Evidence of meeting #7 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was track.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Brian Jean Conservative Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB
Are there any requirements for speeds in certain areas?
Director General, Rail Safety, Department of Transport
It measures speed; it measures everything except voice.
Conservative
Brian Jean Conservative Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB
You misunderstand the question. Are there specific speed limitations? When I go down highway 63, I'm allowed to go 100 kilometres an hour. When you go around a bend in a railroad, is there a requirement to go within a certain speed limit?
Director General, Rail Safety, Department of Transport
Oh, yes, absolutely. Plus, everyday when they leave with their train, they have their orders that will tell them if the track speed has been changed between one mileage point and another mileage point, so they know that usually it might be 60 miles an hour and now they have to go 30. They know all that.
Conservative
Brian Jean Conservative Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB
In fact, is it fair to say that in the past, speeding was one of the key indicators or key problems in many accidents?
Director General, Rail Safety, Department of Transport
No, I think the train crews respect speed. You can be fired if you.... If you come back with a train, one of the first things they can do is download the data from the event recorder to compare it with the allowable speed on the track and see if they were speeding. Usually train crews do respect speeding. It's never been an issue, as far as I'm concerned.
Conservative
Brian Jean Conservative Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB
The weather has a dramatic impact on safety on the rails as well. I understand that pull-aparts, broken rails, and sun kinks are all part of the dynamics of rail.
With increased inspections of these types of cars, these ferry cars, would you see there being the ability to do more preventive maintenance, more repairs on tracks, or is that already, do you think, to the point where we would see no real change in the number of accidents if we increase it?
Director General, Rail Safety, Department of Transport
I think the standards we're working with right now are pretty good. I think we see fewer and fewer sun kinks. We have welded rail now, and it's being de-stressed, so we see less of that. Broken rail is still a problem when it's very cold, minus 35, minus 40. A lot of the railways do have special instructions now. When the weather is below a certain degree, they will reduce track speed.
So I think from an inspection standpoint, it's pretty accurate right now.
Conservative
Brian Jean Conservative Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB
Do the x-ray cars pick up problems with rail before they have those problems of the broken rail during extreme cold?
Director General, Rail Safety, Department of Transport
Yes, they may be able to detect cracks and vertical split heads; however, there are things that are very hard to detect. We do get some TSB reports saying that the root cause of the accident was a broken rail but it was almost impossible to detect with the current technology. That may happen.
Conservative
Brian Jean Conservative Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB
I understand that tests are done on the basis of tonnage over a track, or usually are. Do you know the internal systems of the railroads, as far as when they will do these inspections? My understanding is some tracks get a three-month inspection or a four-month inspection. Do you have any information internally?
Director General, Rail Safety, Department of Transport
I'd have to look at each of the railways, at exactly what frequency they're using.
Conservative
Brian Jean Conservative Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB
Would you be able to provide that to the committee as well?
Liberal
John Maloney Liberal Welland, ON
Are prosecutions instituted as a result of your inspections showing defective situations, or only if there's a derailment, or only if there was a derailment causing loss of life or environmental damage?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security, Department of Transport
As I mentioned in May, the number of successful prosecutions we do is very small, but they could be a result of any of the things you mentioned. We'd have to look at those. But, generally speaking, le procureur général du Canada will prosecute a company, on the recommendation of the department, when it has broken the law or when it has not followed the regulations. It's not because of an accident or because of a derailment; it would be because the law was not abided by.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security, Department of Transport
It's not pre-established in the act, no.
Director General, Rail Safety, Department of Transport
If you look at section 41 of the Railway Safety Act, what it says is, basically, whoever violates the Railway Safety Act can be subject to prosecution. So everything Marc has mentioned would be covered and everything you mentioned could be covered.
Liberal
John Maloney Liberal Welland, ON
I appreciate that you've indicated that the number of incidents are down significantly, but in the last three or four years there seemed to be a real chronic problem. I won't say the railways are ignoring this, but the frequency and the severity of the incidents would suggest that someone needs a wake-up call. I'm wondering whether a significant indication of a fine range might be that wake-up call, or perhaps even in extreme situations criminal charges could be laid. Has that ever happened in the situation of a rail accident?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security, Department of Transport
Criminal charges, no, not to my knowledge, but we got the wake-up call when the accident rates increased back in 2005. Right after that, we went into the company where we saw the significant increase and we did a massive number of inspections. We also did a safety management system audit, and the company was ordered to rectify its behaviour under the safety management system.
Following that, we did see significant improvements throughout the network, and we also saw the company hire a special VP on safety and put more emphasis on safety, generally speaking.
So in terms of the type of action you mention around prosecution, if after having been told and after having been subjected to all of that, the company had continued to violate the law, then we would have prosecuted.
Liberal
John Maloney Liberal Welland, ON
Can railway crews refuse to take a run if they feel that for some reason there is a serious problem with the track? Is there job protection for them if they do that?
