Transport Committee on April 8th, 2014

[Brian Stevens]

In terms of the freight railways and the safety management system, the Auditor General has got it right in terms of the inability of TC to do the audits.

I think our opening comments kind of reflect our position in terms of SMS. In our view, SMS is kind of a bureaucratic process—there are probably enough documents to fill up this room—and in many instances it doesn't advance safety.

I've gleaned over the report, I've read the testimony of the Auditor General here at this committee, and I look forward to reading his comments later. Again—

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Let me just remind Mr. Dias, before he steps in, and I quote, “work plans are vague in terms of timelines for monitoring progress on important safety issues”.

Critical information is missing. We don't have the federal railways’ risks assessments. We don't have information on the sections of track used in transporting dangerous goods. We don't have information on the condition of railway bridges. We don't have the financial information of privately owned federal railways not publicly available.

There is a three-year cycle for auditing the SMS of each federal railway. They did 14 audits in three fiscal years; 26% of what they actually required themselves. VIA Rail was not audited in three years. The audit scope is very limited.

In conclusion, these findings indicate that Transport Canada does not have the assurance it needs that federal railways have implemented adequate and effective safety management systems. The report says that even the methodology used to determine the inspections is flawed.

It goes on and on. What are we to make of this? How can Canadians trust what you're saying when this is the definitive objective assessment of what's going on?

[Jerry Dias]

Let me ask you this question. Can you imagine if we regulated the airline industry this way?

You don't have a quarrel with us as it relates to regulation.

Let's take this another step further. I won't talk about VIA, but I'll talk about the transportation of dangerous crude. Five years ago we had one inspector for very five cars. Today, we have one inspector for every 4,000.

So shall we continue the discussion on a slippery slope?

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you.

We now move to Mr. Watson for seven minutes.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for appearing here today.

Mr. Dias, allow me a moment to share on the public record what I shared with you just a few moments before the hearing began, my personal congratulations on your election to the leadership of Unifor. We certainly wish you well in your efforts.

Just to clarify some of what Mr. McGuinty just put on the record here, if we go back to the 2007 independent rail advisory panel report, with respect to safety management systems, they had suggested that to achieve the pinnacle of a safety management system is to increase the number of audits while decreasing the number of inspections.

I'm not sure that anyone, Canadians included, would feel comfortable if inspections were replaced by system audit. The situation now is, while we take the Auditor General's advice on needing to do more audits, the number of traditional inspections have actually increased to a level of 30,000 over what was normally about 20,000 a year. We think that is also an important thing, that we don't abandon the number of inspections simply to increase audits. So we take the correction by the Auditor General well.

Professor Fleming, your comments on safety culture.... Now I used to work for Chrysler in one of its previous iterations. They had five measurements in their plant: safety, quality, delivery, cost, and morale. If you were to talk to workers on the shop floor, they certainly felt that morale was the bottom of the heap, but if you had moved that to the front end, you'd have improved quality, safety, delivery, and cost down the chain.

Can you comment a little bit on the importance of the employee feeling safe in the environment and how they can participate in driving the safety culture within the corporation? What are the barriers to that?

[Dr. Mark Fleming]

Okay.

The safety culture is in some ways hard to define away from the broader organizational culture. That's one of the issues when you talk about morale and other—

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

So leadership at the top drives safety culture, is that what you're concluding?

[Dr. Mark Fleming]

There are many components. Definitely senior leader commitment is one of the biggest components of the culture in terms of determining what that culture looks like and how people feel about that culture.

From a front-line perspective, they are the people who are at risk and they are the people who are implementing the majority of control measures that are going to be in place. So when we talk about hazard control and administrative controls, really, that relies principally on employees complying with different rules and procedures. Sometimes people can get a bit confused about what we mean about safety culture because they look at the safety outcomes and they see it's mainly somebody at the front line who has made a mistake or an error. It seems like it's an employee issue, when principally what the evidence shows is that it's a leadership commitment issue.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Actually, it's interesting you point that out because I think I heard that with respect to VIA's testimony today, that it's about human error. If I can quickly find Mr. Vena's testimony at CN, he said that they conduct 1,000 audits per day to see what their employees are doing, as if the employees are the ones who are causing the safety problem.

