Transport Committee on March 13th, 2008

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

The last thing I want to get in here, while I have a brief window on this, is that there are 56 recommendations. That's obviously a lot of recommendations.

We've identified the heart, needing to get to stage five, both for the industry and for the regulator.

Looking at the priorities, every government has to make priorities, and 56 recommendations are a lot. Which are the most significant for the government to focus in on, structurally speaking, to get both the industry and the regulator to that stage five? They may not necessarily be the lowest-hanging fruit, but if you were to distill this down to the most significant three or four recommendations that will really push this thing forward, what are those?

[Douglas Lewis]

Maybe I can give you four or five, but not rank them.

I think we have to have a better collection of information. Transport Canada has to have the ability to collect the information, analyze it, and disseminate it. It has to start with the information.

I think there has to be a bigger emphasis on implementation of safety management systems in both Transport Canada and the companies. I'd put that fatigue management issue in the five. Straightening out the ways in which rules are developed should be made into a regulation, and everybody should work at it.

Lastly--and maybe we should start with this one--both Transport Canada and the industry have to make a better effort to communicate and be transparent and work together.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Maloney.

[John Maloney, Liberal, Welland, ON]

Mr. Lewis, you had a recommendation or a suggestion that municipalities and developers should consult with Transport Canada regarding new developments. I envisage perhaps two situations. Say a developer is putting in a subdivision two miles down the road, and the density of secondary roads traffic will increase as they lead to primary transportation arterial roads. How far away do we have to consider this? What is reasonable proximity to a rail line, or is it just subjective? Or do you have to consider every situation on its own? Should Transport Canada have to sign off on these developments? What do we do with existing development, whether it's residential, commercial, or industrial? Should we--we being the Government of Canada--be funding initiatives to improve hazardous situations with current development? Is it sort of a double-edged sword? Should we be providing not only consultation on the new development but assistance to a municipality, such as at crossings? Crossings are very expensive to put up, with the signals, etc. That's a concern, as well as new development.

[Douglas Lewis]

Thanks, Mr. Maloney. That comes from our observations of proximity issues in my comment about jurisdiction. The safest crossing is a grade separation. That may be expensive, but municipalities say to developers that they want street lights, sewers, and water. Why shouldn't they be able to say they want them to provide money for a grade separation on the other side of the railway?

Our example in the report is from Wetaskiwin. We took a rail inspection car from Calgary to Edmonton. There's a whole lot of land in Alberta, and when you get to Wetaskiwin you see what's happened. You have the town on one side of the tracks and you have the subdivision and the school on the other. It's a recipe for disaster. I realize grade separations are expensive, but a municipality wanting development approves the subdivision on the other side, gets the sewers and water, and nobody says they should take all their roads and funnel them into one crossing where there's going to be a grade separation. They expect a contribution for that too. If they don't get it, the council down the road is the one that deals with the problems. I think there should be more emphasis on doing that when we have lots of land.

The counterpart in the city of Montreal was where I think a golf course owned by one of the railway companies has nine holes in one municipality and nine holes in the other. One is saying that nine holes are going to be residential development and the other is saying they don't want those nine holes developed. How do you solve these problems? How do we prevent the residential community being built, and then the next thing you know, at the first council meeting after people have lived there a while, they're complaining to council.

I think there has to be better cooperation between the municipalities and the federal government. I wouldn't give the railways the hammer--and I don't think you can do it constitutionality--but we asked for something like Ontario's buffer requirement. If there is a development within 300 metres of a railway line, there has to be notice to the railway, so it can apply to the various hearings, be a party to them, and put their point of view in front of the politicians who are going to make the final decision.

[John Maloney, Liberal, Welland, ON]

What about areas that have been built up for years that have hazardous conditions? Should we be stepping up to the plate to assist municipalities to mitigate those hazards?

[Douglas Lewis]

That could be a very expensive proposition for the federal government. I think you'll notice in the report that we stayed away from suggesting we should fund railway crossing improvements for provincial railways, for that very reason. The provinces have control over municipal planning. Should the federal taxpayer be making monetary solutions for provinces that have created their own problems? I'm not sure.

[John Maloney, Liberal, Welland, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Shipley.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Like others, I also want to congratulate and thank the panel for their work. It started, I think, in February and ended in November. Coming up with a very thorough report with 56 recommendations is very commendable, so I want to thank you and your whole panel for the work you've done.

I come from southwestern Ontario. I don't have a large city through which trains go, but I have a large rural area and a lot of small towns through which main lines run. Over the years we've had a number of accidents on the rail lines.

In rural areas we have professional emergency people. Most of them are volunteers. I follow up on Mr. Maloney's concern about municipalities and those sorts of things in working around jurisdictional issues with CN and CP in our small towns. Municipalities don't always have the option. A town has maybe been there for generations with a rail line through it; it once had a train station and now it doesn't. So a number of issues come with it.

I'd just lay out some of the concerns that happen in the rural areas. The concerns in terms of rail safety aren't just for large towns. I can tell you that safety in terms of the public is likely about as paramount in terms of rail safety as it is on road safety. There isn't anyone in the rural areas who doesn't cross the railway, and our railways out in our rural areas come with a variety of safety protections.

In terms of rail safety, and getting to the SMS, on page 67--and I know it's been brought up before, and you've mentioned it--there is a submission on it. It says, “While much progress has been made, most employees have only a cursory awareness of [the] existence [of SMS] and what it actually means to them.”

