Thank you, gentlemen, for coming.
I'll direct this to Mayor Desrosiers.
I previously was mayor of a community that had a railway running through it and I can share many of your concerns. We had industry there dealing with hazardous chemicals as well. The safety of the community is foremost, but I'll leave that questioning to the rest of my colleagues on the committee.
I want to focus on the gentleman from British Columbia and his associate from Ontario.
One of the concerns in the two reports we have seems to indicate that CN--in particular in this case, and we're talking about rail safety in all railways--appears to have had a high number over the last few years, certainly in 2005. The auditor's report and safety management assessment that were done concern me in that the inspection rates for the cars were rated at an overall safety defect rate of 20.6%, or 20% to 21%.
That means one car in five has some kind of safety defect. I realize they can vary from loose sills to defective brake beams, and I gather they vary in importance, but it seems like a high percentage. They talk about the weekly rate changing from 13% to 27%. Almost 54% of 232 locomotives inspected had a safety defect record, and the weekly locomotive safety defect rates ranged from 32% to 69% or 70%, which seems very high.
I'm concerned with some of the other recommendations that seem to indicate in some cases with rolling stock—and I'm not presuming locomotives, but more the cars—that American standards are being used to evaluate whether those cars need to be pulled and improved. It reflects on the rate of reporting incidents as well by using, in some cases, the American standards. I don't know if that's related to CN having a predominance of management coming from the States and applying their standards to Canadian operations, and even further to British Columbia, which has some of the most severe terrain grades and curves in North America. I'm curious if as workers there you have noticed that.
I would make reference to the Foisy commission's report after the Hinton disaster, which indicated that the effectiveness and rigour with which the CTC and Transport Canada move to correct identified problems are inadequate. I'm gathering that relates perhaps to staffing levels, or are their standards not adequate?
If you gentlemen could respond to that—