Public Safety Committee on May 9th, 2013

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

In terms of notification, then, are there certain steps you take immediately, based on that, which your locomotive engineers, or your porters or conductors, would realize are out of the norm?

[Marc Tessier]

As far as the last incident is concerned, VIA Rail was notified, and we were under the guidance of the RCMP. That's all I can say about that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Whatever process or whatever strategy you took, it obviously worked, so we're very pleased. I think we all have confidence that.... Obviously, the communication, then, between the RCMP and VIA Rail was very good. You were able, in whatever way you did it, to contact your conductors without giving away anything. I think Canadians can be confident in that.

We'll go to Mr. Leef, please.

[Ryan Leef, Conservative, Yukon, YT]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

This is another question for VIA Rail. We have talked a lot about the prevention strategies that are in place. Of course, it's a priority for our government, and I think obviously a priority for you at VIA Rail, to make sure that incidents don't happen in the first place. But maybe we can move to the response end of it, because I don't think we've touched on that a lot.

It is recognized a lot of times that when disaster strikes, your survivability of an incident, or the mitigation of harm, has as much to do with your response to it as it does the event itself. On that end, what kind of work is VIA Rail doing with integrated partnerships to ensure a safe and appropriate response to anything that might occur on a medium or larger scale?

[Marc Beaulieu]

We've participated in exercises with local police and the RCMP to develop our skills and knowledge on first response. Depending on the location, the site could be taken control of by the infrastructure owner themselves. We work very well in partnership with the infrastructure owners, with the RCMP, and with Transport Canada to coordinate these exercises, to practise how they go.

We have an operations control centre that is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in constant communication with whatever governing bodies we require, or infrastructure owners, to keep an eye. For anything that is signalled to us, we have identified an appropriate response per type of occurrence. We use it efficiently whenever required.

[Ryan Leef, Conservative, Yukon, YT]

Do you engage other emergency services, such as local fire and ambulance or other emergency responders, in that training?

[Marc Beaulieu]

We would contact any agency required, depending on the type of emergency it is, whether it be fire, ambulance, police, or Transport Canada. For any means that we need to mitigate the risk that has been identified to us, we have an appropriate response plan.

[Ryan Leef, Conservative, Yukon, YT]

Thank you.

Mr. McDonald, we're focused on rail, of course, but does Transport have similar plans with other public safety transport, and does that include appropriate legislation for public transport? Some of these transport systems are integrated. You take a bus to take a train to take a plane.

Maybe you could just touch on that a bit.

[Gerard McDonald]

Sure. It really depends on the type of mode. Some of the requirements we have are legislated, and we do have regulations in that regard. With others, as with the rail industry, we work through a memorandum of agreement.

The objective for us is to achieve a certain behaviour as opposed to passing laws and regulations. It's making sure that the industry's prepared, that they've assessed the risk, and that they know what they're doing and how to respond to it.

[Ryan Leef, Conservative, Yukon, YT]

Great. Thank you.

I'll go back to VIA Rail again. Obviously, with the security market nowadays, there's a host of products, programs, and systems available to choose from. When you're making decisions about the suite of security programs and security measures that you buy or integrate into your system, at even the smallest of levels, how do you go about making those decisions? Are they evidence-based, operationally appropriate decisions, keeping in mind sound financial management, or do you just try to invest in everything going and see what works?

[Marc Beaulieu]

We rely on our partnerships with experts in the field, whether it be Transport Canada, the RCMP, or other railways. We seek whatever expertise required.

All of our risk assessments are done using proven models to make sure that the mitigation we're aiming for is properly considered in our assessments. We get full cooperation from everybody and anybody who is involved in our safety and security network.

[Ryan Leef, Conservative, Yukon, YT]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Leef.

We'll now move back to Mr. Garrison.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Let me assure everybody that I'm going to have a very specific question for VIA Rail, but given some of the interventions from the other side, I just want to step back for a minute.

The terms of reference for today are fairly narrow, but we on this side think it's important to set the rail transport question of national security in the larger context. It was implied, for instance, that the audit of the Auditor General didn't really apply to what we're talking about today, and I just want to point to two of the objectives of that audit.

The Auditor General said that their audit was to “determine whether the management framework for the Public Security and Anti-Terrorism initiative was adequate to ensure that funding decisions reduced risks to Canadians by the maximum extent possible”. For that reason, we've asked a number of more general questions, because that audit I think is relevant to determining where our resources are going, and whether rail is one of the places it needs to go.

