Transport Committee on April 1st, 2008

[Marc Grégoire]

Yes, and clearly, it will take a few more years yet, as we have noted. Several years ago, a number of railway company audits were done. The observation made at the time was that a cultural shift had not yet taken place.

Luc told you that our employees were still showing some resistance. This is a major change. As I have explained to the committee on several occasions, whether it be in the case of air, marine or rail transportation, we are firmly convinced that in the long run, implementation of SMS will improve safety levels in Canada. Once again, the Panel made this observation.

Is implementation of SMS proceeding smoothly? No, it is not. Are problems being encountered? Yes, you listed them. We have much work to do over the long term.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Except that you were always told that there were not enough employees to do inspections and follow-ups. Mr. Lewis alluded in his presentation to a shortage of sufficient resources. That is what he said. Therefore, you will need to stop playing the government's game, admit to us that you are short on resources and ask the committee to help you. We need to get down to brass tacks.

[Marc Grégoire]

Generally speaking, for years now, if managers wanted additional resources, they put in a request to Cabinet, not to the committee. The Minister of Finance establishes the budgets once a year and additional resources are obtained through the budgeting process.

In terms of our resources, I have mentioned to you several times that we endeavour to make the best possible use of our resources. You stressed at length the funding to the air transportation sector. You have demanded from us a commitment that we not transfer resources to other areas. The last time I was here, a number of committee members pointed out that not enough money was earmarked for the protection of navigable waters.

The level of activity in the rail sector has increased significantly. At the same time, the number of accidents has also increased, as we observed in 2005 and in previous years. In light of this situation, the Panel concluded that more resources needed to be allocated to railway safety. I said at the outset that we endorsed the Panel's recommendations. So then, we are admitting de facto that we will likely need to invest additional money in the rail sector. We have already started to do that this year by transferring additional funds to this envelope. Over the next few months, we will be looking at what additional steps we can take.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

My second question is for Mr. Bourdon.

We have observed a lack of consistency from one region to another. Exactly where do things stand in Quebec on this front?

[Luc Bourdon]

As I explained, we are in the process of standardizing all of our practices. I think there has been a clear improvement in the area of program delivery. Unlike what was happening three years ago, we now meet with the five regional representatives to develop a national railway action plan.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

The report was produced in November 2007. It maintained that there were inconsistencies from region to region. Were there problems in Quebec?

[Luc Bourdon]

Not as far as we were concerned. We have a solid team in Quebec.

[Marc Grégoire]

It is a well trained team. Luc headed up the team for several years.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

However, that is not what the report says.

[Luc Bourdon]

I do not think the report singles out Quebec or any one region of ours in particular.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

When he appeared before us, Mr. Lewis noted that Transport Canada had “failed to maximize this new approach due to inconsistent implementation across the various TC regions [...]”.

[Luc Bourdon]

As far as the SMS concept is concerned, you have to remember that we were the first to implement this approach. Certainly we were the first ones in North America to apply SMS to the railway sector. There was no model on which to base our actions. We learned on the fly and from the SMS philosophy.

Earlier, Mr. Grégoire observed that during the SMS implementation phase, the number of rail accidents and the volume of rail traffic had increased. Before we can rely strictly on an SMS system, we must be sufficiently certain that the audit work being done accurately reflects the current state of affairs within the sector.

In light of increased traffic volume and the higher number of accidents, we were forced to assign people who normally would have been handling SMS to inspection duties. We had no choice in this matter. Therefore, we were unable to devote all of the attention we would have wanted to SMS during the development phase.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Would that explain the inconsistencies from region to region?

[Luc Bourdon]

It is important to be clear about two things. First, as part of the national railway audit process which is coordinated by head office, a regional team leader who reports to me is appointed for the duration of the audit. Regional representatives make up the rest of the team. Practices are consistent in this case, whether CN, CP or VIA are involved. Depending on the size of the railway in a particular region, an application may be a little less consistent.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

And in which region would practices be less consistent?

[Luc Bourdon]

I couldn't tell you because it comes down to interpretation and subjectivity. The person on site, or the TC representative, may have a relationship of some kind with a specific person from the railway company. Essentially we are talking about human relations. When I ask railway officials if they have any major problems with Transport Canada, they tell me that they really do not, even though one or two inspectors may occasionally be guilty of being overly zealous. Generally speaking, I do not receive any complaints about how our programs are applied.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Masse.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, gentlemen, for meeting with us today.

With regard to safety management systems, in your testimony you mentioned you've run into some cultural problems with regard to changing the direction you want to go in. How much more time are you going to allocate, or resources, to actually change these cultural problems? That's pretty systemic if you have that situation. Maybe you can kind of highlight where you think you might be in terms of grading yourself right now, and then how far off you think you are from making a major step forward. Or do you have to then look at the fact that there's an unwillingness to change here?

[Marc Grégoire]

Well, I don't think there's an unwillingness to change. We said that there is resistance to change. How much time are we going to give ourselves? If we can count that in years, certainly before the culture is implemented in the department and in the industry in all modes, we're talking years. So whether it be three years, five years, I don't know, but it's a long journey that we have started.

We started this journey in 1995, in the mid-nineties, at which point we said that given the traffic increase we're seeing now in all modes of transportation, if we keep doing business in the same way we're going to have to add inspectors as the traffic increases, and that's going to become unmanageable, given the huge traffic increase that we have seen.

Furthermore, we had reached some kind of a plateau where no matter what we were doing the old-fashioned way we were not able to reduce the rates. So we consulted a bunch of experts, who eventually convinced us--and when I say us, I am talking about management and many people and experts in Transport Canada--that we needed to look at things from another perspective. Safety management systems had been implemented in the chemistry industry with very big success, so we said we would try that here, and we became the leader in rail and in aviation. In aviation now, as you have seen, the ICAO has adopted SMS as the way forward for all countries. There is no similar organization for rail, but we think this is the way to go.

If I can talk about the challenges we have internally, we're asking people to do a more difficult job than the job they were doing before. It's easier to go on the rail and bang on it or to kick tires, so to speak, and to fill a checklist for inspection than it is to do a safety audit into which you have to think far more and you have to write and you have to make assessments. That's where the difficulty in the change of culture lies in aviation and rail now. But the direction has been set and has gone through four ministers and a whole bunch of managers in the department. We're determined, but we can't expect fantastic results tomorrow. It's going to take years.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Yes, it's been over ten years now.

With regard to other things that could be done in the meantime, ideas have been suggested, such as giving new powers to safety inspector officers, like the ability to fine or park railcars that are not meeting standards. Wouldn't that be something that would at least provide some other degree of protection from problems, having that specific on-site expertise, and repercussions should they be warranted?

[Marc Grégoire]

We have every intention of keeping the expertise that we have in the department and continuing to renew it over the years. The panel has made a number of recommendations in that regard. There's a recommendation, for instance, to enlarge the enforcement tools basket that we have, and I firmly believe that we should have something similar to what we have in the other pieces of legislation. The one that was reviewed most recently was the Aeronautics Act, under which you have seen significant increases in monetary penalties and other penalties that we can impose. We don't have those tools in the Railway Safety Act.

So one of our proposals is certainly to include the monetary penalty scheme, as we have done in other pieces of legislation, the Aeronautics Act or the Canada Shipping Act, 2001.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

That is one of the things that could be done.

[Luc Bourdon]

I just want to add one thing.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Sure.

[Luc Bourdon]

They already have the power to stop equipment or trains from running. Does that already exist?