Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to thank the committee for having us here. As you know, it was on short notice.
I also want to thank the committee for the heavy-load lifting they did to help this bill appear before us--especially the government for bringing it forward in a timely manner.
We support the bill. We urge its fast passage, hopefully in the next 40 days, if possible, or whatever time. We think it came from a lot of work--from this committee, through the RSA review, and also from the department and staff. We'd like to commend Monsieur Bourdon and his staff, who always do an excellent job.
Basically, we see just four small areas for improvement. We've given you four small amendments.
The first one is just the standard, stock teamster amendment at this point--it actually is a teamster/Conservative amendment, a party amendment, or from the government--and that's to allow the committee to review the legislation for safety reasons. It appeared in the TDG Act, and also in the aviation act; though it died, we'd love it to come back.
All it is, basically, is a check on the regulatory process to make sure that the regulatory bodies we have in place always know that Parliament can have an overview and have a look. It is working in other areas, and we just urge you to agree to bring it forward again.
The second one is quite simply to urge you to have Rail Safety at Transport Canada be one of the contacts, one of the possibilities, to report safety conditions. No matter what you might hear from Monsieur Bourdon and the companies, etc., there's a climate of fear out there. Brother McDavid was fired for not having his boots correctly tied. We have all sorts of cases, especially with CN, where they have a less-than-modern view of labour relations. These are not companies that you're going to call and make a complaint to.
Right now, the way it is handled is actually through Rail Safety. Either we contact Rail Safety or the transport board calls Rail Safety. So let's just cut out the middleman and let's go right to the people who do the job--because they do. And they should be congratulated for doing it so well.
The next one is an issue that was raised regarding the RTCs, the control of the rails. Going back to 1999, in fact, CP Rail attempted to do exactly what some American companies are trying to do--namely, to switch their operations from the United States to Canada--and the answer was “no”. If you look at the regulations, which we can get to you or your people can get, it's basically for security reasons. That was the reason given. If you say it's a trade issue, trade is supposed to be fair trade, so that if they can get the work, we can get the work. We can never get the work, period.
I think as we move forward with the North American perimeter system, we should be cognizant that it's up to the Canadian government to have security taken care of up in Canada. These people eventually receive transport security clearance, probably under the TDG Act or some other act. That's the way it should be.
The last one deals with scheduling rules. You've heard of the fatigue management systems. Well, I'll be honest with you; it would be great if they were put in place, but they're not. The truth of the matter is that these issues are dealt with by collective bargaining. It comes through a long line, from the Hinton disaster and the review they're after....
The truth of the matter is that we've almost had two national strikes over one issue: scheduling rules. And I'll be blunt; I'll give thanks to the minister, to the department, to the FRMS people over there, for all the work they did to help us get an agreement. But we don't believe that scheduling rules are something that necessarily should be set by collective bargaining, especially putting the issue of potential strikes on the line.
If you like my paragraph 47.1(1)(c), I actually stole that language from the aviation act, which I worked on with the minister and Mr. Jean and others. That's where I stole it from.
Scheduling rules should conform with fatigue science, period. I think if we put this in the act, we may not actually ever have to use it, but it will force companies to actually deal with the issue instead of just talk about it.
With that, I'll pass it on to Mr. Brehl to continue our comments.