Transport Committee on June 5th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much.

We now move to Union of Canadian Transportation Employees. We have Ms. Collins, Mr. Teeter, Ms. Houlahan, and Mr. Wing.

You have 10 minutes or less.

[Christine Collins, National President, Union of Canadian Transportation Employees]

I want to thank you for the opportunity to present the views of our members on transportation oversight reform. The Union of Canadian Transportation Employees is the national union for most employees at Transport Canada, the Transportation Safety Board, the Canadian Transportation Agency, the Canadian Coast Guard, and many of Canada's airports. Of the 1,350 inspectors at Transport Canada, we represent all but the pilot inspectors in the civil aviation mode.

Our relations with Transport Canada management are positive, consultative, and productive. After all, our members and Transport Canada management have the same objective: ensuring the highest level of safety for the travelling public. We hope that the committee, the minister, and Transport Canada staff know that the paper you have been provided is written with the greatest sincerity and concern for transportation safety.

I recognize that today's session is on civil aviation and as a result we will direct most of our comments to the aviation mode. However, we represent inspectors in all modes and it is necessary to put the aviation mode in the context of the multimodal reality of transportation safety oversight. The committee is directed to focus on the post-regulatory actions necessary following the tragedy at Lac-Mégantic. As a result the major focus is the transportation of dangerous goods, TDG, and the role of the safety management system, SMS, in Transport Canada safety oversight.

The minister has posed questions that form the basis of this review. With the committee's indulgence I will provide short answers to those questions since the details can be provided within our brief. Currently the transport dangerous goods directorate is separate from the other modes of transportation and we believe that TDG oversight should be reintegrated into the transportation modal oversight divisions with continued focus on direct and unannounced inspections. Responsibility should rest with one executive within each mode at Transport Canada. These changes will result in more accountability, less finger pointing, and a more efficient allocation of scarce resources.

Likewise each model directorate manages the implementation and oversight of SMS very differently. There is far too much regulatory reliance on SMS in the aviation mode, which has turned many inspectors into program auditors. This reliance is already present in other modes of transportation and unfortunately is increasing in rail safety. It is important to note that the concept of SMS is predicated on the philosophy that companies are regulatory compliant before they introduce SMS into operations. This is simply not the case for a large percentage of the companies in civil aviation. SMS needs to be an additional layer of safety. It should never be a replacement layer for direct and unannounced inspections by highly qualified inspectors with the power to impose regulations and enforce sanctions.

Where SMS is concerned, the United States takes a very different approach in comparison to Canada. It has far less reliance on SMS for regulatory oversight in all modes of transportation. It also makes a virtue out of whistle-blower protections and even provides significant financial incentives for whistle-blowers. In our view there should be an independent office of whistle-blower protections where transportation workers, both within and outside government, can report incidents without fear of reprisal. There are many positive features in the U.S. oversight system that Canada should pay attention to.

Civil aviation is an oversight division in crisis. Reliance on corporate SMS plans is creating a situation whereby the role of the inspector is to check corporate paperwork. If inspectors leave the office to do an SMS audit, also called an assessment by the department, air operators must be given notice. In some instances the minimum notice period is 10 weeks. This gives the operator more than enough time to correct whatever deficiencies might have been present at the time the SMS audit originated.

SMS audits have replaced direct and unplanned inspections as opposed to being the additional layer of safety. Inspectors believe this is a grave mistake. Giving airlines primary responsibility for safety oversight is paramount to putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.

For a long time now UCTE has gone on record stating that SMS must be an additional layer of safety and the audit or SMS assessment function should be completely separate from the direct inspection function.

Transport civil aviation inspectors are highly qualified industry specialists, many with aircraft maintenance, engineering, and other important credentials. Today, Transport Canada is mistakenly recruiting generalists for inspector positions placing emphasis on skills, such as interpersonal communications and being a team player, instead of industry qualifications, expertise, and knowledge.

Transport Canada has told me personally that they are cloning job descriptions, eliminating references to technical competencies, and pooling candidates. This fact alone demonstrates that Transport Canada has a mistaken commitment to SMS as a replacement layer for direct inspections.

Aviation TDG is another area of concern. Recently, 18 TDG inspection positions were transferred from civil aviation to the TDG directorate. TDG oversight should remain with the various transportation modes and TDG direct inspections should be harmonized with carrier-specific direct inspections.

You will see in our submission that we highlight additional principles that are important to not just civil aviation but to all modes of travel.

Ministerial delegations of oversight power should not be allowed except for select functions such as new builds and retrofits. Where delegations exist, conflict of interest rules must be put in place and enforced.

