope, because investigations are managed by the directors of investigation for each mode. At the bureau, we stay at arm's length when it comes to conducting investigations. However, I take your points, and I will pass them on to the appropriate people in our office.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Okay.

I know I have very little time left, Mr. Chair. I would like to add the rest of my time to my next turn. Can I do that?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Sure.

We'll go to Mr. Gill now.

[Harb Gill, Conservative, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, sir, for attending.

We have seen some recurring issues that you've identified: fatigue, airport runway incursions, commercial fishing vessels, vessel stability and rail grade crossing collisions, which is an issue that you've identified and that we identified decades ago. The collisions keep happening.

When the same contributing factors appear across multiple investigations year after year, what does that tell you about implementation or the oversight gaps?

[Yoan Marier]

When we conduct an investigation, our goal is to identify what happened and, more importantly, why it happened. From this, we can identify the safety deficiencies, which is what went wrong, and make recommendations to improve transportation safety.

Most recommendations that we issue are targeted at Transport Canada, the Department of Transport. We can issue recommendations to other entities but, in practice, most are addressed to Transport Canada. We follow up with the department every year to make sure that action is being taken.

All of the assessments of our recommendations are made public. It is our way to keep the pressure on and make sure that the change is happening and that these deficiencies are fixed.

[Harb Gill, Conservative, Windsor West, ON]

Is the compliance voluntary? Are there any consequences if they don't comply? For instance, rail grade crossing collisions, which take many lives every year, have been ongoing. It's been over 20 years since your department made those recommendations. Why is this still happening? Who is dropping the ball?

[Yoan Marier]

We don't have the power to force change. We can only identify the issues and then make recommendations for them to improve. After that, the implementation of recommendations depends on who the recommendation target is. As I mentioned, most recommendations we issue are targeted at Transport Canada, and we follow up with them every year.

[Harb Gill, Conservative, Windsor West, ON]

Would it be worth our while to give you those legislative changes so that you can enforce and demand accountability?

[Yoan Marier]

Right now, our mandate to do the investigations ensures that we are independent. Being independent is essential to our mandate because it allows us to look at the big picture, look at the work of the regulator and look at the work of all the other entities in an independent manner. This is why we are sometimes able to be critical of the implementation of some safety measures when they're not going at the speed that we wish. I would say that right now, our mandate is adequate for our purposes, which is to conduct independent investigations and then make recommendations.

[Harb Gill, Conservative, Windsor West, ON]

However, you have many recommendations still sitting on the shelves that have not been implemented. There are 81 recommendations that have not been implemented since 1990. Why? Why have they not been executed or implemented and finished?

[Yoan Marier]

There can be many reasons. As I mentioned earlier, of these 81 recommendations, there are 44 in air, 23 in marine and 14 in rail. Some are very recent. For instance, in marine, we have three recommendations that are less than a year old. Of course, for these recommendations, they are too recent for change to have been put in place.

It is true that some recommendations are very old. We have six recommendations in air that are more than 20 years old, for example. For these recommendations, oftentimes the issue is that our assessment of the risks and of the way to resolve the safety deficiency is different from the assessment of the Department of Transport. We have different perspectives on the issue and how to fix it. In some cases, we're also waiting for regulatory amendments. As we all know, the regulatory amendment process can take time. In some cases, we have been waiting year after year for these regulatory changes to be implemented.

[Harb Gill, Conservative, Windsor West, ON]

Would it be fair for me to say that the folks who should be accountable to Canadians are not being accountable and not being responsible in implementing the recommendations that you have put forth?

[Yoan Marier]

As I mentioned, all of our recommendations and assessments are made public, so this is our way to identify the risks and to keep pressure on the regulators and the stakeholders to make sure that change is happening.

[Harb Gill, Conservative, Windsor West, ON]

It appears the pressure's not working.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

We'll go to Mr. Gasparro, please.

[Vince Gasparro, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you both for coming, and thank you for your service.

Maybe we can just take a quick step back. Can you provide a brief overview of the investigative process, please?

[Yoan Marier]

The first step is the occurrence report.

There is an occurrence. An occurrence can be an accident or an incident. Under the regulations, there is a list of accidents and incidents that have to be reported to us. Operators are obligated to report that to us. There is an occurrence report that we receive. Based on that information, the investigating team, which is usually an investigator and his or her manager, decides whether to deploy to the accident site.

Once they deploy, they will assess the occurrence and decide which type of investigation to conduct. As I mentioned earlier, it can be a class 2 for a very complex investigation, all the way to a class 5, which would basically just be collection of data for statistical purposes. They will assess this and, based on the classification, the investigation will start.

The first step is the field phase. They will collect information about the wreckage. They will interview witnesses. They will discuss with manufacturers.

Then there is the analysis phase, which is basically to identify not what happened but why it happened. In that case, this would be, for example, doing further analysis in the laboratory and having follow-up discussions with the manufacturers to identify why the accident happened.

Then a report will be produced. This report is then submitted to the board. The board is me and four other board members. We take a look at the report, and this leads to a confidential draft report.

The confidential draft report is submitted to what we call “designated reviewers”. Designated reviewers are persons who may be directly affected by the board's findings. They get a copy of the confidential draft report and provide comments on the report. Once we get the comments back, we take them into consideration. We make modifications to the report if required.

Then there is a final board review, and the report is published with any applicable recommendations.

[Vince Gasparro, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Thank you for that.

You mentioned “occurrence”, “accident” and “incident”. Is there a difference between the three? Can you just quickly....

[Yoan Marier]

“Occurrence” is the general term for both accidents and incidents.

An accident would be, for example, the occurrence in Toronto where the aircraft flipped upside down on landing. That would be an accident—a major one.

An incident would be an engine failure, such as an aircraft's having an engine failure and having to do an emergency landing at an airport, but with no damage, no injuries or any of that—just engine failure and an emergency landing. That would be an incident.

[Vince Gasparro, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

How do you then work with your stakeholders to encourage the adoption of your recommendations?

[Yoan Marier]

When we issue the recommendation, if the recommendation is issued to a minister, the minister has 90 days to respond to explain what they will do to address the recommendation. When we get the initial response, we assess it and give it a rating that can go from “unsatisfactory” all the way to “fully satisfactory”. Then, on an ongoing basis, we ask for follow-up information about the status of the recommendation. If required, we will modify our rating. For instance, we may have an initial assessment showing that the intent is satisfactory, but a few years later, the department decides not to move ahead with the changes. That would affect the rating, and we could downgrade the rating.

We are also very engaged with stakeholders, industry associations and all of that. We routinely travel to industry conferences to make sure that we spread our message, that we talk to people and that we also get the pulse of what is happening in the field, what people are seeing in the field.

[Vince Gasparro, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

You mentioned during your previous exchange with one of my colleagues the fact that the Transportation Safety Board is independent and at arm's length from the government. Can you talk about why that's important, please?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm afraid that you haven't left time for a response.

The time is up, but maybe you can get back to us in writing for that.

We'll now go back to Mr. Barsalou-Duval for two and a half minutes, please.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

If I remember correctly, there was a train accident on November 14, 2024, in Longueuil. The Transportation Safety Board of Canada went to the site. One of the conclusions you reached was that the wear and tear on the tracks of the secondary line, or on tracks that are not the main line, if I'm not mistaken, was really quite advanced. I think the tracks were over 100 years old.

Do you know if this is widespread across Canada?

That was the first part of my question. The second part is this: Do you know if the tracks at the site have been repaired since then?