Transport Committee on April 8th, 2008

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

Mr. Bellavance is going to share his time with Mr. Laframboise.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

It is important that we have a good understanding. Certain measures have been taken in the air transportation sector, but in the rail sector, the situation is not the same. In the airline sector, you only have to take care of one piece of equipment, the airplane. The landing strips and the airport are the responsibility of other managers. And the route used by airplanes is in the air. In your case, you have to take care of thousands of kilometres of railway and of railroad yards. All of this belongs to the company.

If we resolved the anonymity problem... We would like, through legislation, to protect your employees who blow the whistle. Whistleblowers should not be punished. That is contrary to the necessities of a safety management system. That can be resolved through legislation.

Mr. Brehl and Mr. Cotie talked about training. I liked your example, Mr. Brehl. This is why I wonder if there is one system that is really better than the others. There are two ways of doing things, there are two companies with two different strategies. The result, as you have stated, is a few less accidents with CP. What do you mean when you talk about education? Does this mean that the companies must invest money? There is no training going on, despite the fact that the SMS has been in place since 2001. There is no training culture at CP, and you are saying that training is required. Mr. Brehl and Mr. Cotie, could you explain to us how this should be accomplished?

[William Brehl]

The training systems at CP are good when they're utilized for our people, for the engineering services. But I assume they believe they're too expensive to run very much training. They try to get by on the cheap.

As Mr. Cotie pointed out, our people on the ground at CP know nothing about SMS. As you go up to the steering committees and the policy committees they begin to understand the safety management system, but the local health and safety committees have very limited knowledge.

As far as training is concerned, they didn't begin training our track foreman and our leading track maintainers, who are the two in charge of each crew out there.... They went about seven years without training anybody. You learned on the job. They were not hiring a lot of people, but they were bringing people up as others retired. Then they decided they had to start training again but they decided not to train foremen and LTM; they'd have one course and train them both. The course used to be four weeks long with a refresher every three years. Now it's for two weeks and that's it. You're trained and you're the guy.

I hate to keep throwing examples at you, but there are so many of them.

We had an incident in December 2007, outside Golden, B.C. Three employees were clearing snow on a night crew in the dark, and exceeded their limits. They were recognized by the RTC as being outside their limits when they got on the radio and were protected. Nobody was hurt, but when they looked into it, the three employees didn't have four years of service among them. None of them had received training. They were just put out to work in the dark in a snow storm.

So the training hasn't been done properly at CP, and it is an issue that we fight with them about all the time. We have it in our collective agreement that we are to be included in all training--that we supply involvement and input. But all we ever get in the end is “This is what we're going to do. Take a look at it. We're going to do it next week.”

They do the health and safety training that's mandated by legislation. They keep up to date on it, and I'll give CP credit for that. They don't give human rights training or return-to-work training. All of it goes by the wayside until they have to do it. I believe Mr. Cotie said they put oil in after the engine seizes, and that's a good analogy. That's exactly it. When an accident happens they start saying “Let's fix this”.

I'll make this brief and turn it over to Mr. Cotie.

I have one other example. I lost a friend on mine in 2000. Shawn Ormshaw was changing a traction motor on an Ohio crane. There were no mechanics there at all. He was a labourer who had only worked with the railroad for two years. He undid a bolt, the traction motor fell on his head, and he died.

That implemented a change at CP in the engineering services and brought about what we call the job briefing booklet. I don't know if CN is doing the same thing, but at the beginning of every job, and if the job changes, you have to do a briefing with everybody. If a new person comes you have to do a briefing with them on all the hazards, what work they're going to do, where the health and safety guy is, where the first aid guy is, who's going to call 911, the ambulance routes, and all of it. They do it and it's great, but it happened after a guy died.

There are so many things we should be training our people in now--proactive instead of reactive.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Brehl, I'm going to have to stop you. I'm sorry. We're restricted for time.

Mr. Watson.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for appearing here today. We appreciate your input.

If you've been following the hearings before our committee, you'll know that we have not gone easy on the rail companies in terms of their answers before this committee. We haven't gone easy on the regulator either, Transport Canada. We'll see how easy we wind up being on you guys. But in fairness, if we get tough, bear with us, because you're also part of the solution.

This review is 200-plus pages in length. Are you the folks who've actually read the report, or has somebody done that for you within your various organizations? You all have a good working knowledge of the document? Okay.

Out of the 200-plus pages, when Mr. Lewis was here I asked him if the heart of the entire thing really boils down to what I see on pages 73 and 74, concerning an evaluation tool for safety culture, agreeing that where we have to get to is beyond just simply rules and compliance but to safety literally permeating the culture of the operation. And that's as much for the regulator as it is for the companies themselves.

They talk about a five-stage continuum on the progress to full implementation of SMS. I think we can reasonably agree and I think the evidence strongly concludes that when SMS is fully implemented—that is, as a layer on top of the rules—that is where we will see safety results at their best. They point to Air Transat as one particular company, for example, and VIA being a little further along the path than CN and CP.