The inspector to overall staff ratio is far too low. There is no conceivable reason why inspectors should only represent 58% of the total staff complement within the Transport Canada safety and security directorate, and only 23% of the staff complement at Transport Canada itself.

The length of time to act on Transportation Safety Board recommendations is much too long. Time limits to implement recommendations should be imposed and inspectors should be a key component of all Transportation Safety Board follow-up working groups.

Safety incidents should be publicly available through a separate database for all modes of transportation.

In conclusion, many of our comments today are relevant to not only civil aviation but all modes of transportation. Direct inspections should always be the principal mode of oversight. TDG should rest with different transportation modes under an accountable executive within the department. SMS audits and regulatory inspections within each mode should be completely separate. There needs to be an independent office for whistle-blower protections.

I need to emphasize that these ideas are not my own. I am presenting the input of our Transport Canada experts, the inspectors who do the work, day in and day out. Transport Canada's primary responsibility is safety and not being a cheerleader for industry.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much for staying within the time.

I'll move to questioning.

Monsieur Mai, you have seven minutes.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank all of today's witnesses.

Your testimony has taught us much. You were very direct and critical of the system currently in place.

You're not only critical of the SMS system but it's more the way it has been implemented. You all raised the fact that the initial idea was to have an additional layer rather than the sole safety management system.

I will begin by asking a question of the National Chair of the Canadian Federal Pilots Association.

You mentioned the survey you undertook. When we discussed it in committee, government members said that it was a small, fairly unimportant survey. In fact, they mocked it a little, if I may say so.

Can you speak to us about the weight given to the survey participants? Can you speak to about the survey results that showed the impression or the feeling people had, now that we are more exposed to risks?

[Capt Daniel Slunder]

There were two surveys, and one of them lasted seven years. Their results were very similar, except for the results being even more negative in the second one. We widened the scope of the second survey in order to get the members of the UCTE to participate as well.

The important thing to note is that when inspectors, who are at the front lines of inspections, tell you that the system is problematic, you should listen to them. For our part, we think that the information that is given should be used to improve the system, instead of being considered as a negative element. People shouldn't say that it's simply a small survey and or that only inspectors are being negative. We are between 500 and 600 inspectors over at Transport Canada. One cannot view as insignificant the fact that everybody there thinks the same way. We must take into account what is being said.

In the past, we could see precisely what was happening in companies, because we were part of it. We went to see what was going on in the companies. We spoke to the pilots and the engineers who were repairing planes, which allowed us to discover problems on our own.

Today, we expect to receive a report submitted by a company employee, after which we have to verify if the problem has been corrected. The fact is that if the report is not entered into the SMS, we will never see it. That is problematic for inspectors. Because they don't see the same information they used to, they cannot ensure the same level of safety as in the past. That is the reason why we speak negatively of this system.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Fine.

I will ask you to be brief in answering my next question, because I would like to ask more questions.

You said that a good many inspectors were part of the report. However, according to your table here, there are about 395 inspectors in 2014, whereas there were 535 in 1993. There seems to be a downward trend in the number of inspectors.

[Capt Daniel Slunder]

Yes, exactly.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Thank you very much.

I have a question for Ms. Collins. The information that you gave us is very important because we hear what's happening on the ground, and from what you told us, it's very different from what we heard from the airline industry, especially in the case of SMS and how employees participate in drafting or working on the SMS. You also raised some important issues with respect to whistle-blowing.

When we looked at the airline industry, or even the rail industry, some of them were telling us, “Well, you know the employees are part of it. There's no concern about punitive results if they actually raise some issues with respect to SMS”.

What do you see on the ground? How does it concretely happen?

[Christine Collins]

There are a lot of problems with not having whistle-blower protection both within Transport Canada, not having any real whistle-blower program, and within the companies themselves. It's fine for the employer to say there are no problems, but if there is no avenue to report incidents without fear of job loss, of repercussions, then employees are not reporting. It's that simple.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

One of the main things we heard from all the three groups of witnesses today is the concern they have with regard to on-the-ground inspections, the fact that right it is more that audits are being done by Transport Canada. We know that the AG mentioned that Transport Canada doesn't do all the audits it is supposed to do, that is not even fulfilling its own targets.

What is the concern for Canadians? If you had to summarize.... The fact is that now Transport Canada is looking at SMS, the whole system, rather than doing its inspections on the ground, in addition to the loss of experience with respect to inspectors.

Maybe we could start with you, Ms. Collins.

[Christine Collins]

Thank you for the question.

