The devil is in the detail in Transport Canada's voluntary enforcement program. The companies apply a similar program, where they say “We will not take disciplinary action against an employee because they come forward and say they have done something wrong”.
There are exceptions to those rules, and Transport Canada applies the same principles. They are things that make perfect sense to us: if it was intentional, if there is any sort of criminal intent, if it's repeated misconduct, what were the consequences... So there are a number of exceptions to voluntary compliance. Transport Canada's policy is if the operator comes forward to Transport Canada and identifies a problem or a safety issue inside the company and says “Here's what we're doing about it”. Let's say it hasn't resulted in an incident or an accident, but they say they've identified the safety problem, and incidentally it may be a violation of the regulations as well, and here's what they're doing to correct it.
It makes perfect sense to us that Transport Canada would not take enforcement action against that company because everybody makes mistakes—unintentionally, obviously; you wouldn't do it under intentional circumstances. And if they're doing the right thing to correct the problem, it's probably an issue that would have never come to the attention of Transport Canada.
SMS is based on openness with the regulator. It's based on openness inside the company so that employees come forward without fear of reprisal to say “We messed up, but we're fixing it”.