I asked Mr. Lewis to rank the companies on that continuum and to rank the regulator, Transport Canada, as well, on that. He said CN was somewhere between a one and a two; I think he put CP somewhere around a two to three; Transport Canada at the same range, about a three; and VIA at a four. So we see that there's a lot of work to be done.

First of all, I want to ask for your evaluation of both CN and CP and Transport Canada. Do you agree with those assessments, that this is about where they're at on the stage in the continuum?

[Voices]

Yes.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

I'm listening to your testimony today. I listened to CN and CP the other day, and I'm hearing the same kind of thing here. There's a strong focus on rules and compliance with rules. When I look at this continuum, that puts you guys, along with the company, to some respect, in the mindset of somewhere around two to three in the continuum, and we have to get beyond simply that type of a focus.

I think this gets to Mr. Fast's testimony, what he was asking about. I see it in the CAW's recommendations, actually, and I want your comment. You're asking for a SMS assessment guide and protocol similar to air. Have you had a chance to look at the proposed amendments on the Aeronautics Act, which talk about some sort of an immunity from players, the ability to report, to get ahead of the curve? So if I'm in a situation where I don't have enough time and I'm forced to not go through my full checklist, I'm able to report that anyway and that goes into the system for the full gathering of information. Are you agreed that this is the direction in which we have to go, that we have to get to something that encapsulates much more information than simply the rule that regulation compliance inspection captures?

[A witness]

That's correct.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

How do you envision this reporting system functioning?

It's open to the panel, not just to you guys.

You've had a chance to look at the air side of it. Is the immunity the way to go? Is it this call-in system that you're talking about? Can it be something else we haven't envisioned?

Help us get to that, because I think that's really the key point. You want to capture much more information than we're getting right now in the system, so that we can see where the problems are in advance of something dangerous happening.

[Robert McDiarmid]

I'd just like to point out that there's a fundamental difference between air and rail, in that air has a lot of competition and it deals with the public up front.

If planes fall out of the sky, people will flock to another airline. If trains derail, for the most part the only ones affected are the grain growers and the public in the one-mile radius of that derailment—for the most part. They can certainly impact a lot more. Yet the grain customer was screaming the loudest during the strike in 2007 at CN, and yet they're the ones who lose the product. And in any case, they can't go to another competitor, because the lines aren't there. So there's the fundamental difference.

Airlines want to have a safe management system because of the interaction with the public, which the railway doesn't have that focus on. VIA does; it's all public. CP does because they probably recognize that it's financially beneficial to them. CN doesn't recognize it whatsoever. Mr. Reason's safety culture does not exist.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

I have to stop you there. I'm sorry, Mr. Watson. I know Mr. Bell, who has been leading this charge, wants to comment.

Can I just add one very brief question? Of the fatigue that's out there and the concerns that are expressed, is any of it or a percentage of it related to employees wanting the extra time, the overtime?

[Robert McDiarmid]

I wouldn't say overtime. It is time. They are restricted from any time off with their families. It forces them to make a decision: “Do I go all out for three weeks to have a week off?”, and “Can I maintain my family's earnings?” Those are the factors.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

And again, I think that might be part of some of the issue.

Mr. Bell, you are to conclude. You have five minutes.

[Don Bell, Liberal, North Vancouver, BC]

Thank you, gentlemen.

A number of the questions that I had asked of the railways and wanted to ask of you have already been asked, and I've heard your answers.

I'm interested particularly, and obviously in terms of the workers, in the issues that were of concern related to the fatigue issue, the training issue. The other is the issue of health and safety committees. I don't know, since I missed the beginning of the presentation, whether you were particularly queried about it. I know there were two recommendations that talked about this, recommendation number 19 and recommendation number 24.

Number 19, as we heard from Transport Canada or the panel, relates to the SMS and therefore concerns the companies, whereas recommendation number 24 talks about Transport Canada and the companies together having areas of responsibility.

Paragraph 24-7, I guess I'd call it, of the latter recommendation talks about a means of involving railway employees at all levels, and where possible through health and safety committees and representatives. Number 19 talks about the industry taking steps to ensure the effectiveness of local occupational health and safety committees.

We heard, in terms even of the ratings of the companies and their effectiveness, that it varies by region; the Atlantic region, the centre, and the west.

I am wondering whether you have any comments, particularly with respect to the health and safety committees.

[Jim Wilson]

For CP, the way it will range by region, sometimes even by location, specifically depends on who the boss is. If the boss has a built-in belief in safety, you'll see things get dealt with a little more, rather than sit on the minutes for an extended amount of time.

Again, if the employer has the ultimate say as to what gets fixed or doesn't get fixed, then that will drive your culture or the effectiveness of the committees.