The reality is that there are very few direct inspections taking place any longer. They're very few and far between.

There are no unannounced inspections, which is very problematic. You give a company enough time to tell them when you're going in to do an inspection and they can make sure that they have the right things in the right place prior to the inspection.

The audit function is not an inspection function, and there is a conflict of interest, to be very blunt, when you give a carrier responsibility for a safety management system when their prime role is to make money.

When you don't have the right safeguards—in our opinion, with the direct inspections—you have problems. I fully support all companies having SMS. It's very important that they have it, but it should never be a replacement for the professionals who go in, inspect, and ensure compliance.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much.

Mr. McGuinty, you have seven minutes.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Thanks, ladies and gentlemen, for being here this morning.

I hardly know where to begin in the wake of the testimony. It's frankly unbelievable. It's shocking to hear what we're hearing from front-line inspectors, from folks with 30, 40, and 50 years...with 100 years of combined experience on the front lines—former pilots—because it flies in the face of everything we've been hearing this week from the government, from the government's Transport Canada officials, and from the airlines.

Mr. Chairman, it's hard to know where to start except maybe to ask.... Maybe I'll start with Mr. Slunder.

Mr. Slunder, you were talking a moment ago about the poll, or the survey, that you conducted with your own members, with all of the inspectors. On several occasions in this committee, the government members have tried to dismiss these findings, because they have this problem with organized labour. They can't see past their bias against organized labour, which is very unfortunate, because I think that's dangerous for Canadians. For the front-line folks who are doing this work each and every day, who really care about what they're doing, and who are seized with these matters, and bringing, as you have here in all these briefs, some really positive recommendations for change, I don't know why the government is fixated on its anti-labour, anti-union ideology, but it's really dangerous for Canadians.

The minister was asked in the committee of the whole whether she had seen your survey, and she said she had not. She had not seen it. She had not read it. She was there with her deputy minister and ADMs. They had not seen it nor read it, apparently, but she went on to repeat the same claim that you have debunked here when you talk about “30,000 inspections with only 250 front-line pilot inspectors”.

Can you help us understand what would possess a minister of the crown to put out numbers that are clearly not right?

[Capt Daniel Slunder]

I have difficulty speaking for the minister in that respect, but—

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

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Mr. Komarnicki.

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

It's pretty hard for any witness to try to figure out what the minister may have been thinking. I think it's an inappropriate question, and he should frame it in some other way. It's just inappropriate. How can I say or anybody say what someone is thinking?

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Yes, and I think Mr. Slunder agreed with that in his comments.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

I'll reframe it—

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Continue, Mr. Slunder.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

That didn't eat into my time, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

No, it didn't. Of course not. It never does.

[Capt Daniel Slunder]

What I would like to point out, though, is that in a functioning safety management system, if I receive a report from nine out of 10 employees that I have a problem in a specific area of my operations, it would behoove me to do something about it. It would behoove me to study the report, ask questions about it and do something with this information, be it to address the issue or, which is entirely acceptable, do nothing. But you can't ignore it. You have to look at it and you have to do some study of it.

On the other hand, there's the other aspect, which is that in a functioning safety management system we do not belittle whatever information comes to us. We do not say that it's an outlying report or it's disgruntled employees or.... Because that does not support continuous reporting, which is the basis for this process. If you dissuade people from reporting into the system, then you have, as Mr. Reason says, a “pathological” company that can not operate by itself. It needs to be regulated.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Let me, if I could, turn to Mr. Chalmers.

Mr. Chalmers, I can only describe your brief and your presentation here today as shocking. Do you believe that the SMS system is salvageable, with this proviso: I think everybody agrees, and Canadians who know anything about this would agree, you can't really have an SMS system without the backstopping or a foundation of inspection, enforcement, and audit provided by the federal government under Transport Canada, right?

What we're hearing from all three sets of witnesses today is that “Houston, we have a real problem” at Transport Canada in terms of the number, frequency, and types of inspections that are going on. The number of inspectors is an example.

Mr. Chalmers, can we salvage the SMS system?

[Norman Chalmers]

It's out there. I don't know if you need to salvage it, because it's out there. It seems to be the focus of Transport Canada as the magic bullet that will remedy all problems. But it's only a small part of the actual operations of the actual aviation.

SMS is not a huge implementation by the aviation industry, because they have already been doing most of that stuff. People have been reporting problems within companies on a regular basis for the last 50 years. There are other avenues of reporting issues and there always have been. Every company that has a maintenance organization does internal auditing. There is a lot of that stuff that's going on.