Evidence of meeting #33 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 inspection.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Laureen Kinney  Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security, Department of Transport
Martin Eley  Director General, Civil Aviation, Department of Transport
Luc Bourdon  Director General, Rail Safety, Department of Transport

9:35 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Larry Miller

Mr. Watson.

9:35 a.m.

Conservative

Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON

My point is that the question, if I understood the interpretation correctly...and fair enough, I wasn't listening in French, as you were speaking it.

To my understanding, public servants are being asked what the committee should be doing or should not be doing. They're being asked for commentary on the committee's decision on whether it will or won't conduct a study. That is a question for politicians around the table to answer and to be accountable for; it's not for independent public servants.

That's my point of order, Chair.

9:35 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Larry Miller

The officials know what they have to, under the rules, respond to and what they don't, so I'll leave it up to them.

9:35 a.m.

NDP

Isabelle Morin NDP Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Do you believe one day of public consultation is enough to make a radical change like this to aviation safety in Canada?

9:35 a.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security, Department of Transport

Laureen Kinney

To generally speak to the process, the regulatory process is laid down in cabinet directions. We carry out the process in a variety of ways, through a regularized formal approach, with our civil aviation advisory council. The process is different for each set of regulations. It may depend on the history.

In this particular case, there has been a significant amount of history and there has been a significant amount of discussion in the past, so the level of consultation is seen as appropriate to the particular issues. But I'd have to—

9:35 a.m.

NDP

Isabelle Morin NDP Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC

Do you think it's been sufficiently discussed in the past?

9:35 a.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security, Department of Transport

Laureen Kinney

Well, as I say, the department goes through a regulatory process and looks at the need to get information. If there's new information coming in, the department is always willing to look at the new information.

9:35 a.m.

NDP

Isabelle Morin NDP Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC

Thank you.

Now I am going to switch to another topic that hasn't come up yet in our study on rail safety, and that is screening personnel at airport checkpoints.

I would point out that certain individuals could be transporting dangerous goods with them.

In early 2013, screening personnel at the Dorval airport were the subject of much discussion given the renewal of their collective agreement. They wanted to be paid the same as screening personnel at the Montréal-Trudeau airport; they also wanted adequate breaks. At the time, I met with a number of employees who told me about their concerns around safety.

How much time is an airport screening officer supposed to spend on each piece of baggage that a passenger has? Are you able to tell me what those standards are?

9:40 a.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security, Department of Transport

Laureen Kinney

I don't think I have that specific a detail for you, but the security regime that's put in place is driven by—

9:40 a.m.

NDP

Isabelle Morin NDP Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC

Could you please look into that and get back to the committee with the information?

9:40 a.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security, Department of Transport

Laureen Kinney

I would suspect that I can't give you that kind of breakdown, because you're talking about individual passengers who have one or two bags; they have different clothes; they may be in a wheelchair; they may have a backpack—

9:40 a.m.

NDP

Isabelle Morin NDP Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC

Airport screening points experience peak times during the day. Between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m., for example, lineups are incredibly long and more staff hasn't necessarily been scheduled. How does that work exactly? What is required of employees as far as bag checks go? Are they instructed to have dealt with the line within a certain number of minutes?

I'm not asking how long employees spend on each passenger, just each piece of baggage. Screening officers told me that such standards were in place and that they were told to spend a certain number of seconds on each passenger. Do you have that information?

9:40 a.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security, Department of Transport

Laureen Kinney

To give you a simple overview, the International Civil Aviation Organization sets the standards and guidelines for aviation security, as with many other areas of our work. Transport Canada transfers that into regulations. Those regulations apply to the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, which does the screening through contractors at the airport. They must follow and they must apply those regulations that we apply to them. They do this through protocols that they develop in training their staff.

That's how it works.

9:40 a.m.

NDP

Isabelle Morin NDP Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC

I'm going to tell you about something I experienced.

When I was coming back from a parliamentary trip a few weeks ago, I had a layover at the Toronto airport. I asked to be served in French. The alarm went off when I went through the scanner. I was told to go through the X-ray scanner but I said no for personal reasons. Because there wasn't a French-speaking female screening officer who could conduct the body search, I was told I could go ahead.

