Transport Committee on April 3rd, 2014

[Keith E. Creel]

I'd be remiss not to make one important comment.

Mr. Watson had a question about how we could improve our SMS. One of the areas that we're seized with is expanding and collaborating and partnering with industry, with pipelines to improve those response times, assets resources to reduce the response times. The second point we're seized with is risk mitigation and the closing of crossings. We have a very problematic situation in Canada where Transport Canada's objective is to close crossings. However, CTA opens crossings, so Transport Canada may close, for instance, three in a year, and CTA, without collaboration, without any due process, may open six.

Every time you have a crossing, you have an opportunity for an uncontrolled situation to occur. You have an opportunity for a truck, for instance, to impale the side of a train that may be carrying these very hazardous materials, so it's in the Canadian public's best interest and safety's interest to eliminate as many unnecessary crossings as possible and to strictly control the opening of any new crossings.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you.

Mr. Mai, on a point of order.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Mr. Chair, I don't think we need to go into committee business. The motion that was moved, personally, I don't want to talk about it too long. We have great witnesses who are here, quality witnesses. I think we all have a lot of questions—

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Are you withdrawing the motion?

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

No. I would like, maybe, to have 30 seconds on the motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

This is what I'm up against, Mr. Mai.

If I start another round, I need to go one, two, three, four. We don't have time to do that. You should have thought of that before you tabled the motion.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

I think we could do it if we only ask one question. It has happened before.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Mr. McGuinty, go ahead.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Mr. Chair, I think we can accommodate another round here.

I've seen this motion brought by the NDP and I think it can be dispatched in less than a minute. We have 20 minutes left on the clock and six witnesses here today, who I hope are to come back for another two-hour session, Mr. Chair, so I would strongly urge us to continue.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Mr. Watson.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Mr. Chair, I don't know how long it will take us to dispose of the particular motion in front of us. If we begin down the road of another round, then we may not leave ourselves sufficient time.

Chair, I'll leave it to your discretion on that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you.

Based on the comments, I'm going to take one question from Mr. Mai, one from Mr. McGuinty, one from Mr. Watson, or two from over here to even it out and then we'll go from there. Please don't abuse this. Make your question very direct. Gentlemen, try to make your responses as quickly as possible.

If we're going to deal with this motion, I hope it goes quickly, but we never know until we get there.

Mr. Mai, one question.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Thank you very much for your great understanding, Mr. Chair.

Honestly, I do understand how important it is that Canada has two of the best rail companies in the world in terms of safety. I understand that. The concern we have and that I hear on the ground is with smaller companies that don't have all of the resources that your companies have in terms of making sure that safety is the number one priority. Obviously with Lac-Mégantic, MMA, for instance, didn't have the same concern about safety that your companies have.

How can we, as regulators, because I think we have been failing, in that companies are inspected and Transport Canada is flagging issues but not following up on those issues....

How can you help Transport Canada to make sure that all of the inspections or issues are dealt with from the companies' side. What would be your recommendation for small companies?

[Michael Bourque]

Let me start with that, since there are a number of short lines in our membership.

I want to assure you that we asked ourselves all of those same questions after that terrible accident. That's one of the reasons we have instituted a new measure where we will require a commitment to safety culture as part of membership in the Railway Association of Canada.

I also should mention that for safety management systems, exactly the same rules apply for short lines as for mainline operations. In fact, and my colleagues can jump in in a minute, where they operate on CN or CP track, then they also have to follow the standard that those railways have. Typically a short line is operating over a much shorter distance, and they're operating at much lower speeds. Typically they have very experienced personnel with very low turnover. They must audit their own safety management systems. Transport Canada has developed guidelines for them in developing SMS, and employees have to be part of their SMS development.

One of the things that we did following Lac-Mégantic is that I asked our dangerous goods team to visit with every single one of our short-line members to talk to them about the lessons from Lac-Mégantic. Two of my staff were on the ground at Lac-Mégantic, helping firefighters, because they are experienced dangerous goods operators. They were there for 15 days straight providing their expertise to the personnel on the ground. They then went out to every single one of our short-line members and had discussions with them about what they learned, and re-emphasized the requirements under the act as part of their safety management systems.

