Evidence of meeting #20 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 40th Parliament, 3rd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was information.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Managing Director, Toyota Canada Inc.
Just over half of our total sales last year were of Canadian-made vehicles.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Western Arctic, NT
Now, we've heard talk of changes in U.S. regulation for vehicles. Will that impact on Canadian production?
Managing Director, Toyota Canada Inc.
Absolutely. No matter what sort of regulation is implemented in the United States, because we share a common marketplace with vehicles moving back and forth between the two markets, U.S. regulatory changes will have an impact on the vehicles driven on Canadian roads.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Western Arctic, NT
Are there many differences now between Canadian regulations and U.S. regulations?
Managing Director, Toyota Canada Inc.
There are some. Also, there are some specific and unique Canadian safety regulations with respect to daytime running lamps, immobilizers, and some other specific equipment. But in general, I think the government has committed itself toward harmonization of regulations with the Americans.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Western Arctic, NT
How do you see the issue in terms of Canadian customers versus U.S. customers when it comes to dealing with defects?
Managing Director, Toyota Canada Inc.
I think that, one, there is seldom any lag in either direction across the border in terms of recall activity. Whether it's a recall initiated by us in Canada that affects U.S. product or a U.S. recall affecting our product, we move together to make sure that the recalls are conducted. We have systems in place that allow us to undertake recall activity on each other's products in the event that those vehicles are in the other's marketplace.
Specifically from the standpoint of our dealer network, I would say that my impression of our dealers has been that they've always gone above and beyond to provide extra levels of service to our customers when there's a recall situation. We recognize that it's very disruptive to our customers. They put in the extra hours and they do the extra work to make sure people are taken care of.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Western Arctic, NT
Are you in a position to compare the relative services of Transport Canada with the U.S. equivalent in terms of their abilities, in terms of their substantial investment in vehicle safety? Can you give me an idea of how you see that?
Managing Director, Toyota Canada Inc.
Obviously I don't deal with NHTSA on a day-to-day basis, so I can't speak to the nature of their operations. What I can tell you is that my impression from many of my dealings with the Transport Canada officials is that they are knowledgeable and very diligent.
There are some things that I think we do very well here in Canada, and I would say that as a distributor, let alone in reference to the work of the regulators. We are experts in matters related to cold weather operation of vehicles. We have engineering teams that are specifically dedicated to that work because we know that these are issues that arise in Canada in these conditions. I would say that the same is true for Transport Canada; it has its areas of strength relative to the U.S.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Western Arctic, NT
Well, we've seen the complexity of Transport Canada's work vis-à-vis vehicle issues. We've seen some of the statistics there.
Would you say that Transport Canada has the resources to deal with the always complex automotive market, with the greater number of brands, with the types of changing technology? Do you feel that we're adequate in that regard?
Managing Director, Toyota Canada Inc.
Even from the standpoint of an automotive distributor supporting our dealer network, obviously those technologies change all the time, and we have to regularly retrain our personnel to be able to support those vehicles. That said, one of the things that is happening is that, given the rise of electronics in vehicles, many of the systems are actually easier to check with various available tools.
As the nature of those systems and the technical challenges change, so too does the standard knowledge, and some of the old issues tend to go away. For example, I think the last time I was here I mentioned that in the past one of the things that was common across the auto industry was to experience binding of throttle cables. Because those cables don't exist anymore, that's an issue that has gone away as we've moved to new technology.
I think everyone in the industry is learning and changing their skill sets and the tools that we use to look at it. I've heard the department say they're of the view that they have the resources necessary for the job. Clearly, if the job changes, that's a separate question.
Conservative
Lois Brown Conservative Newmarket—Aurora, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good morning. Welcome back to our committee. Thank you for being here.
First of all, I'd like to thank you for the considerable amount of material you have provided the committee. It has made for a lot of reading, but thank you very much.
Mr. Beatty, I think what's apparent here is that our committee really is trying to figure out who knew what, when, where, and why, and, on a go-forward basis, how we resolve this. I'll get to that last question at the end.
