Public Safety Committee on May 9th, 2013

[Gerard McDonald]

Mr. Chair, obviously, as the member points out, access to tracks is a very big concern for us, on both the safety side and the security side. What we expect each railway organization to do is to conduct an appropriate threat and risk assessment of all their infrastructure, identify those areas requiring the highest need of improvement, and develop the appropriate mitigation measures to address those.

We're working with the railways, on both the safety and the security side, to help them identify those areas where there are specific instances—such as in Montreal where access to the tracks was a concern—then we work with them to see what can be done. It's my understanding that changes have been made to that particular area to make it more secure.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

When we look at VIA, for example, they tend to operate at speeds faster than freight trains. That's expected. It's part of their business plan. These specific areas become of greater concern. If people can access the tracks, they don't have a lot of warning. People often, frankly, mistake the speed of trains. They don't have a lot of warning, specifically with passenger trains and the speed they're travelling at.

Has there been consideration given—and, again, it speaks to all aspects of rail security—to greater mitigation efforts, such as fencing and so forth, that would really block access to railway yards in urban areas?

[Gerard McDonald]

It's not an area that we regulate specifically in a general sense. But if there is a specific area of concern, we can work with the railway to look at where further mitigation measures might be necessary, and if necessary, try to come to an agreement with the railways. That is what we do to address those.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

At this point, it's optional whether the railways may choose or not—

[Gerard McDonald]

It's the railway's responsibility.

We work with them. If we find an area that is a continuing concern, we can bring more force to bear on finding a potential solution.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Okay.

To VIA Rail, as I said, we've seen some incidents where there have been concerns about access to the tracks. I know CN is a principal railway whose tracks you operate on in the corridor. There's also some interaction with CP.

Are you working with those railways specifically to enhance security to prevent access along those tracks?

[Marc Beaulieu]

We rely strongly on the infrastructure owners to provide that safety. We report very quickly and efficiently to them whenever we find there's a risk area that needs to be addressed.

We work very closely with Operation Lifesaver, which obviously creates awareness campaigns on the dangers of being on or near infrastructure. We work very closely with Transport Canada. In fact, we've had a very successful private-crossing closure program that was funded by Transport Canada to improve rail security on the short distance of infrastructure that we own. All incidents and reasons for suspicion are quickly reported to the infrastructure owner for their information and furtherance.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

We'll move to Mr. Scarpaleggia, please, for five minutes.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Mr. McDonald, I'm looking at a newspaper article from a couple of weeks ago. It says: In its latest plans and priorities report, Transport Canada noted that security “systems and processes in place may not be sufficiently robust to respond” to a major incident.

Perhaps you could comment on that. Is it a misquote?

[Gerard McDonald]

No, I don't believe it's a misquote. It's from our report on plans and priorities. Part of that is that you outline what some of the risks in the system are and how you might mitigate them. One of the risks identified in that report is that our plans aren't robust enough. Obviously, to mitigate it we're going to ensure that we enhance those plans to ensure their robustness.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Okay.

Mr. Beaulieu, just to come back to the marshals, you have plainclothes marshals on VIA Rail trains in Canada. You did say that, correct?

[Marc Beaulieu]

I did.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Okay. I don't know if you can answer this, but on what percentage of trains would you have them? Is it 5%, 10%, 20%?

[Marc Beaulieu]

To reveal more information about some of our measures would defeat the purpose of the measures that are in place, so I'm going to choose not to answer that.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Understood.

That's why, actually, Liberals more and more are calling for the establishment of a public safety and national security committee that would meet in camera. As you know, Senator Dallaire has been discussing this, and I brought it up a couple times at this committee. That's precisely why—so we can get some of these answers.

On the issue of passenger lists, when it comes to air travel, Mr. McDonald, correct me if I'm wrong, but every time someone gets on a plane in Canada, their name is checked against an RCMP list or some kind of list to see if they're a person of interest. Or is it just people travelling in and out of Canada, especially to the United States?

[Gerard McDonald]

Their names are checked against what is called a specified persons list.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Is that done for people getting on VIA trains? If not, would it be very expensive and complicated to do it for VIA passenger lists as well?

[Gerard McDonald]

It is not done for VIA trains. One would have to assess what the value of that would be before determining whether it would be a worthwhile exercise and whether it would mitigate any security risks.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Well, I would think that if it mitigates security risks in one area, it would mitigate them in another. We're talking in both cases about mass transit. Obviously, in some ways, I suppose, there's more concern about air travel, but we're talking about probably the same passenger loads, and so on and so forth. Given that there's no screening of baggage that gets on a VIA Rail train, probably there's a good reason to screen the lists.

I would suggest that this is something that VIA Rail and the government might want to look at, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to turn to the big issue, I guess, Mr. Beaulieu and Mr. Tessier, as representatives of the government. Is anyone in a position to compare and contrast our rail security here, especially in the busy Montreal-Quebec City-Windsor corridor, with how Amtrak tackles security in the busy New York-Boston-Washington corridor? Apparently all their baggage has to go through sniffer dogs and so on.

I'm not suggesting that this is what we should look at, but are you regularly comparing and contrasting, and maybe sharing best practices? Or are they out of the picture, in some way, from your concerns?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

I think that was, perhaps, to Mr. Beaulieu.

[Marc Beaulieu]

We constantly review safety and security measures by other railways, whether it be Amtrak or Europe or Australia, to see what their best practices are. Based on our risk assessments, we determine what actions we should take.

If I may, I'm going to go back to your passenger list question, just for a clarification. Every person who gets on our trains has their ticket scanned so we know exactly how many people and what people are aboard our trains. This is consistent with the safety and security plans we submit to Transport Canada. We know who is on our trains based on ticket scanning, and we've implemented that technology.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Your time is just up, very quickly, please.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Are you comparing that with a police list? For example, he may not be a terrorist. It could be somebody who's known to have a firearm and has threatened someone in the past.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Scarpaleggia.

We'll now move to Mr. Rafferty.