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.