Evidence of meeting #20 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 41st Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was goods.
A video is available from Parliament.
President and Chief Operating Officer, Canadian Pacific Railway
Those are all owned.
President and Chief Operating Officer, Canadian Pacific Railway
I'm not certain whether we do or don't. I'd have to get back to you, Mr. Watson.
Conservative
President and Chief Operating Officer, Canadian Pacific Railway
We will do retrofitting. I'm sure we'll do some new purchases as well, but we'll retrofit. It will probably be a combination of both.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
The TSB was here saying that even the new DOT-111 standards are not likely sufficient. There's a process under way to discuss new standards for containment.
Are CN and CP participating in any of that dialogue currently, on either side or both sides of the Canada-U.S. border?
President and Chief Operating Officer, Canadian Pacific Railway
CP is actively participating on the U.S. side, where those conversations are taking place with the industry as well.
Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer, Canadian National Railway Company
[Inaudible—Editor]
Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer, Canadian National Railway Company
It's on the U.S. side and in Canada.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
Very good.
Returning to safety management systems for a moment, what would be the most effective way to place a greater emphasis on the transportation of dangerous goods in the safety management system requirements for rail transportation?
Mr. Creel, let's start with you and then go to Mr. Vena.
President and Chief Operating Officer, Canadian Pacific Railway
In fairness, it is given full emphasis and full focus in our railway. There's always more that could be done, but it's not for lack of effort or commitment or lack of focus. I would say that we're seized of the issue and concern and will continue to be seized of it on a go-forward basis.
Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer, Canadian National Railway Company
Because of the number of commodities already labelled as dangerous commodities that we handle, we have a very robust system. I think you could spend hours here explaining the regulations involved in the movement of dangerous goods and the speed restrictions.
We at CN sat down after Lac-Mégantic and looked at everything we were doing to see whether we needed to change. That is part of the SMS and what drives it. You have to look at everything. You look at the training for people. You look at the communities. You look at further inspections. We put more money on geometry cars.
It all adds in. We have to do it and we did it after Lac-Mégantic. I think it's very robust.
I know that all of you understand the safety management system, but the people outside may not. Numbers will drive it, and also technology will drive it, and if anything changes, there's a continuous improvement program. It's not static, whereby you put it up on the wall and say this is what you're doing with the movement of any product or safety. It's a continuous development.
So after Lac-Mégantic we had some change. If we have any incident at all, we do the change. Or if the trend line is different for somebody else, we try to find out what other people are doing to see whether we can improve on it.
That's a long answer. I apologize for it.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
No, that's fine.
For emergency response, there is specialized firefighting equipment, obviously, because you're dealing with very different types of dangerous goods. Can you tell us what that specialized equipment may consist of? How readily is that specialized equipment available when accidents occur? Where do you position this type of equipment across your network?
Maybe we'll start with Mr. Vena, and then I'd like to get Mr. Creel to answer the question as well.
Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer, Canadian National Railway Company
Sometimes you're smart to pass it off to a guy who knows it better than you, so away you go, Michael.
Vice-President, Safety and Sustainability, Canadian National Railway Company
With regard to equipment, first and foremost, one of our largest assets is actually our dangerous goods officers who are qualified out of Pueblo, Colorado, to the highest level, and they are scattered throughout. What we've done is enter into a lot of agreements with companies. As an example, if we have a flammable liquid fire, we already have arrangements with Irving Oil’s contractor. We have arrangements with Valero, out of Quebec. We have arrangements with railroads, in terms of equipment. We have our own specialized equipment for burying goods.
You have to understand that when it comes to dangerous goods, it's not only about crude oil. We handle about 500,000 carloads of dangerous goods and we have for a very long time. Crude oil is less than 2% of our business, so when we talk about dangerous goods, we're talking about the full facet. We call in many different suppliers who can assist from an environmental standpoint. We can't neglect that. Not everything burns; things can spill to the ground. We have environmental caches of equipment strategically located throughout our network for that first response, whether it is booms, river rafts to put booms in place, absorbent materials, and so forth.
We have multiple layers but we also have a vast network of experts. We’ve had incidents where I've had five planes in the air bringing in people from all over North America. It's not a five-alarm fire for us; it's a ten-alarm fire for us. We will bring in as many people as needed. As Mr. Creel said earlier, you ramp up through a situation, so if you're in northern Ontario, that time of response, you ramp up.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
What is the desired time to be able to move equipment from the cached area to a location? For example, firefighters have a response time in their communities and that's why fire halls are strategically placed.
What is your response ratio for these strategically placed caches?
Vice-President, Safety and Sustainability, Canadian National Railway Company
In fairness to that question, we have to understand that we have some very remote locations where roads don't go in there. Oftentimes, it takes a bit more time to send in a helicopter to bring in goods and so we will just parachute in some of the first rounds of equipment. When we have road access, within hours we are fully mobilized with personnel and equipment, so they do vary. Understand that our country is fairly vast; we don't have always dense population areas.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
What's your urban response time?
People in higher population areas would want to know what your likelihood of getting those resources to them would be. I appreciate the remote area discussion.
Vice-President, Safety and Sustainability, Canadian National Railway Company
For a densely populated area, we're talking about Toronto, Montreal, Edmonton, and so forth, within the hour, two hours, we're already there.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
Your time has expired.
We have to go to some committee business now so thanks very much for being here.
Mr. Creel.