Transport Committee on April 8th, 2008

[Todd Cotie]

If the rule is good, absolutely, and we'll help out, but we also see rules that might not work out.

For example--and it doesn't affect our members so much--the lone worker policy is one we dispute entirely. A rule came in place to the effect that now an employee can go out and work alone without any backup, and there are procedures to follow. However, on April 19, 2007, we had an employee who was working by herself and was killed.

Part of the concern for me is whether she would have been disciplined had she not died. Was it the rule that caused the incident, or was it the actual process of having only one person out there working?

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

From a personal perspective, I'm just trying to get a handle on what the problem is.

We've had others come before us from the panel who have essentially said that things aren't great, but they're getting better, so let's be patient. I don't mean to diminish what they said--they said some really good things--but you've come here today and essentially said that the workers are being treated like some of the machinery, that the machinery wears out if it's not maintained properly and will cause an accident, and that workers are not being maintained properly. You've pointed out fatigue and sleep deprivation.

To most people, these would seem to be elementary issues that good management would address immediately as part of the maintenance of the asset. Are you telling us that's not happening?

[Todd Cotie]

What we're seeing is that the oil is being changed in the engine after it seizes. We're trying to be preventive and change the oil first.

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

We'll just get to the real bottom line. From all of that, should I interpret that the regulator, i.e., Transport Canada, should rely less on developing an SMS and get more into proactive regulatory intervention?

[Todd Cotie]

Not necessarily, especially with the steelworkers. We believe in the safety management system to an extent. Especially with my position being a liaison, what I'm trying to fix is the top-to-bottom stuff and work in the middle. We can be effective; however, it's “trust, but verify”.

In the example of the 30-mile-an-hour slow order on the double mainline track, it would be nice if that were part of the Railway Safety Act. It makes our job easier to negotiate that, instead of having something fester for four years and having a work refusal. When you're seeing that pattern, the Railway Safety Act should maybe adopt that as legislation--but in my position, what I'm trying to do is clear up the mud in the middle a little bit.

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

But you're proposing what you just said a moment ago--that the act be amended in order to include such measures.

[Todd Cotie]

Absolutely, and you're seeing.... It's because we've now established that there is a concern there, and we've let it go long enough that maybe.... In those circumstances 30 miles an hour seems to be appropriate. There have been no problems or issues since we--the company and the union and I--worked that out, so I think it should be added to the act.

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

Do you engage with Transport Canada in this process, and if so, how frequently?

[Todd Cotie]

I don't, no.

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

There's none?

[Todd Cotie]

No. I personally have no interaction.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Monsieur Laframboise is next.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

First of all, I would like to thank all of you for appearing before our committee. I will give you my general opinion on the report. I feel it has one positive feature: it deals with probably all of the issues, or at least a great majority of them.

The problem is in the perception of the stakeholders. I would like you to help me with this. Transport Canada does not necessarily accept the blame that is dished out. Myself, I dream of a balanced security management system with a field inspection system that is maintained in order to ensure that the company does not commit any excesses. You may have read the testimony of Mr. Miller, the head of security at Canadian National. He thinks it is a good report but he does not agree that CN has a culture the report described as a “culture of fear and discipline“. Mr. Miller was appointed in April, 2007 and right off the bat he said that he did not accept this description because he did not see that. When the chief of security does not see one of the big problems, CN has a major problem. This culture must be changed.

Canadian Pacific told us that the culture was fine and that they had new equipment. You, Mr. Brehl, you mentioned the accidents that recently occurred at Canadian Pacific.

All of this raises a problem for me. My question will be to each of you because I would like you to help me understand. VIA Rail did not appear, because everybody says that things are fine at VIA Rail, that security there is good. Things are going rather well at CP and are somewhat worse at CN. You have employees in each of those companies.

How come the security management systems or SMS culture was unable to penetrate all of the industry, when those systems have been in place since 2001? Why is security better at VIA Rail? Why is it rather good at CP and less so at CN? Is this real? If not, there is a major problem everywhere.

I would ask Mr. Wilson, Mr. Brehl and each of you to answer this question.

[Jim Wilson]

John is actually from CN, and I represent all the members at CP, so we quite frequently discuss the differences between the two railways. CP approaches things a little more cooperatively and brings in the unions, for the most part.

On the safety management system itself, CP Rail worked with our organization on the mechanical aspects of it. Other components were left right out of it. In fact, in 2002 I wrote a letter to the railway company asking for a copy of their safety management system in its entirety. They said I could come to their head office and look at it, but they were not about to turn over the documentation to me. That made me very frustrated, as a representative. When you're trying to understand what they filed with the regulator on safety management systems, you want to be a part of that. You also want a copy of what they filed so you can follow through on it.

On how CP has approached safety, we break it into the two components of health and safety, and rail safety. The health and safety aspect is dealt with by the regulator through the Occupational Health and Safety Act, part II. If we have issues about any part of the regulations, we're not shy about calling in a regulator. The regulator is generally very good at coming in, doing inspections, and writing voluntary compliances. The employer, for the most part, follows up on all of it.

