Transport Committee on Feb. 15th, 2011

[Cliff Mackay]

We can give you some of that information. One of the problems with crossings in Canada is that, particularly on the private side, the data is not as good as it should be. We can certainly give you data on the public crossings and some of the private crossings, and we can certainly give you a sense of where the risks are highest.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Is not the company that owns the railroad responsible for the risks of the crossing?

[Paul Miller]

I would certainly agree with that, Mr. Bevington. At CN, and I'm sure at both VIA and CPR as well, we have a list of crossings that we have prioritized due to either the nature of the sight lines involved or the nature of the operation adjacent to that crossing—for example, if there's switching going on over top of that crossing—and if there's a proximate crossing that could be used by the public with minimal inconvenience. We would very much like to work with both Transport Canada and the municipality in terms of closing them.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

So you've got some information. It's $21 million that the government has put forward. Is that just a drop in the bucket of dealing with 44,000 crossings to bring them to a level of safety that would be acceptable and represent the best technology applied correctly to the different locations?

[Cliff Mackay]

Clearly more money would be helpful. But it isn't just money. There's also very much a focus of people on the issue.

I'm just going to ask Mr. Marginson to speak very briefly, because they've been doing some of this very recently.

[John Marginson, Chief Operating Officer, VIA Rail Canada Inc.]

I should contextualize this by first saying that we don't own a lot of track. We own roughly 160 miles of our own track. Primarily our operations are on CN and to a lesser extent CP track.

Having said that, if you can close one crossing, two crossings, several crossings, it's that many crossings reduced and that much risk reduced. As an example, I'll speak a little bit about what we refer to as our Alexandria subdivision. It's actually the subdivision from about Côteau, Quebec, into Ottawa. On that relatively short piece of track--it's roughly 70 miles--we have 98 crossings, let's say a hundred crossings, over 75 miles or so. We've been able to contact private landowners who have private crossings over that 75 miles and we've slated for 2011 to close about half of those crossings. But I'm telling you it's tough slogging. It's tough work, because basically you have to go and knock on doors, go into people's kitchens, sit down at the kitchen table, and talk about this thing.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

With the dollars being invested with the federal government, is there a shared relationship on these dollars? What's the relationship?

[Cliff Mackay]

Yes, railways almost invariably put money into crossings as well. The actual relationship really depends on negotiation as to the public benefit and the private benefit to the railways of better safety, but railways put money into these things routinely.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Is there a need for higher regulation on crossings so that you're all operating from the same page of the book? Is there a need for us to increase the requirement for safety at crossings in a universal way across the country?

[Cliff Mackay]

The way it's done now is there's a risk assessment done, and the level of requirement at that crossing is based very much on the risk assessment, which goes right back to the fundamental principles of safety management and whatnot. We would not recommend that we change that, because that's really what you're trying to do--

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

But you could put the--

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you, Mr. Bevington. I'm sorry.

Mr. Watson.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, of course, to our witnesses for appearing today in consideration of Bill C-33.

Mr. Miller, in one of your statements you said one accident is one too many. In 2009, according to the Transportation Safety Board, there were 1,038 rail accidents, including 68 main-track derailments. I'm going to submit that there's significantly more work to do, and our government believes, of course, that Bill C-33 goes a long way toward that. It was broadly consulted on. It responds to 56 recommendations made by the special expert panel doing a rail safety review, as well as 14 recommendations by this very committee.

Mr. Mackay, I hope I haven't discerned something more than is here, but I sense a subtle shift or an intention to shift the discussion to things like the government with respect to crossings, or municipalities with respect to municipal planning, when this bill responds to safety reviews about your member companies, CN, CP, and to a lesser extent VIA. When I say lesser extent, the expert panel had more favourable things to say about the safety culture at VIA than they did about the other two companies. So I'm hoping to talk about the bill.

We've had many witnesses here who have said, for example, that Bill C-33 is “the right thing to do”. I'm going to ask each of the companies, CP, CN, and VIA, whether they agree, broadly speaking, about Bill C-33, that it is in fact the right thing to do. Maybe we'll start with CN.

[Paul Miller]

Yes, sir, we do. We have a couple of suggestions as per our written document, but we have no issues whatsoever with the bill.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Mr. Marginson.

[John Marginson]

Absolutely, it's the right thing to do. When you're carrying passengers at speeds of up to 100 miles an hour, safety is paramount.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Good.

Mr. Wilson.

[Glen Wilson]

CP is also a supporter of Bill C-33, and behind the submission you received is simply a desire to improve it further.

[Cliff Mackay]

If I could just say for the short lines, since they're not here, they would share that sentiment.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Okay, very good.

Let me bore down a little bit and get to some of the specifics, just to be sure from the broad sense.

You support the requirements for environmental management plans and compliance audits with those environmental management plans? Do each of you support those initiatives? Okay, they're all nodding yes.

The new administrative monetary penalties and the increase in judicial penalties as well?

[Cliff Mackay]

Yes, we'd only make one comment there, sir, and that is that they be managed at a high level inside the government.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

The requirements for the rail operating certificates and the minister's authority to suspend or pull those? I'm seeing heads nodding. Okay. Very good.

Non-punitive reporting. This has been a difficult issue in consideration of the former Bill C-9, the Aeronautics Act. We didn't get consensus around the table whether it should be part of an SMS or whether it should be something else. At the time we had three parties in support of it being included in the SMS, as it's being presented similarly here. One party didn't, and it led ultimately to the bill being hoisted in the House. We may have some difficulty with respect to NPR in this current round as well.

Maybe I support your position in the sense that I think it has to be one or the other. It either has to be in an SMS system or there has to be a direct line to Transport Canada. I'm not sure, if given the choice, that workers would use both. Do you share that sentiment or not?

[Paul Miller]

Sir, once again for CN, we have no issue whatsoever on non-punitive reporting, and we know we have to improve our own processes in this regard. We have no issue with employees reporting directly to Transport Canada, and we do see it as part of an SMS. Again, just with the comment I made a moment ago that it can't be the be-all and end-all, we do have to develop and continue to work on that relationship, employee to front-line supervisor, to have that trust.

[John Marginson]

Certainly we also are not concerned by non-punitive reporting.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Whether it should be one or the other is more what I'm getting at. I'm not sure, if given both, whether both would be used.