Thank you.
The shift to the safety management system involved a shift from inspecting to auditing. The theory was that the companies are responsible for their operations and Transport Canada is responsible for a national safety system. The companies have to develop the systems and come to Transport Canada to show that the systems for safety work. The company has to audit them and Transport Canada has to audit them. That involved a shift in the skills of the people who did the job. There's a difference between being an inspector and being an auditor. You're looking for different things. If you go out and inspect rail lines, you're putting a lot of Transport Canada's resources into inspecting the rails.
The theory in shifting to safety management systems was that companies should do the inspecting and have the systems to audit where things are going right with the rails and where they're going wrong. Transport Canada should then oversee that function of the companies. That involved having people who understand that they're auditing.
As it happens, my first career was as a chartered accountant. I learned something about auditing, and it came up time and again. Quite frankly, there are differences across this country in the attitude of Transport Canada inspectors towards the whole issue of SMS and auditing. That's what we found.