Transport Committee on May 6th, 2014

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

How many employees might be involved in that sphere?

[Marty Cove]

There is a fair number. There are the people who are overseeing the development of the programs, there are the people who actually do the loading, there is a second group of people who check the cars after 24 hours to make sure they're in good shape. We do inspections of the cars when they're arriving and when they're leaving, so there is quite a number. I couldn't give you an exact number.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

I know Ms. Cook mentioned that the ethic you try to instill is doing the right thing and going beyond what's required. That's kind of interesting because it's a matter of trying to keep that ethic. How do you motivate people in that regard? One of the comments made earlier was that in a safety management system you need a safety culture, one in which safety values are firmly entrenched in the minds of managers and employees at all operational levels and respected on a daily basis in the performance of their duties. It requires employees to engage and be part in the development of the companies' safety management systems, and to be able to escalate their safety concern to the highest levels in the organization without fear of punishment, and receive appropriate supervision and training to ensure that errors lead to improvements in safety.

When we had the Teamsters here, they seemed to suggest—at least to my mind—that the employees were not part, and did not engage, and were not part of the solution.

How do you engage employees in the manner I have indicated, (a) where their concerns get raised to the highest levels of management, and (b) the concerns they might raise do not result in any kind of punishment or detraction from their contribution? How do you motivate employees, and managers as well, I suppose, to be part of a system that is not only adhering to regulations but dealing with safety beyond that?

Who wishes to tackle that?

[Jim Bird]

It falls right into my area of daily work, safety culture.

It starts with leadership. Once an organization has the leadership, you have to be able to go out and set examples. You have to talk to people. You have to talk to the people involved in the process and reassure them that somebody's listening, somebody's acting on these things. For example, if I go to a site and somebody tells me there is a safety concern here, I have to act on that immediately to show them that we have credibility.

So it's leadership and talking to people so they feel they have a voice, a buy-in. If you don't have that, you're never going to arrive at a safety culture. You can have all the programs and processes and documentation in place that you want, but unless you get that leadership, unless you get that interaction with people—

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

You can have the right paper and the right concept, but you might not actually have it effectively carried out—

[Jim Bird]

Exactly.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

—unless you get the buy-in from all levels, I suppose.

[Jim Bird]

Exactly. What I look for is what the leadership is doing, because I'm a watchdog on the safety culture side. You need to look and see what the leadership is actually doing. I actually measure how many times the senior manager will go on site and talk to people about safety, for example.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

I guess it's not something that just happens. It's something that happens over time.

[Jim Bird]

It takes a while to develop a safety culture. It's not going to happen instantaneously. It's a discipline. You have to invest in it.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

I know, Mr. Larson, you might want to make a comment.

I know that many are concerned with the fact that maybe you don't have enough regulations. You can have a lot of regulations, but things evolve and you need to have a system that deals with that.

Go ahead with your comments.

[Roger Larson]

I think to be philosophical, the best regulation is the responsibility of the chief executive to protect the assets the shareholders have paid for. When you look at safety cultures, you go to a potash mine in Saskatchewan and you'll see a huge billboard on the outside of the potash mine saying how many thousand or million person hours that mine has had without a single workplace incident.

One of our member companies mottos is “Safety Today”, not “Safety Tomorrow” but “Safety Today”. They drive this safety philosophy all the way through their corporate structure and that's a responsibility to their shareholders. I think that is more effective than regulation by government in terms of a cost-effective way of improving safety.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Ms. Cook, did you have a final comment on that?

[Fiona Cook]

I want to say that's why we call responsible care an ethic. To not report a safety incident would be the wrong thing to do. That's taken years. Sometimes with new companies that come in, it can take years to get up to that level of performance and that trust within the organization that reporting on another employee is seen as the right thing to do and will be rewarded, not punished.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Hoang Mai]

Thank you, Mr. Komarnicki.

I want to thank the witnesses for their presentations and for having answered our questions.

Mr. Watson, you have the floor.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Vice-Chair, noting that it's the month of May, we served notice of motion and I'd like to move:

That, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the Committee undertake a study, as suggested by the Standing Committee on Finance in their motion adopted on April 29, 2014, of the subject matter of clauses 212 to 233 and clause 375 of Bill C-31, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 11, 2014 and other measures; and that the meeting on Tuesday, May 13, 2014, be dedicated to the study.

Should I read it in French as well?

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Hoang Mai]

No, that's okay.

I think everyone has received the notice of motion. Is there any debate?

Mr. Sullivan.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

It's a question. Will we be calling witnesses? If so, will we need more than one day? Will we be actually undertaking a vote on any of these clauses or are we just conducting a study and reporting back?

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Hoang Mai]

Mr. Watson.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

I know that in terms of witnesses, obviously government officials would be present for such a study to answer on these particular elements—both Transport Canada and Infrastructure officials. If there's a desire to have other witnesses, obviously that's something you've probably been considering for the last 48 hours. With our notice of motion we should probably make that known to the clerk as quickly as possible to see what we can accommodate with respect to the meeting.

We don't have a lot of meetings available, if you will, with respect. We have a study that we're largely seized with and there's a reasonable timeframe in terms of when this would have to be examined by this committee. The standard, as I understand in these typical cases, is that unless there are amendments that are proposed by the committee there's a response that's made back to finance committee regarding the fact that the committee has looked at these particular measures.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Hoang Mai]

Right now we don't have anything planned for the next meeting on Thursday. That's in terms of committee business.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

So is your suggestion that we move this study ahead to Thursday as well as next Tuesday?

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Hoang Mai]

I'm not making any recommendations.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Is that acceptable to Mr. Watson?

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thursday we'll have other committee business, particularly in light of the completion of the rail segment of the study before us. There will be some opportunity to give some direction to the analyst with regard to compiling the interim report such that we could have it back in a reasonable time for the committee to consider the interim report on findings as well. We also have other modes of transport to commence for that particular study.

The proposal is that we use this particular meeting next week to take a look at the budget elements. I believe they relate to the “beyond the border” measures for regulatory compliance or harmonization of the Champlain Bridge, which we're looking at.