Evidence of meeting #21 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 via.
A video is available from Parliament.
Chief, Customer Experience and Operating Officer, VIA Rail Canada Inc.
Our success could be our greatest weakness and our greatest enemy. If we start to become complacent because we were successful in recent years and because we are good at what we do, we might become our own worst enemy.
NDP
Isabelle Morin NDP Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC
In your presentation, you indicated, as did Mr. Dias, that the greatest concern when it comes to health and safety was the human factor. CN and CP said the same thing last week. We have heard a lot about the new technologies which will be brought in and the way these technologies will help us improve safety. However, we were not told about any indicators relating to the human factor.
What resources are you specifically allocating to improve safety in terms of the human factor? Perhaps a representative from Unifor could also answer this question.
Chief, Customer Experience and Operating Officer, VIA Rail Canada Inc.
I am very pleased to have the opportunity to respond.
Human error is the main cause of accidents, but this does not mean that the employee is the direct reason an accident happens. As managers, we are responsible for providing employees with training, good equipment and we must also do good risk analysis, so that these risks are managed in a safe environment. Yes, human error is the main reason accidents happen, but it is not necessarily a person who is directly responsible for that happening.
As it now stands, we are implementing new technologies to reduce the number of accidents. In collaboration with our union partners at the TCRC, we spend a lot of time trying to find out which human factors might help bring down the number of accidents on board of trains.
NDP
Chief, Customer Experience and Operating Officer, VIA Rail Canada Inc.
Training, the ability of people to react to sometimes unclear information, new information which arrives along the way, signage which might be misinterpreted or mistransmitted to a locomotive, the ability to react to a sudden event on a moving train; these are all factors which might influence the safe operation of a train.
NDP
Isabelle Morin NDP Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC
Thank you.
Mr. Stevens, do you want to add something in that regard?
Director, Rail, Unifor
Yes, I will.
There's an overreliance in the industry on technology and the technology, I've often said, is not proven. An example of that would be in the coal train system that's running from Sparwood in British Columbia out to the coast and back.
We used to perform a safety maintenance inspection on that train at a number of locations. CP was able to convince Transport Canada for an exemption on a number of safety and maintenance inspection rules and the no. 1 air brake test rule because they said we have this technology. They ran a six-month test and the technology proved to be 83% effective. With eyes and boots on the ground, we're 100% effective. The exemption said it will ensure railway safety and it's in the public interest.
It went from arguably 100% effectiveness with our rail mechanics doing the safety inspection maintenance to 83%. This has now been in place for about 18 months and the evidence is showing that it's declined. It's gone from 83% down to almost touching the 60% effectiveness. But our mechanics are still going out.
Also, the overreliance on WILDs, hot box detectors, and cold wheel detectors, those are tools that would assist our mechanics, not replace the mechanics.
CN has wayside detectors about every 12 to 15 miles. CP has them between 15 and 20, and say they're the greatest thing in the world. We still have bearing failures, cracked wheel failures, dragging equipment failures, and all of those would be captured at a safety inspection location. But most of them, for the most part, have been eliminated. That's why we're saying we should have a safety maintenance inspection at least every 1,600 kilometres, so we know that those cars are travelling from one distance to another in a manner that's safe.
In terms of the technology, there's an overreliance and my fear is that there is going to be more and more reliance. The railways are saying that they're not going to fix cars that they don't own. They're in the business of moving cars, not in the business of fixing them, and that's the mentality that drives this technology.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
One of the previous witnesses talked about safety management systems and obviously, there are regulations and we know that's important, safety management systems being sort of an augmentation of that. The statement was made that the safety management systems in a lot of cases are yet maturing or still maturing. I know when you look at VIA Rail, CN, CP, or perhaps larger operations, their safety management systems may be in a different stage.
Is there a maturation process in safety management systems? What might that look like and are there disparities among operators that need to be looked at?
Would anyone care to answer that? Perhaps, Mr. Fleming.
Professor, Department of Psychology, Saint Mary's University, As an Individual
I think it's true that how an organization approaches a safety management system develops over time. When you go from a prescriptive regime to a goal-oriented or safety management system regime, there's often a big challenge in that transition.
