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?