Transport Committee on May 7th, 2007

[Lawrence Cannon, Conservative, Pontiac, QC]

Oh, we're here until 2016? Sounds like it. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

If I may interrupt, I'll turn to Mr. Jean now.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

On that note, as you know, Minister, we've had an opportunity to study rail safety recently. We've heard from a lot of witnesses.

I know you're a minister who for the first time put a ministerial order against CN. As for a safety action plan, there were 76 enforcement actions over the last year, I think. This government, through the department, did an independent review of the Railway Safety Act in October, and indeed encouraged this committee, through me, to take another look at rail safety as much as we could. Indeed, I wanted to bring to your attention, Minister, that one particular witness, who had survived a double fatality in B.C., said your actions were long overdue; he in fact applauded your actions. I wanted to bring that to your attention.

My first question is actually in relation to the Quebec bridge. I know that my Quebec caucus, especially the Conservative members, have come to me over time on the Quebec bridge and have had a lot of questions on that. I was wondering if you could give us an update on what has taken place in relation to that CN property.

[Lawrence Cannon, Conservative, Pontiac, QC]

Well, specifically on that issue, we have decided to take CN to court on that specific point. We believe that CN does have an obligation. I won't go beyond that because it is going to be before the courts, and I'll let the courts decide on our allegations or premises.

Maybe Guy wants to talk to that specific issue, but we'll leave it at that.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

I know it has been a contentious issue for the people of Quebec City as well, so I'm glad to see that the government is taking steps on that after a long time waiting.

I also want to talk a little bit about inspectors. We've received some statistical information on Transport Canada safety inspectors. I think all members have a copy of this in both languages. We've heard a lot of speculation from time to time in relation to the deletion of inspectors. From this chart, it looks like in 1992-93 we had 576 inspectors, and today we have somewhere in the neighbourhood of 873, so there has been quite an increase in the number of inspectors.

I was wondering if the department or Monsieur Grégoire could continue on with his explanation as to why there has been the change in the number of inspectors.

[Lawrence Cannon, Conservative, Pontiac, QC]

Well, that's a good point, so we'll let Mr. Grégoire complete his answer.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Go ahead, Mr. Grégoire.

[Marc Grégoire]

There has been, indeed, a significant increase in the number of inspectors since 1992-93. The reasons for those increases are written in the right column of the chart given to you. First of all, the Moshansky inquiry resulted in the department obtaining a number of additional resources in 1993-94 and 1994-95. Then, on November 1, 1996, the department transferred the air navigation system to Nav Canada. A number of people--about 6,400--were transferred to Nav Canada. Some were ANS inspectors, but some stayed over at the department. These were ANS air drone inspectors. That explains the further increase you see there. Then as part of airports transfer, people doing inspections on behalf of the airports group in Transport Canada were transferred back to the civil aviation group.

You see, then, back in 1999-2000 and 2000-2001 that we got another increase for the safety workload review. Then we got program integrity. The management committee and the DM in 2003 allocated $9.3 million to civil aviation. So that took us from 576 to 873.

What I was trying to say at the beginning was that we cannot find a reference to 1,400, which didn't come from us. Other inspectors who are not shown there are aircraft services inspectors who are still with Transport Canada but in another branch, as well as engineers who do aircraft certification--about 130--who are not there either.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

So in essence, over the last 12 years, the number of inspectors has increased by over 300.

[Marc Grégoire]

Yes, that's correct.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

That's a significant percentage.

I was wondering, Minister, about the $33 billion this government has allocated, which is obviously a tremendous amount to put into infrastructure and is long overdue. And you've had rave reviews from the federal municipalities organization. How is this going to be spent, Minister? Is this going to be allocated on a per capita basis for the most part? How is it going to be allocated as far as the country is concerned?

There's been some talk and something raised by Mr. Volpe previously that would suggest that political motives are going to be utilized in the allocation of money, but....

[Lawrence Cannon, Conservative, Pontiac, QC]

I'll let Mr. Volpe speak to that question. Clearly, in Alberta, he's going to have a...I'll grant him Alberta, but apart from that....

The total amount of money that's being spent.... I mentioned the gas tax funding before, in terms of the $8 billion being carried forward.

There's the GST rebate, which brings the total rebate for communities and municipalities to 100%, so that's $5.8 billion.

I'm on page 167 of the budget, colleagues.

Then $8.8 billion for the Building Canada Fund.

For gateways and border crossings there is $2.1 billion. That specifically, of course, is not necessarily on a jurisdictional basis.

The Building Canada Fund would have the P3 projects, which are $1.2 billion.

There's the equal per jurisdiction funding, which is the $25 million per jurisdiction for seven years, which totals up to $325 million per province and per territory, for a grand total of $2.275 billion.

