Evidence of meeting #25 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 companies.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
I appreciate that very much.
In the marine sector there is additional liability beyond that of the shipper itself.
Mr. Larson, you almost suggested that any type of shared liability would lead to lower safety outcomes, if I understood your intervention correctly. Is that happening in the marine sector? Is its safety performance dropping?
President, Canadian Fertilizer Institute
I have no experience in transporting dangerous goods in the marine sector.
Conservative
President, Canadian Fertilizer Institute
Our products do generally move to final destination by truck, but 85% would start on rail.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
It's 85%, okay.
What factors go into the decision surrounding what mode of transport is selected? Maybe anyone on the panel could answer that briefly.
Manager, Logistics, Canexus Corporation, Chemistry Industry Association of Canada
As an example, our organization doesn't ship chlorine by any mode other than rail. We looked at it, and we've concluded that from a safety perspective trucking is far too risky. We limit ourselves to shipping chlorine by rail.
I'm not sure I can really say much more than that.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
Does anyone else want to answer the factors that go into decisions, rail versus truck?
Environmental Health and Safety Manager, Univar Canada Limited, Canadian Association of Chemical Distributors
With our member companies it largely depends on the ability of the destination, what they can receive. Some of our member customers do not have rail siding. Some are only able to receive in contained factory packages. For us, it's largely what the end user is capable of safely handling.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
The main origins and destinations for the products that your members ship, are they fairly static? Could you name for this committee the top five TDG products that your members ship in terms of destination, or origin and destination? Is that something that you could easily prepare for us? Do you know that offhand by any chance?
President, Canadian Fertilizer Institute
We have an analysis that's about that thick that we've already supplied to Transport Canada on distribution of anhydrous ammonia in Canada and the United States. I'd be happy to share that with the committee.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
Let's go back to liability for victims of unfortunate accidents involving dangerous goods. Is it the position that anything beyond the general liability of a company should give victims access to funds? We heard one witness who suggested that there should be a pool of funds accessible to victims of these accidents. Is that something that your members would support, or should victims recover their damages in court?
President, Canadian Fertilizer Institute
It would be our strong preference that there are no victims. With the reality that there have been victims, they need to be properly compensated and looked after without more trauma in their lives. If you look at the history of insurance claims over the last 10 years, there have been no problems within the existing insurance pools involving availability of compensation. The most expensive accident was something in the order of $900 million.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
Your member companies, we haven't really gotten into the details of this other than that Mr. Cove shared some numbers with respect to DOT-111s. How many DOT-111s, both what we call the old legacy cars and the newer DOT-111s, do your members own? Do you have a sense of that? Can you provide a list of your member companies and how many DOT-111s they have?
Director, Business and Economics, Chemistry Industry Association of Canada
It's something we're currently preparing, and we'd be willing to share it with you when we have that available.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
I'd appreciate it if you'd table that with the clerk of the committee for the benefit of the committee. This is our last meeting with respect to the rail mode of transport in our ongoing study. We will have to proceed to an interim report in June that will be tabled, and that's a report of findings. Additionally, we'll have a final report with recommendations at the end of the year on all modes of transport. At some point we'd like to see some of that information provided to the committee.
There's been a lot of discussion around this committee table about transload facilities. There's a concern that, given the lack of national fire safety standards for such facilities, they may represent a risk. Is this something, Mr. Cove, that you're concerned about? For the organizations here, are your member companies concerned about that?
Manager, Logistics, Canexus Corporation, Chemistry Industry Association of Canada
Certainly from our perspective.... We do have transload facilities, not only the oil transload facility I mentioned northeast of Edmonton, but we also have some hydrochloric acid transload facilities in Alberta. We do take into account their locations within the rural or urban areas. That's part of our product assessment prior to starting to ship.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
What agencies, provincial or federal, do you report to with respect to safety, and for what aspects?
Manager, Logistics, Canexus Corporation, Chemistry Industry Association of Canada
There's quite a few, and I don't have that information handy.
Manager, Logistics, Canexus Corporation, Chemistry Industry Association of Canada
Sure, there's quite a litany of them
NDP
The Vice-Chair NDP Hoang Mai
Thank you, Mr. Watson.
Thank you, Mr. Cove.
Mr. Komarnicki you have seven minutes please.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
Thank you for appearing before the committee. I might mention that Mr. Larson comes from northwestern Saskatchewan. It's good to have you here today.
I want to pursue the two points you raised. You talked about the insurance aspect and the DOT-111 capacity to produce if you're going to replace them within the time requirements that have been specified.
With respect to insurance, I understand you are saying that the party that has the care and control of the product gets the insurance to appropriately cover their aspects of the operation. I take it from what you're saying that the maximum amount of insurance is obtained by each of the parties for their respective areas.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
One of the suggestions was that in addition to that there should be an additional fund that shippers would pay into to cover catastrophic or other events. You're saying that's not possible, not probable, not reasonable.