[Dr. Mark Fleming]

It's always a challenge to separate these things. Clearly, the employees are the people at risk, so yes, you want to know what's going on at the front line because that is a reflection of your culture. Not to sound paternalistic, but a way to think about this in an everyday sense is to think about your children and your parenting style. We all get embarrassed when our children freak out and behave inappropriately in a public place. The reason we're embarrassed is that everybody knows it's a reflection of how we parent, whether we like it or not.

While it's not quite the same in an organization, that gives you the sense that it's important to look at the activities and behaviour of front-line staff, to judge it in terms of a reflection of your behaviour. What you're showing is important and you need to change what you do. That's the lesson. It would be to reflect it back at you.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Okay, I appreciate that. I know, Mr. Dias, you would say on behalf of your members that they're very actively engaged as much as they can be to work safely in an environment. As a Chrysler employee, I knew how to exercise a work refusal, for example, if there were components at my work station that weren't safe. I know they're actively engaged.

I want to probe a little of what you know and the union's participation on behalf of workers with the corporate organization on their safety management systems. Are you involved or do you see the risk assessments they produce? Do they share that with you at least?

[Brian Stevens]

Yes, during the risk assessment process, whether it be under the Railway Safety Act or under the SMS of occupational health and safety, we usually have one or two members who participate in the risk assessment process.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Are you involved in the risk planning about where to target risk assessments?

[Brian Stevens]

No.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

You're not. Okay.

Are you actively part of the process of setting safety goals for the organization?

[Brian Stevens]

No, we're not part of that process. Although we sit on the policy committee, so in a sense it comes down from above.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

But the pending regulations as a result of Bill S-4 will very much formalize the union in that particular process and that will be an important step forward on behalf of workers to ensure they are moving forward in the active planning and information sharing around improving safety management systems.

[Brian Stevens]

In Jerry's opening comments we spoke of enhancing employee participation, but again, we'll see when the regulations come out.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Fair enough. I want to ask as well about on-board video cameras. Is there a difference between your position and that of, say, CN and CP? I'm trying to remember offhand, Chair, and you'll have to forgive me here—and I don't want to misrepresent this—but I think that at least CN had suggested that they not only wanted outward-facing cameras but inward-facing cameras, and I don't know what their policy is. They say they're aligned with TSB's recommendation but I know theirs has caveats about how you use on-board video. Can you discuss your position, what you would see it used for and not used for, and whether that differs from the railway companies' perception of how we should do that? Because obviously if we're going to be making some recommendations in the report we want to be clear about what we could be recommending.

[Brian Stevens]

Yes, there is a difference of opinion between the rail unions and the employers in the use of in-cab voice recorders and video cameras. Our position has been, with the industry and with TC, that we're not opposed to cameras. Our position would be that the cameras inside the cab would be focused on the equipment; that is, the gauges, the rail stand to see what position the throttle might have been in, those items. There's no need to have a video camera looking at the face of the locomotive engineer. It should be on the equipment. We're not opposed to in-cab voice recorders either, provided they're used exclusively by Transport Canada to investigate accidents.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

The TSB to investigate....

[Brian Stevens]

Sorry, the TSB to investigate.

In fact, in our last round of bargaining we came to an agreement with VIA Rail arguing in terms of allowing these in-cab cameras and voice recorders. They agreed they would not be used for surreptitious reasons, such as listening in on conversations. They would not be used for anything other than as currently provided in the TSB act, and that is for investigating accidents.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Unifor represents VIA workers—

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Sorry, Mr. Watson, your time has expired. Because I think it's very pertinent to what we just heard from Mr. Stevens, would VIA Rail comment on that same question, if that's okay with committee members?

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

How they approach the recorders?