What does Transport Canada make of that kind of situation?

9:40 a.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security, Department of Transport

Laureen Kinney

I don't know exactly, of course, all of the details around it, but certainly we set requirements.

9:40 a.m.

NDP

Isabelle Morin NDP Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC

I'd like to know how Transport Canada makes sure it can serve French-speaking women across the country when searches need to be carried out.

9:40 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Larry Miller

You are out of time, but we'll listen to the answer.

9:40 a.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security, Department of Transport

Laureen Kinney

We set requirements for security. We set requirements for what must be done by the security screening agents. Also, CATSA, the crown corporation, is responsible for setting service standards and meeting official language obligations. If you have a complaint, there's certainly a whole suite of activity that they go through to address that, but primarily, our focus is on the security obligations. Now, there are other agencies that look at language complaints.

9:40 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Larry Miller

Okay. Thank you very much.

Mr. Toet, you have five minutes.

9:40 a.m.

Conservative

Lawrence Toet Conservative Elmwood—Transcona, MB

Thank you to our witnesses this morning. It's very helpful.

I want to start with a couple of questions regarding the Auditor General's report and your detailed action plan regarding that.

I know there are several items that have been completed, and there are some items for which we're still looking at completion. One of the items I wanted to specifically talk about is the assessment of audits and inspections, or the number of planned audits and inspections to be taken into account under the new SMS environment. That's scheduled for fall 2014. I'm just wondering if you could briefly let us know the status of that and whether we're on schedule.

9:40 a.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security, Department of Transport

Laureen Kinney

Maybe I'll start with that and then ask Mr. Bourdon to amplify.

We have taken that recommendation very seriously. It's an important and good thought, in terms of how we look at the balance that's appropriate between audits of safety management systems and other types of inspections, of which we have a whole array in rail, as well.

The issue is to look at what kind of cross-validation is appropriate and what measure of safety issues that would drive, perhaps in bridge inspections having more inspections as well as audits, and perhaps less in another area. But that's something...a significant amount of work is being done on a scientific basis. Contracts have been let, and people are involved in bringing together the statistical validity of numbers of inspections, along with the risk areas, and bringing together the experience of the people in the field who have been doing this for a long time.

We will be ending up with some recommendations fairly soon.

Luc, do you have any specifics? Do we have a timeline for the next stage of that?

9:45 a.m.

Director General, Rail Safety, Department of Transport

Luc Bourdon

It will be by the fall.

9:45 a.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security, Department of Transport

Laureen Kinney

It'll be by fall, as said, so we're keeping very close track of these commitments.

9:45 a.m.

Conservative

Lawrence Toet Conservative Elmwood—Transcona, MB

Just touching on the inspectors a little bit, one of the other aspects is their independence and objectivity. I know that has been shown as being complete.

Some concerns about that independence and objectivity have come up several times during the testimony. Can you briefly let the committee know how that has been addressed? Also, do you as officials feel this has been adequately responded to and that there is definitely objectivity and independence in the field?

9:45 a.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security, Department of Transport

Laureen Kinney

Yes, this is an issue that had actually arisen before the audit recommendations were made, so work had been already well under way in that regard. As a complete process within all of Transport Canada, decisions have been made to require conflict of interest statements from all our employees, both at the executive level and at the inspector level, who are in areas of safety sensitivity and who potentially might be more vulnerable or more in question if there were issues. The difficulty, of course, is that when you're looking for knowledgeable, qualified people to carry out inspections, you want to look for people who have experience in the field, training, and certifications. Typically they have worked in the field and they bring that knowledge to make for a better inspection.

Transport Canada's approach has been to put in place those measures, so that we can initially—as they say, on recruitment—make sure their obligations are clear and their conflict of interest declarations are filed on an annual basis. In fact our database system is going to be able to look at the trends and the types of issues that arise over time, so that we can provide other cross-checks on that.

We have done values and ethics training for our staff. We've done case studies. All of our staff are well informed of their obligations. Again, in general, these are people who have the safety of the transportation system as their highest interest and are very well aware of where dangers may come on a day-to-day basis.