In some of the documentation you have provided to us, there were questions asked previously about isolated reports of incidents; you say in the U.S. in July 2006, and in Estonia in August 2007. You said in response to another question that Toyota had identified 39 reports related to the sticky pedal phenomenon that were issued in Europe.
You've described the organizational structure in Canada. Can you tell us about the organizational structure in Europe? Is there any communication between the two? Would they share any of that information?
Managing Director, Toyota Canada Inc.
I'm not intimately familiar with Europe; obviously, that's not part of my day-to-day role. But I can say in general that the organization in Europe is that you have many distributors operating at the local level on a national basis across Europe. There is a regional organization called Toyota Motor Europe that is responsible for the activities within the region. Then, like Canada, technical matters would go back to CQE in Japan for ultimate investigation and review.
As we talk about that type of engineering, engineering happens at various different points, obviously, and first in the design of the vehicle. In other words, have we considered the issues, and if we design to a specific performance parameter, then how does the vehicle perform in operation in the field? Also, there are the quality checks that you do at manufacturing. There are a number of different points where you intervene to deal with those issues.
But in general, the same process would apply in Europe as it does in Canada, which is that it starts with a vehicle identified at the dealership and escalates as the various parties are either able to resolve it or are looking for additional technical support.
Conservative
Lois Brown Conservative Newmarket—Aurora, ON
And that information would be shared with whom? Would it go back to Japan? Would Japan share that information with its North American counterparts?
Managing Director, Toyota Canada Inc.
It would go back to Japan, and we would expect that where the information was relevant to product we put into the Canadian marketplace, it would be shared with us.
Conservative
Lois Brown Conservative Newmarket—Aurora, ON
On a go-forward basis, you said that you've established a new global safety quality committee. Could you describe to the committee what that looks like? What is its function? To whom does it report? In the future, how will that try to mitigate these problems we've seen?
Managing Director, Toyota Canada Inc.
I think as we reported at the last committee meeting it was the intention of the company to establish a global committee chaired by Akio Toyoda, our president. That has been done. It's comprised of regional chief quality officers, and a chief quality officer has been appointed for North America. Below the chief quality officer is a North American task force that's responsible for looking at all issues of quality and safety. It meets on a regular basis to review issues and report them up through the chief quality officer.
In addition to that, in North America, we have an independent safety advisory committee that is looking at all of these issues and providing independent advice to the company to make sure there's nothing we're overlooking because of process inside the company or our approach to doing business. The objective is to ensure that we have the most information flow possible inside the company, so that if something appears to be significant it will be identified and shared.
Conservative
Lois Brown Conservative Newmarket—Aurora, ON
What would trigger a report to the investigation officer?
Managing Director, Toyota Canada Inc.
For our chief quality officer, it would be anything that may be coming from the field, or that is identified in manufacturing, or that is generally captured by our operations across North America. So that would include Toyota Canada, but it would include the manufacturing facilities, our counterpart distributor in the United States, Toyota Motor Sales, and so forth.
Conservative
Managing Director, Toyota Canada Inc.
What it's intended to do is to make sure that if there is any delay, or if there hasn't been adequate consideration of some information that has been undertaken and then the normal process of identification of the problem would be triggered, it would come back, as it does today, through to Toyota Canada, and we would take one of several steps.
If it is a safety defect, obviously we would trigger a notice of defect and recall. If it's simply a question of the functioning of a part, then it might be a technical service bulletin or some other information to the dealers about how to deal with a specific issue in the vehicle. But the idea, again, is to get the maximum communication flow and ensure that nothing gets stuck anywhere in the system. Hopefully that translates into increased speed to market.
Conservative
Lois Brown Conservative Newmarket—Aurora, ON
How many reports would it take from a dealership or a variety of dealerships before it would raise a red flag to quality control?
Managing Director, Toyota Canada Inc.
Again, I think that depends on the nature or quality of the information coming in from the field. Depending on how well documented the report is in the first place, you may or may not be able to actually replicate the condition that's being referred to.
That was one of the issues in the early stages of this campaign: it was very difficult to replicate the condition.
In other cases, you may have something that's very clear and you can work with immediately. We have some recent examples of that as well.
