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.