Public Accounts Committee on April 30th, 2014

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

All right. I know I'm just reading your own report to you, but I find it necessary to put some of this on the record.

You also found during that 2011–12 year that Transport Canada had made “significant progress in addressing many recommendations from the [2007] Railway Safety Act review”.

Is that correct?

[Michael Ferguson]

That's correct, and then we have a “however” that follows that.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Understood, but what I'm—

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Sorry, Mr. Woodworth, but the time has expired. We're actually a little bit over.

Thank you, and now we to Mr. Allen. You now have the floor, sir.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Perhaps we'll talk about the audit period that you actually audited now. History's always a wonderful thing. I studied that once, but it's always in the past. That's the great thing about history.

Mr. Ferguson, you did note in your report that of the minimum number of inspections the department actually thought it should do, I believe you said they actually only did 26% of those.

I certainly won't put words in your mouth, sir, but my father would have said to me when he was alive if I got 26% out of 100, I didn't do too well.

You have highlighted that in your report, sir. Why would you have highlighted the fact that you only did 26%?

[Michael Ferguson]

Mr. Chair, I think we really come to sort of the why of that in paragraph 47 where we say the findings indicate that Transport Canada does not have the assurance it needs that the federal railways have implemented adequate and effective safety management systems.

I think we were highlighting that they had put in place a plan to do a number of these audits. Those audits were important for them to get all of the assurance they needed about the safety management systems, and without all of those audits, I think we made the reference it would take many years for them to get the level of assurance they were looking for.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

It was also noted in your report that this system is the SMS system, if I can to use the acronym that Mr. Lévesque quite competently outlined for us. I appreciate, Mr. Lévesque, that you explained the SMS earlier, so now we can use the acronym and don't have to keep saying it. I appreciate that.

The system had been around for about 15 years, and yet this audit, I would suggest to the department, is not the most pleasing one for them based on what you have seen inside here. It seems to me that your not knowing in a 15-year period whether you have personnel who actually can conduct SMS and whether you have the appropriate skill levels, and capacities, and competencies with those individuals isn't very reassuring for the general public.

What's your sense of where you think they need to take their competencies in the sense of, are there still deficiencies in your view inside of your audit?

[Michael Ferguson]

I can't speak to what the department has done since we haven't done that audit. I think at the particular time we identified the number of staff who were trained to do the full audits at the department. They didn't have a lot of staff at that point in time that were trained to do the full audits.

We're very encouraged by the fact that the department has agreed with the weaknesses we have found, have agreed with the recommendations we have made, and has indicated they intend to fix these problems.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

I think now I'd go to Mr. Lévesque to give us an update on that.

But first of all in your testimony when you started in your report—what you actually went through—a number of things you said struck me. You talked about “doing” or “will get done.”

Let me just refer you to your action plan, sir, at paragraph 7.70, where it says that the completion date will be the fall of 2014. Is that the human resource component we're talking about, sir, just so that it's clear to me?

[Louis Lévesque]

That's correct.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Fair enough. I thought it was, and I didn't want to use your words in your opening statement to suggest maybe you weren't doing it because there were a couple of words that in the vernacular are fluffy. I thought maybe you might have said we have a completion date in your opening statement, but that's okay. It is referring to paragraph 7.70, right? Perfect.

How far along are you with that, sir? Are you near completion, because I recognize we still feel like we're in winter in this country, but the fall of 2014 will come. I assure everyone it will come. Whereabouts are you in that timeline?

[Louis Lévesque]

The first point I want to make is that the department is in line with meeting what has been promised in this action plan.

I just want to go back to the comments about the skills of the people in the department. The first thing I want to say on that is that priority number one is ensuring safety, doing the oversight of safety in the rail transportation system.

We have a traditional approach to oversight that is based on inspection. What SMS is about is saying that we want to take safety to a higher level by having more of our resources dedicated to the auditing of safety management systems and, notably, to garner the information will that will help us direct and focus our inspections to areas of highest risk. This is not about closing shop, rearranging, and in the meantime not doing inspections. Clearly, we have fallen short on the speed of implementation of SMS. It's clear in the report. We do not have as many people as we should have at this point in time trained to do audits.

On the other side, I will say that last year we performed 30,000 inspections. It's all about ensuring that, as we move, it's to increase safety, but we're certainly not about to say that we're not going to do the inspections in order to prepare our people for it. We should be able to do both, I get that point, but the important point here is that safety is priority number one. We have an inspectorate force that is very versatile and conversant in the inspection activities. What we have to do is have more people who are able to perform audits and to meet the targets in our audit plans to ensure that we have the right coverage in our SMS.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Sorry, we're way over time. Thank you very much.

We go back over to the government side and Mr. Woodworth.

This is your second time up. You have the floor, sir.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

We'll go back to where we left off, Mr. Ferguson. I am going to get to the “however” in a moment, but, first of all, I just want to say that, from the evidence you gave me a few minutes ago, I see an arc of improvement from 2007 through to the time of your audit in 2011, with some significant advance being made almost every year.

Is that an unfair characterization on my part or is that fair?

[Michael Ferguson]

Again, we've outlined the overall time frame and when things have happened. Certainly in our timeline we have emphasized some of the things that have happened in recent years and acknowledged that those things have happened in recent years. Overall, our concern, when we looked at that whole time frame, was that things seemed to be moving too slowly.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Right.

This is where I want to say that I thank your office for contributing to that arc of improvement. The next step, then, having done the review beginning in 2007, having come up with recommendations in 2008, having dedicated $71 million to it in 2009, having then published the Rail Safety Management System Guide in 2010, your office then came along in 2011 and did your usual thorough gap analysis, if I can call it that, to point out the areas that still needed improvement. Correct?

[Michael Ferguson]

I think that's a fair characterization.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Right.

Your report then was completed in June of 2013, and that was your contribution to this—what I'm going to call—arc of improvement. Correct?

[Michael Ferguson]

Again, I think that we identified that things were moving too slowly. Yes, things were happening. Certainly I think that the report is also helping to move things along even more quickly. There were activities, there were things that were going on, but even those I think were probably happening a little too slowly.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Right.

In fact, then, your report having been delivered in June of 2013, the department accepted your recommendations. Correct?

[Michael Ferguson]

That's correct.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

There was no undue delay there, was there?

[Michael Ferguson]

No. They accepted them. They agreed with our recommendations and....

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

In fact, then, the department delivered its action plan in response to your June 2013 report. The department delivered its action plan within about six months, in January 2014. Correct?

[Michael Ferguson]

That sounds about right, yes.