Evidence of meeting #38 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 training.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
In the event of an accident or an incident, what is the current reporting regime? Federally, obviously, if there's an incident involving a release of goods, it's mandatory that it be reported to the Transportation Safety Board. Is there a similar regime with respect to a provincial agency or authority that you're required to report to? Are you required to report to anyone?
Mr. Picard, I don't know if you want to weigh in on this one.
Executive Director, Atlantic Provinces Trucking Association
In some capacity you need to report every incident, I'm assuming, to Transport Canada, but every province obviously legislates the safety stats of each carrier, which would incorporate their entire record in there.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
To RTL, if there's an incident at a trans-load involving some release at the point of either loading onto a truck or to a facility, do you have to report that, and if so, to whom?
President and Chief Executive Officer, RTL-Westcan Group of Companies
Yes, we would report that immediately to the provincial environment authorities if there was a release of product.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
Where I'm going with this is that I'm probing whether there is a sufficient regime in place to track, in an empirical sense, the safety of transporting dangerous goods by the trucking mode. It's simple in some respects for us to look at the Transportation Safety Board and see that we have an empirical basis by which we can track whether modes are improving or not improving and what factors may be at play there, but we don't seem to have that with respect to trucking.
Are the statistics out there? Are they just disparate and need to be drawn in or centralized, or should this committee be looking at whether or not there is a system that's put in place for that purpose?
Who wants to jump in on that?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Head Office, Alberta Motor Transport Association
I'll make a comment, Mr. Chair, on this.
The department of transport in each province, via the regulations for transportation, do facility audits. When they do facility audits they inspect and look at the incidents and accidents that the carrier had. You are responsible to maintain the paper work and accuracy of your record keeping for these audits. There is a program in place provincially to audit.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
Thank you very much.
Mr. Sullivan, for five minutes.
Oh, sorry, did somebody else want to comment?
President and Chief Executive Officer, RTL-Westcan Group of Companies
I was going to add to that. As carriers we have a carrier profile, which is federally monitored. Anything from accidents to a speeding ticket or a vehicle fine, all that is tracked on a monthly basis. Obviously, the history is maintained.
Mike Sullivan NDP York South—Weston, ON
Thank you to the witnesses.
One of the things we heard last time was that the Canadian Truckers Association would prefer that there were regulations involving electronic management of drivers' hours, because they pointed out that some bad apples can avoid the law by falsifying records or by misusing the paper records. Do you folks have a similar view that the regulations ought to be enacted federally, or provincially to ensure that the hours of work are maintained electronically?
President and Chief Executive Officer, RTL-Westcan Group of Companies
At RTL-Westcan we support regulations for electronic logging. Our fleet is about 90% complete in terms of electronic logging devices and on-board technology. By February of next year we'll be 100% complete with electronic logging devices in all our vehicles.
Executive Director, Atlantic Provinces Trucking Association
At our association we support that as well. It would bring us to the next level that we need to be at as an industry. Paper logs are vulnerable, if you want to use that word, but electronic logs are the way of the future for our industry. More and more carriers have them, whether it's mandated or not. We need to act fast on that one.
NDP
Mike Sullivan NDP York South—Weston, ON
Thank you. I appreciate that.
The Teamsters were here and they support this measure as well. This is not something that they are opposed to. It's good news that all sides seem to be supporting the notion that truckers' hours need to be managed more electronically.
The second point I want to make is that several of you talked about the training of your drivers. Is there a need to regulate the minimum standards for driving across all provinces? We recently learned that in Ontario you can get your AZ licence with 10 hours behind the wheel and with no hours on a major controlled-access highway. This is a serious problem in Ontario that is only now coming to light. Do you have some advice for this committee on whether we should be looking at making some kind of training standard across the country?
Executive Director, Atlantic Provinces Trucking Association
Each driving school today is private. We put out the standards and push what the industry recommends and supports, but in certain capacities there should be some mandatory entry-level training for drivers. That would bring us to the next level for our industry and would put structure needed from a training standpoint for young drivers and people looking for a second career.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Head Office, Alberta Motor Transport Association
Mr. Chair, if I could make a comment as well. Alberta does support minimum mandatory driver training. It's necessary to have a standard so that the drivers' competencies are proven before they're out on the road with the public. There needs to be entry-level training established across Canada that is fair and equitable for all provinces, and in place as soon as possible.
President and Chief Executive Officer, RTL-Westcan Group of Companies
We would support that as well.
NDP
Mike Sullivan NDP York South—Weston, ON
Thank you.
Mr. Picard, I think it was you who suggested in your opening comments that there needed to be some improvement in shipper responsibility for documentation. Can you expand on that a little?
Executive Director, Atlantic Provinces Trucking Association
The entire responsibility, if there is an issue, lies with the driver and the carrier; therefore, when working so closely with shippers in loading and unloading product, there should be some sort of responsibility from a shipper's standpoint to be properly trained to know which document goes with which product, so that if there is an incident it's not all fingers pointing at the carrier.
Basically, that was the scope of my comment.
NDP
Mike Sullivan NDP York South—Weston, ON
We've also heard this from the rail industry with respect to liability. Rail is unable to say no to transporting any good, whereas truckers can in fact say no. But the rail industry's reaction was, because they can't say no, that the shippers ought to be held in part liable for any spills that the rail industry may cause.
How does the trucking industry feel about the liability for the carriage of products and the liability for resultant spills and about any regulation that needs to be in place regarding how much liability you're forced to carry?
Executive Director, Atlantic Provinces Trucking Association
That's a tough question. Each incident is really an isolated incident, whether it involves a driver fault or improper loading or improper paperwork as a result of the incident or due to the extent of the spill or its impact.
Who is responsible for what and to what exact extent is something that needs to be reviewed. I'll let the experts decide it, but we want this to be looked into going forward, for sure.
Conservative
Conservative
Peter Braid Conservative Kitchener—Waterloo, ON
Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all of our witnesses for being here today.
I want to start with the gentleman from RTL. You mention in your opening presentation that you serve a number of northern and remote routes, if I heard you correctly. I want to give you the opportunity to elaborate a little on that. These conditions and geographies that you serve would obviously be unique .
How, specifically, do you customize your safety management systems to deal with the fact that you are serving these unique geographies in remote areas? What unique procedures or training do you have in place?
President and Chief Executive Officer, RTL-Westcan Group of Companies
We would address this in a number of different ways. First, it would start with our journey management plan, about which I spoke earlier, so that we understand all the risks along the route. The second piece would be ensuring that we have suitable third-party relationships, in the event that we needed assistance either because an incident took place or maybe because there was a maintenance failure and the truck or trailer had broken down and needed recovery.
On the last piece, concerning northern or remote routes, as a rule we would only use our more senior, experienced drivers, the drivers with more time behind the wheel and more training and basically a higher confidence level to operate in those remote areas.
Conservative
Peter Braid Conservative Kitchener—Waterloo, ON
Okay. And if and when an incident should occur, how do you ensure that it is responded to on a timely basis, given remoteness?