Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, for inviting the steelworkers to discuss our union's perspective on the future of rail safety in Canada as it relates to railway workers and the transportation of dangerous goods.
I'm Richard Boudreault, the steelworkers' area coordinator from Montreal. I'm also the coordinator responsible for our transportation members in the province of Quebec. Since 2005, I am also the chief leader for the negotiations on The Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway. The last collective agreement was voted on and adopted by our members in April 2012 and is still in force right now.
The USW, or Syndicat des Métallos, as we are known in Quebec, represents more than 5,000 rail workers across Canada and Quebec, from clerks and intermodal employees to maintenance of rail employees and on-train conductors. As well, I am pleased that also appearing before you today are representatives of National Steel Car Limited, a company that employs members of USW Local 7135 at its Hamilton operation. Indeed, our members have been involved in both manufacturing of rolling stock and railway operations for more than 70 years. We are clearly stakeholders in the future of rail safety.
The Lac-Mégantic tragedy on July 7 involved a railway company that employed our members, including the conductor, Mr. Tom Harding, whose life has changed as dramatically as the families in the community. All were impacted by both government and company decisions that we believe were wrong-headed from the start. For us, a union dedicated to protecting our members and their communities, the Lac-Mégantic story itself can in part be traced to our experience in collective agreements.
In fact, we were in negotiations for 15 months, and I have just a few comments about that. We had a new issue concerning the one-person operation, and we went before the federal government and this item was a deal breaker. We had been told by the federal mediator that we were not the union that would decide if this would be implemented; it was not our responsibility. The responsibility was Transport Canada's to decide if it agreed or not to implement the one-man crew operation at MMA.
In fact, it is important to note that The Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway received permission to go with a one-man crew in May 2012 , exactly one month after the signature of the actual collective agreement with our union. MMA was the second company in Canada that received that authorization from Transport Canada; the first one was QNS&L, Quebec North Shore and Labrador.
We are all aware that the volume of dangerous goods shipped by rail across Canada has jumped 30% in recent years. The boom in petrochemical and crude oil shipments is raising new challenges that obviously have not been fully addressed. Otherwise, none of us would be in this room today. We have responded in various ways to questions of rail safety over the years, including on such issues in the Railway Safety Act as the construction or alteration of railway works. This includes the rail lines, structures, signals, and road and utility crossings. This section simply says that the minister or Governor in Council can make regulations that require railway companies to undertake certain actions, such as changing engineering standards.
Our members involved in railway track maintenance report that speed is an issue they often feel threatened by. They often work in very remote areas where trains, including those carrying dangerous cargo, race through a maintenance zone at top speed with workers only a few metres away from the track.
Other so-called rules are that the minister may require a company to make or amend rules on just about every aspect of their operations. In doing so they must consult, during a period of 60 days, with each association or organization that is likely to be affected. This has not been done or enforced as rigorously as it should be. Allowing railways the absolute discretion to inform and involve whomever they choose in the process of transporting increased amounts of dangerous goods is the rail equivalent of allowing the fox to guard the henhouse.
As I said earlier, our members not only work in but are residents of communities through which dangerous goods pass on a daily basis. There is no excuse for safety management systems not to include full disclosure to relevant stakeholders, including employees, their unions, municipalities, and possibly others. Raising the spectre of national security or the threat of terrorism is unjustified. If you ask anyone who still lives in Lac-Mégantic, I am sure that they feel they were the victims of a corporate act of terror.
The steelworkers believe that the role of Transport Canada should be, first, to promote and provide for the security and safety of the public and the environment in railway operations; second, to promote and facilitate participation of interested parties in improving rail safety; third, to monitor railway companies to ensure they adhere to the Railway Safety Act and its rules, regulations, and standards, as well as to monitor the overall safety of railway operations through audits, inspections, and data collection; fourth, to promote transparency of their operations and findings as well as data collected; and, fifth, to investigate rail accidents with the full participation of workplace health and safety committees.
The first two recommendations come from the objectives of the railway act, subsections 3(a) and 3(b). Items three and four are gleaned from the Government of Canada website on Transport Canada.
Comprehensive data collection is, or should be, part of the ongoing federal monitoring of railway companies to ensure they are managing their risks related to safety. For workers, there must be a stronger commitment, compelled by Transport Canada, to develop, monitor, and implement safety management systems, in conjunction with our unions, which are ultimately carrying out the companies’ bidding. This is even more crucial in cases when railway companies apply for exemptions to the regulations or act.
The United Steelworkers union has always taken our role in health, safety, and the environment very seriously. But the very safety of our members and their communities is being put at risk by a Minister of Transport who grants exemptions to railway companies like handing out Halloween candy to kids.
The union believes that the focus of rail safety has been on the development of management safety systems, reducing worker participation, regulations, and enforcement to a subset of those management systems. It is our view that worker participation, supported by their union, is an independent component of safety in the workplace. It provides a well-needed check and critique of the safety system. This is not a new position and was included in our 2007 submission on rail safety.
We will do no less to ensure that workers, their families, and their communities are protected from disaster. Without changes that allow greater transparency and sharing of information, disaster remains a constant potential in the increasing transportation of dangerous goods. You don’t have to take my word for it, just spend some time in Lac-Mégantic.
Thank you very much.
I would be pleased to answer any questions you may have.