Evidence of meeting #27 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 agency.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Isabelle Morin NDP Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My thanks to the witnesses for being here.
Ms. Frid, could you tell me specifically which factors the Canadian Transportation Agency takes into consideration when it issues certificates?
Director General, Dispute Resolution Branch, Canadian Transportation Agency
Yes, I would be happy to. Thank you for your question.
The factors are set out in the Railway Third Party Liability Insurance Coverage Regulations. Three categories of factors are listed: third party bodily injury or death, including injury or death to passengers; third party property damage, excluding damage to cargo; and named perils pollution.
You can have the regulations if you wish.
In addition, the regulations also set out 10 very specific factors, including passenger ridership, train miles, volume of railway traffic—
NDP
Isabelle Morin NDP Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC
I am sorry, but since I have access to the regulations, I would like to continue with my next question.
I imagine that those factors can change over time. Why, after providing the certificate of fitness to MMA in 2002, was the certificate never renewed or reviewed? Does the agency have the obligation of seeing what happens after a while? We know that the company can change.
Once again, is that self-regulation and does the company have to advise you that it has changed? Would it not be safer for the agency itself to conduct a review?
Director General, Dispute Resolution Branch, Canadian Transportation Agency
As you said, under the legislation, the railway company has the obligation to advise the Canadian Transportation Agency.
NDP
Isabelle Morin NDP Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC
So it is still a self-regulation process that can lead to accidents. That is unfortunate.
Ms. Quinlan, you said that you wanted more transparency to determine the adequacy of insurance coverage. Could you tell me what the benefit would be for municipalities if there were greater transparency? Why do you want more transparency?
Co-Chair, National Municipal Rail Safety Working Group, Mayor, City of Bromont, Federation of Canadian Municipalities
I will ask Daniel to answer that question.
Senior Policy Advisor, Federation of Canadian Municipalities
Sure. I think this responds directly to questions that were raised after Mégantic: how did MMA end up with $25 million in coverage; what was the process to get there; and what does the adequacy test mean?
There are sort of two options for the CTA: to establish a minimum that is transparent because it's the minimum for everyone; or, to explain their rationale.
NDP
Isabelle Morin NDP Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC
In your view, is the agency's explanation about not making that information available valid?
Director General, Dispute Resolution Branch, Canadian Transportation Agency
I can try to answer that question.
This is exactly the question that we asked in our consultation: should those amounts be made public? We solicited a broad range of views, and we will consider that perhaps more information should become publicly available for the people to see.
Senior Policy Advisor, Federation of Canadian Municipalities
As my colleagues reminded me, there wasn't public trust in the system, right? To have that, it's reasonable to say that the commercial financial information would be kept confidential, but it seems reasonable that knowing what the insurance level is would be public. Again, this is all for day-to-day operations, so if we don't build a comprehensive regime for a catastrophic incident, these kinds of questions are really not the point. The point is to build a catastrophic regime for an incident of the scope of Mégantic.
NDP
Isabelle Morin NDP Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC
The Canadian Transportation Agency is in the process of holding consultations. The review was supposed to have been completed by the end of March 2014. It is now May.
What happened? Why do we still not have the results of the review?
Director General, Dispute Resolution Branch, Canadian Transportation Agency
As I explained, we have two types of consultations. The second round of consultations ended recently, on May 9.
NDP
Director General, Dispute Resolution Branch, Canadian Transportation Agency
We will try to have the recommendations ready for the fall.
NDP
Isabelle Morin NDP Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC
Okay.
It is still a significant delay, considering that we were supposed to receive them at the end of March.
I have one last question.
NDP
Conservative
Wai Young Conservative Vancouver South, BC
Yes, thank you so much for being here and for sharing that really great information with us. Because this is a rare opportunity for us to have FCM here, we're very grateful for you to be here. We're also very grateful for how you've worked with the government on this most tragic incident.
Moving forward, then, we talked a little bit about the need for the railway operators to provide information to municipalities and to first responders. You are saying that's there now, but more work could be done.
Could you elaborate on that a little bit, and also maybe provide us with some information about how many municipalities have registered with CANUTEC, whether it's all of them now, or just 50% of them? Where is that process?
Co-Chair, National Municipal Rail Safety Working Group, Mayor, City of Bromont, Federation of Canadian Municipalities
The answer to your question is yes.
Concerning the importance of having all the information so that we can act in case of emergency, we are, I think, accomplishing progress.
On your question of how many municipalities, of course we want all municipalities that have a railway system that crosses their territory to be part of that group that will receive the information. We have 18 municipal unions, provincial unions in Canada. We are talking to these unions to make sure that all municipalities can take advantage of what is being offered. I believe we have maybe 700 to 800 municipalities at the moment, but every day we are getting more. We want 100% of the municipalities to be part of that effort.
Conservative
Wai Young Conservative Vancouver South, BC
Can you give me an indication as to where that is right now, though? Is it 10% or 50%? How many have registered with CANUTEC?
Legal Advisor, Federation of Canadian Municipalities
It's a difficult call, because we don't actually have a number of how many municipalities are crossed by a railway. We know from CN, which is a really good indicator because they cover pretty much the country, they have about 1,100 municipalities that they cross. About 800 municipalities have registered, so that gives you, I think, an idea of scale.
The other thing to keep in mind is several municipalities, especially in the smaller cities or rural areas, are grouped together, so they are jointly appointing one person for five, six, ten municipalities Individual fire chiefs have been appointed officials. We are close to 800 appointed officials. Many of them represent more than one municipality. If CN has 1,100 municipalities, and we know there are 800 officials or so registered, we're in the 80%, 90% range probably achieving that over the next few months.
Conservative
Wai Young Conservative Vancouver South, BC
Now I know that you can't answer this question today because it's going to take too much time and I do have a secondary question that I would like some back and forth on, but my other question around this is of course with the FCM conference coming up in Niagara. I'm hoping that all the municipalities would be registered because of course we as a government would not want to see this incident happen again.
In addition to that I did hear, I think, in your testimony today that there is some consideration around working with the first responders as well as working with government to ensure that there is a good balance between the information given to municipalities, compared to security issues in the country. I know that's a debate you are currently having.
In other testimony for this study, other groups were talking about the development of municipalities and how municipalities were building too close to railroads. Is that an issue or something that is being talking about at FCM? Are there workshops or zoning things that are being talked about? That's one side. The other side to that concerns transfer stations, where railways go to transfer their loads. Again, we're understanding that some of these transfer stations are either being encroached upon by municipal development or they're simply being built close to municipalities because that's where people work and live.
How are you looking at that now and learning from that? I think we are all in a situation where we want to learn and do our best around zoning and having standards. What is FCM doing around those big issues?
Conservative