That's why we again speak about regulation: at least there's a minimum standard that has to be fixed. If the employers can't meet the minimum standards, at least we have somebody to go to, and somebody has to come in to enforce these minimum standards.

[Robert McDiarmid]

I spoke earlier, sir, about the need to get involved in paragraph 135(7)(e) of the Canada Labour Code, which is the employee participation in all investigations and inquiries. This is an item that is readily ignored in the safety committee atmosphere, despite the unions' wishing to participate, as outlined in the Canada Labour Code. It will not be entertained, in my view, by CN at the very least.

[Don Bell, Liberal, North Vancouver, BC]

Have you noticed from CN a change since April 25 of last year? It's almost the one-year anniversary since Mr. Miller was put in that place, and I presume of the focus that CN acknowledged to us when they were here, that more or less their increased awareness of the whole culture of safety has come since this committee started its work.

[Robert McDiarmid]

I would point out that we have had a vice-president of safety before, back in 1996 at the very least, when Mr. Tellier was still representing the company, and a CN ombudsman of safety, although when Mr. Tellier left, so did those positions.

If they're reintroducing it, that's terrific, but the success of a committee, I find, is more from the participants on the committee and their experience and knowledge and training.

[Don Bell, Liberal, North Vancouver, BC]

I note that the panel said, on page 70 of the report, “Based on what we've heard through the Review process, there appears to be a serious disconnect between CN's stated objectives and what is occurring at employee levels.” I know that this goes to the traditional rules and discipline model, but it also seems that the health and safety committees would play a role.

At the last panel, I presented a photograph that I had taken in CN's yard. It showed safety as being the fourth item on their list. They had said that safety was number one, and I sort of challenged them on this. They said that this didn't necessarily represent the hierarchical order of things, and yet, in another photograph that I sent to Mr. Miller afterwards, these four were broken down into four separate panels—I'm talking about the Prince George yard—that went in descending order, like steps, down the wall.

It says here that safety is every employee's responsibility. I agree with that. I guess in the broad sense, even the management are employees. But I take managers and employees in the sense of people who work for the employer, generally, meaning the company has to have that responsibility as well, and it has to be number one.

[John Burns]

When they give you the spiel, that's the exact order they give it to you in. Every employee sees that as the order of preference, as you've stated in your presentation. While CN, at the top of the house, will tell you that safety is their number one core value and they want to exceed and do as much as they can for safety, when we negotiated a safety agreement with them they cancelled it.

They say that they will go back to the minimum standards of the code. The code is good if they apply it all, but they don't even want to go code-plus when it's negotiated with one of the unions. But they do set the bar of “these are our priorities”.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

I'm sorry, witnesses, but we have a little bit of business to wrap up. I'd like to thank you for....

Mr. Jean.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

On a point of order, I'm wondering whether we would be able to receive a copy of that safety agreement that was negotiated.

[John Burns]

Absolutely.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

I thank you for attending. I think we've gained some new knowledge and information that will help us in our final report.

I am going to ask the committee to stay seated. If you're going to do any discussion, please try to keep it a little bit low. We have a brief motion from Mr. Volpe to discuss.

Again, thank you to our guests. Enjoy the rest of the day.

There's a notice of motion on the floor by Mr. Volpe. I would ask him to take the floor.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am presenting this just to make the conversation a little bit more formal. I have been engaged in conversation with the parliamentary secretary with respect to motion number 183. The motion was introduced by a colleague from Thunder Bay--Rainy River, amended by a colleague from Niagara West--Glanbrook, and passed, I guess unanimously, in the House. It shows that all parties can work together when there's a will.

We had talked about bringing this particular motion, motion 183, to this committee for further study. I think there was a general inclination to go ahead and do that as long as it did not interfere with the already scheduled work of the committee and the intended timetable upon which we already had some agreement in principle--taking a look at the navigable waters act, for one; we wanted to make sure that was on the table and didn't get moved over to one side. Then, of course, were the usual caveats that if any legislation came forward, that would supercede any motions we were entertaining.

I think on the basis of that kind of conversation, we agreed that we were going to accept the possibility of doing motion 183. I have put it in writing for us so that it would be formal enough and the committee would know exactly what our discussions were about.

So having been as transparent as possible--everybody has the motion before them--and having laid out the parameters under which we had conducted some of those discussions, I propose that the committee deal with motion 183, and that it devote to this, I don't know, perhaps one or two meetings, and maybe even three, but certainly at least one. We would hear the mover and the amender, and take a look at exactly what they have. We'd maybe even bring in some officials from the department.

I don't think we've discussed anything beyond that. I know there was some discussion in the House with the other two opposition parties when they were engaged in debate. We haven't had any formal discussion on it here.

My intention here is not to pre-empt any predetermined schedule, nor is it to lead off into a long study that is never going to get anywhere. It is primarily to deal with a motion that has received the unanimous support of the House.