I feel very confident that the short-line members in our association are absolutely committed to safety and they understand the rules, and that we're providing every support that we can to them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Okay, thank you.

To our three questioners, please withhold your statements. Ask the questions so that our witnesses can take the time needed to answer them.

Thank you.

Mr. McGuinty.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Gentlemen, very quickly, I want to give you the number one conclusion of the Auditor General's report.

The Auditor General is saying that Canadians basically cannot trust—cannot trust—whether or not the railways in this country have a safety management system. That's what he's saying. It's written twice in the report. He cannot tell Canadians whether or not your SMS is actually in place. That's the conclusion. There are a whole series of other conclusions that he draws, but I want to put to you a proposition and ask you for your response, very quickly.

We're going to double the exploitation of the oil sands in the next 10 years. We're going to see a million barrels of excess capacity of oil that cannot go on pipeline by 2024. You have plans to build large-scale crude loading terminals in the west for capacity of 890,000 barrels a day. We know from the Auditor General, because we can't necessarily trust the government. The question I want to put to you is—and Mr. Creel, you'll recall these words originally as a U.S. citizen—Canadians would say, “We'll trust, but we want it verified.”

Please tell the Canadian people who are watching what you're going to do to help Canadians have trust in the system, and particularly, what pressure you are going to exert on the sitting government to do its job and regulate.

[Keith E. Creel]

At CP the best thing we can do is convince Canadians that they can trust us by our actions and by our results. We are the safest railway in the North American industry; we have been for the last eight years. Our investments, our processes, our focuses, and our accountabilities are seized with that, and the only way, in my mind, that we'll continue to earn Canadians' trust is to simply produce results, continue to be the safest railway, and continue to be seized with elimination of 100% of the accidents.

I know that's not possible, but it certainly is the objective. I believe fully if you lower the bar and you expect anything less than that, then you're never going to have a chance of achieving that. That's what we're seized with at CP.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Mr. Vena, do you want to comment at all?

[Jim Vena]

Listen, I love that he went over from CN and now he's the safest railroad in North America. He keeps on saying that, but so are we. We're very good.

At the end of the day, I agree with Keith. I think he handled it right. That's exactly what we need to do as an industry.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you.

Mr. Watson, please ask one question.

[Keith E. Creel]

Mr. Chair, I'd like to make one comment, if I could.

I'd like to let Mr. Vena know that the first quarter of 2014 is the safest quarter that CP has ever experienced.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

I will let you gentlemen have that discussion after.

Mr. Watson.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

They can continue that conversation out in the hallway a little bit later. Hopefully, it will keep to words only.

Very briefly, I want to note two things.

Looking on the TSB's website at the annual railway statistics, I note that CN, for accidents involving dangerous goods, went from 85 to 99. That's up 16%. Accidents involving dangerous goods for CP went from 29 to 34. That's up 17%.

There is a another interesting thing, and you'll have to explain this to me. Considering a dangerous goods leaker, TSB says that's an unintentional release of hazardous material while in transit. What does that literally mean? Those are both up for both companies. What is an unintentional release? Where would that happen? How would that happen?

[Glen Wilson, Special Assistant to the President and Chief of Operations, Canadian Pacific Railway]

I can start us off, if you like.

First of all, a DG leaker is also referred to as a non-accidental release. That really means it's a shipper-caused issue, like a faulty O-ring or a valve that's not fully closed, and there's a venting from the car. It could be an overload, and it's a pressure release. Those are the kind of circumstances that lead to DG leakers.

The other statistic you referred to is really just about involvement of dangerous goods within a train, but not necessarily that they were involved in a derailment, that there was any release.

One of the key stats in the TSB's website is accidents involving a release, and the annual average is usually in the area of two to three per year. It's actually very simple to come up with the 99.997% that was discussed earlier by simply taking the number of shipments. Combined dangerous goods shipments on CN and CP are approaching about a million a year, and yet you can see from the TSB's own statistics that there are in the area of two to three accidents involving a release. As we talked about earlier, that can be any release, literally picking up a shovelful of pellets.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

The statistics show three each for CP and CN last year.