Our frustrations are with the Railway Safety Act. When we bring up issues of non-compliance to the regulator, we're seldom answered by the regulator, let alone told if anything is done about our concerns. In our presentation to a review committee, both John and I presented a few projects we had in 2000 and 2004 that identified hundreds of non-compliant items. To this day none of them have been answered by the regulator.

We believe you need a minimum standard in the regulations and the employers have to follow that minimum standard. I think the employer can exceed that minimum standard, similar to what's in play in the occupational health and safety regulations.

We view the safety management system as a plan for how they run safety on the railway. At CP, for example, their injury statistics on mechanical in 1997 showed that 12.87 of every 100 employees were getting injured. Today I think it's under two. So as far as occupational health and safety, the regulations, the regulator, the railways, and the unions have been very instrumental in driving those numbers down. When it comes to rail safety, we believe the regulator has been absent in all of it.

John can talk about the culture of fear.

[John Burns]

Thanks, Jim.

In the past, the SMS system was developed without participation or with very little participation from the employees, who should really be the catalysts for it. It's changing a little bit--I will give CN that much--but unfortunately even when you read the safety management system it says “where appropriate they will include the employees”. So it's open to interpretation, by whoever is running the SMS system at that moment, whether or not they're going to bring in employees for their presentation. In the past they haven't. So it is changing and getting a little better.

Todd talked about a disconnect from the top of the house. When we sit at the policy committee level we're very serious about the SMS system. We want to see it work. We try to give our input, but the disconnect.... He spoke about his membership, and probably all our membership have very little knowledge of the SMS system. CN does not put that out to the employees. They do not have participation by the employees.

Yes, they speak very eloquently about it at the top of the house. They seem to be very concerned and honest about it. But by the time it hits the employees it's been either watered down so much, or completely forgotten about. At two o'clock in the morning, when that supervisor has to get a train out of the yard, he's not worried about the safety aspect; he wants to get the train out of the yard.

I'll leave the SMS system and talk about the culture of fear, which also touches on that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

I think I'll have to move on. We've gone way past the time, so I'll go to Mr. Masse, please.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I can continue along that vein, actually. I had a chance to review the blues and what Mr. Miller said here at a previous committee meeting. He gave assurances that they were making progress, and he outlined a number of different initiatives they were taking. One of the more interesting aspects of his testimony, though, was the notation that, beginning in 2007, CN has hired 2,400 people. That's a significant staffing level increase.

It should be noted, as well, and I think it's rather interesting, that the contributions of the labour movement were not really duly noted in this. However, there was a condemning statement about CN here about the culture and the behaviour and so forth. So I would like you to continue with regard to employment and training and open this up to the whole panel.

Just to conclude, I find it frustrating at times, because you see the amount of rail increase we've had across this country and infrastructure that is widely acknowledged to have been mismanaged and not appropriately upgraded over a number of different years. Then an accident happens, and the news headlines are “Three-train collision closes Highway 39 and forces evacuation: Operator error believed to be cause of train derailment”; “Three trains tangle: Operator error eyed; Leaking liquid ignites; nearby residents evacuated”. But when you start to read about it in the details, you really see that it's the number of trains, the speed, what they're carrying, and also the conditions that seem to be buried, at the end of the day, and the error is seen as the operator. And you're here actually outlining a series of things related to fatigue management and facility development and trying to fix those things.

I want to hear about the growth and how it's challenging in this culture you have right now.

[Mike Wheten]

To answer, I'd like to touch on the culture of fear, too. I think I can put it in a perspective that we can all understand. I'll be very specific. Before I came, about a week ago, I was putting together the brief, and I called our general chairmen. They're the ones who look after the grievances at the second level. They go from our local chairmen at the local to the general chairmen.

So I called our CP general chairman and I called our CN general chairman. I asked how many grievances they were carrying at CP. I called CP east and CP west. The guy in the west said he usually carried between 50 and 75. I called the guy in the east and it was even less.

I called CN central, because at CN we have east, central, and west. The guy at CN central was carrying over 2,000 grievances at any given time. The guy in the west carries around 2,500 grievances at any given time.

Just to reiterate what John said, at CN, when they want to get a train out of the yard, that train moves out of the yard. We don't see any respect for the collective agreement, and in a lot of cases, for the regulations. I may be criticized for saying that here, but that's an absolute fact.

I'm sorry, I forgot your question. Could you ask me again, please?

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Well, culture was the primary thing, but it was also in terms of the staffing increases that have happened within this context. That seems to be really challenging. I don't know if other organizations are going through the same thing, but you're having people who are going through training and development during this growth in this environment that is, quite frankly, somewhat toxic, and that concerns me. Because if we don't get a grip on that, you're going to have a continuation.