There is the Asia-Pacific corridor initiative, which is roughly $1 billion, as well as the other projects, which are sunsetting infrastructure initiatives for about $4 billion.

So the total amount on table 5.3 is $37 billion.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

That's going to be allocated on a per capita basis?

[Lawrence Cannon, Conservative, Pontiac, QC]

They will not necessarily all be on a per capita basis, but the Building Canada Fund will be. Also the gas tax, of course, will be done on a per capita basis inasmuch as it's directed towards the municipalities.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Excellent. Thank you, Minister.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Bell.

[Don Bell, Liberal, North Vancouver, BC]

Mr. Minister, I have a couple of areas I'd like to talk about. The first is railway safety. You made mention regarding the history--I guess the increasing history--of derailments and incidents that were finally responded to. You made reference and response to my colleague, Mr. Volpe, about this predating your time. I think you will acknowledge that the spike in railway derailments became very noticeable by the summer of 2005. A lot of that was with CN, which had taken over BC Rail in July of 2004. By the summer and fall of 2005, it became apparent that there was a significant spike. We'd had the Cheakamus River incident.

Minister Lapierre did order, in the fall of 2005, a safety audit and a safety management report to look into the causes of this. I recognize that you took action in December of 2006, I believe, with respect to appointing this panel and gave them until October. I'm concerned that in October of 2006 this committee had begun our motion, prior to your appointment of the panel. I had put forward a motion calling for this inquiry that we're currently undertaking. I just wanted to put the sequencing in to suggest that in fact the railway derailments really spiked--and that was across Canada, but particularly noticeably in British Columbia--after the takeover of BC Rail. The Liberal government did respond by both ordering the audit and placing orders, as you did. You ordered a section 32, and there were section 31 orders placed upon CN regarding the length of trains they could carry and the speed of the trains in British Columbia.

I'm curious as to why you felt a panel was needed on top of the work being done by this committee. Did you think our work wasn't going to be adequate?

[Lawrence Cannon, Conservative, Pontiac, QC]

No. There's an old expression in French that says, trop fort ne casse pas.

[Don Bell, Liberal, North Vancouver, BC]

Which means...?

[Lawrence Cannon, Conservative, Pontiac, QC]

Which means that we should be taking every possible measure we have. So, yes, a review panel is important because a review panel will focus on, as I mentioned before, going and getting the best practices that are out there. We'll be going out there and meeting the people. I'm not saying this committee will not be able to do it, but the committee will be doing that also, so we will have the opportunity of comparing and moving forward with two groups that do want to enhance our railway safety measures.

I want to point out also, Mr. Bell, that in 2006 we issued 76 enforcement actions to the industry as a whole. This includes 11 orders regarding CN operations and 30 notices on safety issues. There was a ministerial order. You alluded to it before--under section 32--and that was the first ever to ensure compliance. Then we did the Railway Safety Act.

I don't want to cast aspersions here, but this has been going on for some time, and the time for action is now. I think you're just as committed to that as I am.

[Don Bell, Liberal, North Vancouver, BC]

I'm hoping that when this committee comes in with recommendations, which I expect will be well before October, you will be prepared to act on those and not hold off until you get your report from your panel.

[Lawrence Cannon, Conservative, Pontiac, QC]

I'm going to wait until I have as much information as possible to show the members of this committee. I think we are going to have to go through a legislative commitment, and in that sense I think it is important to give the members of this committee, as well as myself, as much information as possible. We'll make sure this is done in a proper and orderly fashion, so we can all see it.

[Don Bell, Liberal, North Vancouver, BC]

My concern is that the reports that were ordered by Minister Lapierre were received in January--at the time of the election--yet they were not made public. You declined to make them public. We had additional incidents and deaths that occurred.

I'm wondering how you feel about the information in that report. Why wasn't it made public so we could put the pressure on CN? Do you feel that some of those subsequent incidents might have been avoided had we put the additional pressure on CN?

[Lawrence Cannon, Conservative, Pontiac, QC]

Mr. Bell, as a third party, CN didn't authorize Minister Lapierre to go forward with that. That was their decision. My deputy says they have apparently changed their opinion on that now.

It's exactly the same question Mr. Julian asked me last year. I'm all for opening this up, but unfortunately the laws that govern this gave CN the possibility of saying it doesn't want to make this public.

I think we have to have as much public information around this issue as possible so that as legislators we can pass the best bill possible.

[Don Bell, Liberal, North Vancouver, BC]

Will you be recommending changes that would not give an agency such as CN the ability to veto when the government does an inquiry, so we would have that information available to the public, and certainly to this committee, which is responsible for the Railway Safety Act?