Transport Committee on March 10th, 2011

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

Perhaps I can just summarize quickly.

Your concern with this amendment is that it will undermine a more positive safety culture that you're hoping will develop through internal mechanisms at these companies. Do I have that right?

[Luc Bourdon]

No, we don't believe it's going to undermine; the only thing we want to make sure is that there is an attempt to resolve it at the company level first, and that if it can't be resolved then they come to us. So if there is an opportunity first to fix it at the company level, and then they come to us, we have no problem with that.

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

Okay, so then let me try to summarize again. Your concern is that it will short-circuit the company resolution processes, which would be a better way to handle the bulk of the questions initially.

[Luc Bourdon]

When we get a complaint, the first thing we do is investigate. Obviously what we would hope to find was that they had tried to resolve it first. If we contact the company and they say, “You know, we never heard about this complaint--”

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

Do you have concerns that if this goes through it could overload you, because there'd be more going to you than through the company?

[Luc Bourdon]

We honestly don't know.

Right now when someone reports something to the TSB, most of the time they send us a letter and ask us to investigate.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Julian.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

I agree with the subamendment and the amendment as offered, and I don't really see the objections around confidential reporting to the TSB. I've been listening very attentively, but I have to agree with committee members who are saying this just provides a very specific option for confidential reporting.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Jean.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

I might have to re-evaluate my position now that the NDP have agreed with me.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Jean is a very wise man in this particular case, and I support him 100%.

He could be part of the coalition, Mr. Chair, if he wanted to cross the floor.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Are we ready? Okay.

Shall amendment LIB-2 carry? We had agreement that we would add the subamendment, so we don't need to deal with that.

(Amendment agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])

Now we're going to move to two other amendments, NDP-5 on page 14 and LIB-3 on page 15. They're virtually identical--not exactly--but should the amendment NDP-5 carry, amendment LIB-3 cannot proceed.

Mr. Dhaliwal.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Where amendment LIB-3 has “may”, amendment NDP-5 has “must”.

We all heard that fatigue is a major cause in railway accidents, and it can only be prevented through scheduling rules that are best decided on between management and labour. If it cannot be decided there, then we should have an option to take it to the other level.

So instead of “must”, we should insert “may”. That will fit better.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Before I proceed, we have two amendments, and amendment NDP-5 was in the order of precedent received....

I would need Mr. Julian to move the motion, and then if you want to amend it to include “may” as opposed to “must”, that would be part of the debate.

Mr. Julian.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will move the motion for the amendment, understanding that Mr. Dhaliwal may move a subamendment.

But first, we had started to talk about the issue of receivability. I would appreciate it, before I speak, if our witnesses would perhaps follow up on what they were beginning to say on that. I think that would help.

[Luc Bourdon]

I'm sorry, I was reading this. Can you repeat the question, Mr. Julian?

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

You had raised concerns around any amendments that touch scheduling rules, and so--

[Luc Bourdon]

The definition...I think it was defined in orders, or later on in the amendments, we would talk about fatigue science in the context of scheduling rules. The issue is that there are no rules about scheduling, as we speak, and we have no authority currently in the act to force the industry to develop rules on scheduling.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

May I ask you, is it legal to have an engineer work for 72 hours straight?

[Luc Bourdon]

Then you're falling under what we call the “work rest” rules that we have in place that give the maximum time that someone can be on duty and the time being provided for rest.

This one talks about scheduling, about having better knowledge as to when they may be called again. My point is not that we are against what is being said here. What I'm telling you now is that when you talk about scheduling rules, they don't exist as we speak. That's the point.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

No, but we may be talking about semantics, right? What we have is a regulation--

[Luc Bourdon]

No, no, “rules” are a regulatory instrument under section.... The authority comes under section 18 of the current RSA. There are no provisions to allow us to do rules on scheduling. That's the issue.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Well, okay, so we're looking at proposed section 47.1:

The Governor in Council may make regulations respecting safety management systems including, but not limited to, regulations respecting

We've gone through a number of the list points, and the final one would be with both the NDP and the Liberal amendments talking about principles of fatigue science that must apply or may apply to scheduling rules.

You're not disagreeing with that. You're simply saying that the regulations around safety management are a separate portion of the act.

[Luc Bourdon]

That's correct.