It also says that, generally speaking, there's a misunderstanding about the intent of the SMS by stakeholders, who “were under the impression that SMS would replace regulations, but the panel understands that SMS was never intended to be deregulation or industry self-regulation”.

In terms of the awareness, it always seems to be that regardless of the issue.... I'll use veterans as an example. We have great programs that we're trying to help veterans with. We've put it in magazines. Veterans Affairs put it out, yet the same issue keeps coming back: how do we make people aware when you have something that is out there?

In this particular case, we have employees who actually work with it every day and seem to be lacking the awareness of it. I'm wondering if you could address it. I'm hopeful that it isn't all about discipline, but maybe it is that fear. How can we work with them? What are some of the ways we can actually work with the employees through the companies to build their awareness?

[Douglas Lewis]

I think we address that in the chapter on safety management systems. We feel they've got to go right back to basics and talk to the employees who are involved in the risk and have an interest in the mitigation of the risk.

That's what safety management systems are about, but it doesn't seem as though that happened, or that when they did it, the companies had specific meetings at which they sat down and said, “We're going to demystify SMS for you. We're going to tell you it's about making sure that you go home at night.” That's what it's about.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

I read that, but I think we have to go further, because you also talked about the issue of a buy-in. We can have all the meetings we want and that can happen, but how do we really encourage the buy-in? I think you suggest that there's a buy-in by some but not by all. I think you said that CP basically has a buy-in and that maybe CN doesn't have that same enthusiasm for a buy-in. If you don't have the buy-in at the top, you obviously won't get the buy-in much from the bottom, only because they haven't been encouraged to.

[Douglas Lewis]

All the railway companies are required to have an occupational health and safety committee. It seems to me that's where you could start with a discussion of SMS, risk management, and mitigation. If we had a standard approach to it in a company, region by region—and I'm talking about the two major companies right now—they could say, “Okay, we want every local occupational health and safety committee to have a discussion on safety management. Here's the brochure, have a meeting, and find some ways to publicize it among your employees.”

I don't think it's mentioned in the report, but CP does a survey of its employees every two years and asks for their feelings on the company's attitude towards safety. They've seen progress in that. I think that has to be done by the railway companies as well. But it all boils down to making it a priority to explain it to every employee on the job.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

You had a good suggestion on the pay cheques.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Sorry, Mr. Shipley.

The Liberal side has five minutes, and I think Mr. Bell and Mr. Volpe are going to split that. We'll go back to Mr. Jean and then open it up for some short questions.

You have five minutes between you.

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

On the issue of the reduction in staffing in the railway companies, it's been about 48% over a 15-year period. I'm going to separate the kinds of discussions Mr. Shipley has raised--or even Mr. Maloney--from the derailment issues. Rather than talk about the personal injury issues associated with railway crossings--there have been 43,000 of them around the country, as you've identified--I'll talk about the derailments.

You focused in many of your answers on the issue of staff not only understanding but being prepared to integrate SMS systems and implement them. When you have a 48% decrease in staffing and curtail new hiring, you're going to run into fatigue, which you've also noticed. But as you bring in new people, do you get the same kind of commitment or ability to insure yourself against problems that will lead to derailments that you would with a greater number of people? How accurate might that be?

Given that you've had these huge reductions in staff, is this an opportunity for Transport Canada to assume full responsibility for not only inspections but also certification--in other words, be responsible for safety through its own oversight system?

[Douglas Lewis]

I would argue that when you bring in new people, which the railway companies are doing now because of the demographics, you have a better chance to train them and see that they are skilled to operate what they're operating today, rather than taking an older workforce and retraining it. To me this is an opportunity to train people to run longer trains and use the advances in braking techniques and other things to the best of their ability. I don't know if it's a question of how much the workforce has been reduced, rather than an opportunity to have a more professional and skilled workforce on the job.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Bell.

[Don Bell, Liberal, North Vancouver, BC]

Thank you.

I have a couple of questions that I'll throw at you and you can answer.

One is that in your presentation today you made the comment:

In our opinion, the regulator is doing a credible job with the resources provided, but has not been given sufficient resources to do the job to advance railway safety.

So they're doing well with what they have, but they don't have enough. You said you're suggesting that the Minister of Finance—and I presume by that you mean the cabinet as well—should balance the importance of the rail industry to the Canadian economy, as well as government revenues, direct and indirect, with the needs of Transport Canada to do the job. I'd ask you to comment on that.

I also want to ask you, while you're at it and before I run out of time—

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

It's getting close.

[Don Bell, Liberal, North Vancouver, BC]

I know. I have my stopwatch running.

You talked about the areas, and I'm curious about British Columbia, because that's obviously where I'm from. To what degree do you think the BC Rail takeover by CN affected their performance in British Columbia with respect to derailments?

[Douglas Lewis]

On that last question, this is a personal observation.

I was amazed when I read the TSB report on Lillooet, I think it was, or Cheakamus, one of the two. Which was the first?

[A voice]

Cheakamus was first.

[Douglas Lewis]

Yes.

I was amazed that nobody picked up on the fact that from August to October there were about four big derailments, and that begs the question. You will note that we suggest a rail operating certificate. BC Rail's sale to CN was not just a transfer of cars; it was a transfer of management, and how do you run long trains through those mountains?

That's why we took the trip. We went right up to Lillooet on a high-railer and saw for ourselves. Boy, it's no problem for a lawyer from Orillia to get the idea of how difficult it would be to run a train through that terrain. We just weren't sure that everybody had applied themselves to those difficulties when it came to the takeover of BC Rail.