Second was to “determine whether intelligence services work efficiently together and provide enforcement personnel with adequate information”. Again, I'm going to have a very specific question about that with regard to VIA Rail.

We've asked the question on the overall impact of cuts being made in various departments, and whether anybody is examining the coordination of this to make sure that those individual cuts don't have an unintended impact on national security. We've asked about the allocation of resources to try to make sure that they're clearly based on threat and risk assessment. We've asked some questions about the coordination of those activities.

Finally, I think one of our perspectives has been that there seems to be, in the strategy, the treatment of VIA Rail as just another railway, when clearly VIA Rail, both as a crown corporation and as a passenger carrier, probably needs some special treatment in these areas.

With that in mind, I'm going to ask about—again from the Auditor General's report—a question that was raised. My question is to VIA Rail. When you sell tickets to people, do you check ID? What kind of ID would be checked?

[Marc Beaulieu]

We only check ID when necessary, in other words, if we have a doubt as to the transaction that is going on. We do not as a rule ask all of our customers for ID.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Has that policy been evaluated in a threat and risk assessment? I'm not arguing that it's necessary. I'm just asking the question of whether that policy was viewed through that lens of risk and threat assessment.

[Marc Beaulieu]

Well, as part of our ongoing review of our security plans, we're always exploring further risk mitigation in consultation with our partners, and law enforcement, and Transport Canada. We're constantly assessing further controls. That is one of the controls being assessed.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

It seems to me this might be a good example of where, by VIA Rail perhaps checking ID, it might be of assistance to law enforcement officials by flagging people who are otherwise on watch lists in other places. So here's one of my questions, then, very specifically: does VIA Rail have access to the information on lost and stolen passports?

If someone were to use a lost or stolen passport at VIA Rail, would you know that it's a lost or stolen passport? Because one of the concerns raised by the Auditor General was that this information isn't getting to front-line people.

[Marc Beaulieu]

No, I'm not aware of receiving any information on lost or stolen passports.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

My follow-up question, then, would be to Mr. Tremblay.

In the Auditor General's report, he points to what he considers serious delays in processing information on lost and stolen passports, from the passport office to the RCMP. He was talking about delays of over a month in processing that information. Can you make any comment about that?

[C/Supt Larry Tremblay]

I'm sorry. I'm just not personally aware of the specificity of your question.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

His concern was that obviously if we're dealing with terrorism factors, the timeliness is important, and that the information needs to pass quickly from Citizenship and Immigration Canada to the law enforcement authorities so that the information is out there.

One of the things he does say is that he suspects that a lack of resources for what is considered sometimes a routine operation is one of the reasons for that delay. I wonder if maybe Mr. Davies or anyone else has any comment on that.

[John Davies]

We certainly have to talk to Passport Canada about what information they push out now. Obviously, they would be looking at what's lawful to push out—if they had information—to make sure there's a lawful basis for that information to move.

I haven't heard the concern that there's an issue. Usually if a passport's stolen or lost, my understanding is that information goes to the security agencies and so on. But I think we'd have to talk to them to get more details on what constraints they may be under. I don't think the constraint would be a resource constraint. I think it would be an issue on whether it's lawful to push that information, to whom, and when.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

We'll now go back to Mr. Del Mastro.

Welcome to our committee, Mr. Del Mastro.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have a couple of questions for the witnesses.

First of all, I think certainly what we've witnessed—and I've just talked to my colleague as well—we seem to have very good collaboration with the United States. We seem to have very good collaboration between agencies, and indeed, with VIA Rail. I think that's very encouraging to everyone hearing the testimony here today.

Mr. Rafferty pointed out that there are, in fact, thousands of miles of track—in the railway industry, we do still talk miles—and it seems to me that most of it is not of great concern. Where we do have greater concerns seems to be in urbanized areas. Threats are exposed or highlighted when we see people gaining access to tracks in areas where they shouldn't be. We had an unfortunate incident just a couple of years ago in Montreal, for example, where some younger folks got down there with spray-paint cans or what have you. But it demonstrates that access to the tracks is still perhaps too easy.

What are we doing, specifically, to eliminate that kind of access to what is really a very dangerous area? If you can get down there with a spray-paint can, you can get down there with just about anything else. What are we doing to secure the tracks in urbanized areas, not only from a public safety perspective for the people who might access it, but also for the people on the trains?