Merci, monsieur McDonald.
The SMS regulations were added to the Railway Safety Act in 2001, following some amendments that came into force in 1999. As per a provision in section 51 of the act in 1988, four years after, there was a mandatory review that took place, in 1994, and that was followed by another one. Nothing that was recommended in 1994 was actually put into the RSA review.
In 1998 there was a second review and it was recommended that the Railway Safety Act be amended to include the provision to have the SMS regulations in place, so that in 2001 the provision came into force.
As we speak, the SMS regulations apply to all federally regulated railways and some of the provincial railways. Some provinces have adopted the federal regime.
A company must implement the 12 components of SMS as part of the SMS regulations. The components deal with policies targeted toward systems, processes, procedures, and documentation.
The regulations require railway companies to develop their own safety policies and procedures and measure their safety record. It's important to note that before SMS, a company still had the responsibility to develop their own policies and procedures. Since SMS came into force, now it is regulated to do so. It's not something that we transferred to industry. They were doing it before. Now it's regulated under the safety management system regulations.
In order to support industry and the unions, we developed some guidance material in 2010 jointly with the unions and management, the Railway Association of Canada, their members, and Transport Canada. We produced some guidance material, which is in the kit that we can distribute later on, which is guidance material to help the company. We've got best practices for all railways, best practices for small railways. There is also a little brochure on the safety culture, as well as a little pocket document on SMS in order to assist the railways and the unions.
Currently, there are approximately 35 railways in Canada that are subject to the SMS regulations. Once the SMS regulations are amended, we'll have about 80 railways, 79 that will come under SMS.
On progress to date, both the Railway Safety Act review, which was a panel that was mandated by the minister to do a review and they tabled a report in 2007, as well as the Standing Committee on Transportation, Infrastructure and Communities, made some recommendations in 2008 and enhanced the implementation of SMS on the rail industry. Many of these recommendations required legislative amendment. All of them, or most of them, are included in the act that was amended on May 1.
In terms of continuous improvement, as a result of the amendments to the Railway Safety Act that came into force on May 1, 2013, work is under way to amend the SMS regulations that respond to the RSA review, as well as the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities recommendations. We're currently amending the SMS regulations to include many of the recommendations.
Amendment to the RSA reflect the central importance of SMS and recognize the responsibility of railway companies to demonstrate that they continuously manage risk related to safety matters using SMS. That's now clearly in the act. As well, we've also included, as a result of risk management analysis, that a railway must maintain the highest level of safety.
Amendments to the regulations will also clarify Transport Canada's expectations and require railway companies to identify an accountable executive as a focal point of accountability for the safety of a company's operation. This will require the involvement of employees and their bargaining agent, which was a recommendation also on the Railway Safety Act, as well as developing a non-punitive reporting system and to have the ability for employees to report directly to Transport Canada in a confidential manner.
We were planning to prepublish the SMS amendment in the Canada Gazette , part I, by summer 2014.