I heard no supporting testimony from either CP or CN about any real progress in the safety management systems ending that. They had no business plan. They had no specific examples they could point out to me, and some of them actually didn't have any expectations about how long it will take to get beyond the culture that's there. So I would like to hear about this from the aspect of the increase in the staff component.

[Robert McDiarmid]

From the transportation aspect, they mostly are new hires. I'm not speaking about the carmen and so on. There have been none since 1987. That was the last influx of employees on CN lines west, in any case.

Now we have a new experience, and that's that our supervisors, our train masters, are being hired off the street. There is no more flow of people from the ranks, with twenty years' experience, to these positions. We're ending up with ex-managers of Starbucks and A&B Sound electronic stores coming in. And frankly, they're quite often there for less than a year once they see the culture they're dealing with.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

It's a little bit different from coordinating rocket fuel.

[Robert McDiarmid]

We spoke about perception earlier, and one thing we recognize is that perhaps Transport Canada's getting beat up by the RAC. They're being bullied if nothing else, and they have funding problems. We go to them with concerns, and they start mentally calculating what that's going to cost them to pursue and are very blunt and frank about it, that they can't pursue it, they cannot afford it. They have as much manpower shortage as the railways apparently have.

CN policy perhaps is based on a U.S. model, but for sure it's based on terminate and replace.

[William Brehl]

Mr. Masse, I represent the maintenance workers on CP. Todd represents the same employees on CN. We deal with engineering services. I'm not sure of the culture of punishment and discipline for the operations for the running trades or for the mechanical, but it sounds like a different company from the one I'm dealing with.

CP definitely disciplines on safety issues. If you have an accident, you go in for a statement and you are disciplined.

A letter came out recently from the general manager of track programs and equipment, which are our seasonal work gangs. A letter came out from him concerning on-track collisions of machinery. He didn't come to us. I'm the member of our policy committee at CP. He didn't come to the policy committee. He didn't go to the local workplace health and safety committee and ask for ideas to lessen the on-track collisions. He put out a letter, which was posted everywhere, that said if these continue, the quantum of discipline will be increased.

We took exception to it and we took him to task, brought it to the policy committee, which went on to appeal the letter.

But it comes out right away. That's the off-the-cuff reaction every time.

I don't see CP being the good guy in this when you compare them. Maybe when you compare them with CN you can say they have 10 or 12 fewer mainline train accidents per year. Out of close to 100, 10 or 12, yes, I don't think they're all that good. I don't think things are rosy at CP. I just gave you the last two weeks' snapshot, and it's ugly.

When you say operator error and human error, that's the first thing they'll say on anything. But if you start getting into it, you get into the process, which is protect against, that was on OCS territory, the occupancy control system, that's the Weyburn one you were reading, and you can protect against other trains; it allows for human error.

Thanks to the changes in the CROR, the Canadian Railway operating rules, our guys, when we're out working on the track, have to protect against trains that can come into our track occupancy permit. We're not a train. There were no injuries there. Thank God, there were no injuries. There were minor injuries, scrapes and the like. But we're not a train. If a train hits us, we die; it's as simple as that.

I buried a friend of mine, Gary Kinakin, two Christmases ago because he was working on one track. A train was passing and was exceeding the 30 miles an hour that they should have been and, for whatever reason, Gary stepped in front of it and got hit. You don't argue with a train; you just die. It's as simple as that.

CP runs this fear and this threat culture to improve their safety. They don't include us from the bottom up, other than if they're looking at new safety policies, we'll get to see the finished product, and they'll ask us to give them our thoughts before they implement this in two days. It doesn't matter what thoughts we give them, it's being implemented in two days. But we had a chance to review it.

That's our whole submission here. We want to be included. We're willing to be included. We should be included.

One last point. On the new hires, everything seems to be going toward CN. Our track programs and equipment, which I believe are the same at CN, are probably the biggest number of accidents you have in engineering or on track program and equipment. That's where the injuries happen. The summer season is the only time you have to get that work done. If you defer it, you end up with sole orders. So it's push, push, push. It's like assembly-line track work.

At CP this year 25% of its track program and equipment employees, if they're able to hire them, are going to be brand-new. One in four are going to be brand-new. We have guys out there who are working on machinery, hired as maintainers, who have no mechanical experience at all. They're getting them under the apprenticeship program. Just two days ago a CP manager told me there's a heavy-duty mechanic two crews away within radio earshot who's supervising them. That's the outlook.

I don't see CN as the bad guy and that CP is improving. CP's derailments are increasing. They increased by 21% from 2006 to 2007 and they're going up now. Maybe they're not able to catch CN--I don't know if that's the number of trains or amount of track or differences in culture or whatever--but they're headed in that direction. They are putting, in our opinion, production over safety, and as teamsters, we're not going to stand for it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

Mr. Fast.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll start with just a general comment.

I've sensed from all of your comments that in principle you support safety management systems, but you have great concern about implementation within the industry. Is that a correct characterization?