Transport Committee on Feb. 8th, 2011

[Rob Merrifield, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

The concern is whether we're putting enough muscle behind the bill to actually make sure it complies. There are a number of things in the bill to make sure it's monitored and that there is an executive accountable. As a government, we put $44 million towards improving compliance by raising the number of people who are monitoring. So we're putting forward a piece of legislation with a fair amount of muscle. We're going to make sure that it's complied with. That's clear.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Bevington.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. It's good to see you here.

The bill is an interesting one. I want to ask you a number of questions, one of them dealing with your desire to enforce safety regulations by going from work orders to tickets. It's my understanding that in the United States, having tickets for enforcing changes is in some cases expensive for railways. They'll simply take the penalty and not do the change to the system that's required to bring it up to the safety standard. Where is the evidence that your system—by changing from work orders to tickets—will accomplish this?

[Rob Merrifield, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

We're not going to tickets. We're going to make sure that we have legislation in place, as well as judicial and administrative penalties. That will happen, but that's not by ticket. That's by making certain all the regulations in the act are complied with.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

So you will be enforcing work orders, then?

[Rob Merrifield, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

That's right, we'll be making certain that we work with them. The penalties are fairly stiff, but nonetheless they're not going to be in the first act. There will be an act when non-compliance is there. It is something that will happen to make certain that the culture and what is laid out in the bill is actually complied with. So, no, you're not going to find inspectors running up and down the tracks passing out tickets.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

I didn't expect that, but sometimes the penalties are not sufficient to make the company move on a particular issue. I want to make sure that this is well understood in the bill.

[Rob Merrifield, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

For an individual, $50,000 per day is significant.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Well, that may be the case.

When you look at the statistics, you can see quite clearly that we do have a problem with safety in Canada, and that's for those people around a railway. How will this bill reduce the number of casualties that we now have in this system? We now have between 50 and 70 deaths a year from level crossings or for people on the trains.

[Rob Merrifield, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Well, as the government, I'd agree with you that that's a very good question, and we've put money where our mouth is. We're seeing the incidents go down significantly, but one death is one too many. I'm not saying that we can't get better. We have to get better. But we have seen a great improvement. We've put $28 million into rail grade crossings. That's a program that is identifying the riskiest crossings. We're working down and making some very good gains on that side of it.

But that's not enough. We have to change the actual culture of safety in our railways. We have to make certain that this piece of legislation is brought into force as quickly as possible and that some of the amendments that you and members of this committee have worked hard to bring forward actually get put into law. That's why this is a very important piece of legislation. It will go a long way to addressing some of the concerns--

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Is there anything in the legislation that will drive companies to fence their tracks to a greater extent than they are now?

[Rob Merrifield, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

The bill makes certain that railways can deal with.... The railway certificate is going to be worked out to make sure that the regulations actually comply with and enforce what the intent of the bill actually is, which is safer railways, and that's right from environmental risks, to human risk, to the potential for any derailment. There's an opportunity to do that in the regs--

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

So really, the regulations are what's going to determine the actual direction that rail companies have to take with these issues. There's no overriding principle here about—

[Rob Merrifield, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

It's like any other piece of legislation. The act is the act, giving the overlying principles and the muscle to make it happen. The regulations will give you the minutiae of what has to be complied with.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Let me understand this, then. You will be able to move into areas where rail companies have existing licences and ask them for major improvements...?

[Rob Merrifield, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

To operate, you will have to have an operating certificate.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

And that operating certificate that exists now, once this bill is passed, will.... What's the nature of the grandfathering of the regulations within this bill? If we have new regulations, will these regulations be binding on companies with existing operating certificates? How does that work?

[Rob Merrifield, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Yes, they will. As I mentioned in my remarks, before you're issued an operating certificate—and everyone on a federal track will have to have an operating certificate—they will have to comply with that certificate.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Do I have some time?

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

One minute.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Say, for instance, you're looking at systems. This is one thing that was brought to my attention. I'm not an expert on railways; I come from the Northwest Territories. But the fact that in this country we don't demand automatic systems for red lights on our trains is something that has been brought to my attention as a safety concern.

Trains are not automatically brought to brake when there's a red light on. In Canada, it's still done manually. Would that come under the provision of regulation or would that necessarily have to come at a higher level?

[Rob Merrifield, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

I'm not an expert trainman myself, so I'll ask Luc to answer that one.

[Luc Bourdon]

I think what you're referring to is what we call positive train control. If a locomotive engineer is about to run through a red signal, for whatever reason, and he's not slowing down or stopping, a system will override a locomotive and bring the locomotive to a stop. Or if he's about to take a switch that is in reverse position, the locomotive will come to a stop as well.

That technology is currently being looked at in the United States. The U.S. Congress, through the Rail Safety Improvement Act, required all railways operating on mixed traffic, that being freight and passenger and where there is highly toxic material, to implement positive train control by 2015. However, the cost-benefit ratio is currently 22 to 1. They're working all the bugs out of that system. In the meantime, we're waiting to see how they're going to manage that system. We're going to look at it to possibly eventually do the same implementation in Canada.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

Mr. Bevington.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

This is just for clarification. Was that through regulations? Is that how you drive that particular thing?