In terms of maturity, in 2000 I developed a thing called the safety culture maturity model, which was to describe that process. It was used as part of the previous railway act review. For your safety management system to work, it needs to be supported by a mature safety culture. As that process evolves, then your safety management system will become more effective.
At the bottom end of a safety culture, we have what we call a pathological culture where organizations don't care about safety. It's all about getting around the rules and not following them, and that, obviously, is not good for safety. When we get toward the top, the companies live their systems and go beyond any requirements and rules, and are very effective and safe. What's important is to see that, really, it's the maturity of the culture that underpins the effectiveness of your safety management systems.
Many times you can have two companies that on paper have the same management system but very different outcomes, and that's because of a poor underpinning culture. It's the maturity of the culture that is important rather than the maturity of the documentation of the system.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
Fair enough. I suppose there'd obviously be variances depending where we are on that—
Professor, Department of Psychology, Saint Mary's University, As an Individual
Continuum. Yes.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
—continuum.
The other thing that I'm looking at is that a safety management system requires buy-in by employers and employees, management, and the whole operation. I know that there are things that you need to deal with, like there's a certain way of thinking about things. There's a resistance to change by many of us even when change is good. We've done things a certain way and want to continue to do that.
You've mentioned that monitoring the performance is one thing and looking at trends and risk assessments. But actually going to the next stage and doing something about that in terms of improvement, is there resistance to that and how can you address the resistance to change that may mean improvement?
Director, Rail, Unifor
If I may, the risk assessment deals with risk, not the hazard. So the improvement from a perspective of in the workplace, which Professor Fleming was talking about, when there is a review, has got to come back to eliminating the hazard, dealing with the hazard as opposed to just continuing to find ways to mitigate the risk and get better at it.
People who are involved in SMS are true advocates of it. They're believers of it and they believe they're doing a wonderful job at it. As Professor Fleming said, no matter how well the documents read, it's the organization itself. So there has to be—
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
Are you saying there's some resistance? How do you address any resistance to change for improvement?
Professor.
Professor, Department of Psychology, Saint Mary's University, As an Individual
Different groups have resistance for different reasons. There are a number of different strategies that can be employed. In general we would try to engage people in the process. If they have control of the process, they tend to be more likely to buy into that change process. In a case where that's not working, then you may want to use external controls. If an organization isn't buying into a process, then you may use regulatory controls to say, “You must do something.” Sometimes you can frame it as a stick or a carrot. If you engage people in the design of the process, they're more likely to comply with it and buy into it. If that's not the case, then at a regulatory level you would use that process to move people along.
My framework—this is dealing with managers rather than front-line staff—is that if the person doesn't change, the person is changed. You either get rid of the person or you get the person to change.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
I notice the on-board voice and video recording devices being used. Maybe you're doing a pilot on that. I know there may be some resistance as to what they can be used for, whether it invades employee privacy, or whether they could be used as a punitive measure potentially, but really, safety, I would say, trumps all of that. There has to be a way that you can figure to address both the privacy issues and the punitive measure issues and use them for the purposes that they're intended to be used, regardless of how invasive they may be.
The legislation, the Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board Act, says it can only be used for investigative purposes for accidents. There has to be a way you can work that out.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
Thank you very much.
We'll now move to Mr. Watson for five minutes.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Dr. Fleming raised one valuable tool, which is surveying the safety perceptions of employees as one of a number of different tools to assist in evaluating safety culture.
Let me ask VIA. Do you do surveys of your employees on how safe they feel in the environment, and how often do you do that?
Senior Director, Safety and Corporate Security, VIA Rail Canada Inc.
If I may, one of the things we do as part of the Canada Labour Code's occupational safety and health regulations is to have a joint national health and safety committee, so high-level union, high-level management.
Conservative
Senior Director, Safety and Corporate Security, VIA Rail Canada Inc.
Correct. Absolutely. I'm going to get to that, if I may.
We actually have two. One deals with the issues that are important to our Unifor colleagues, and one is important to our TCRC colleagues. Denis made reference that we're hosting our annual conference this week.
Our unionized employees help develop the survey questions that we send out to employees across the country through the workplace committees, so we make sure they're highly involved.
Conservative
Senior Director, Safety and Corporate Security, VIA Rail Canada Inc.
We do them annually—