Transport Committee on March 10th, 2015

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you.

I'll give the rest of my time to Mr. Sullivan.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Thank you, Madam Minister and Mr. Chair.

Coming back to your initial comments, my question has to do with rail safety. You have lowered the speed of railcars through urban areas to 40 miles an hour, or 64 kilometres an hour, and yet the cars that derailed in northern Ontario and the U.S. were all the new 1232 standard, which means they've been replaced. In Gogama they broke and exploded in large numbers at 61 kilometres an hour, lower than the speed that you have suggested was the acceptable speed through urban areas. People are looking at this mess of rail, imagining it in Oakville or in Toronto, and asking what the government is going to do. These new railcars clearly aren't safe at 60 kilometres an hour if they're going to break up and explode.

What further regulations are you likely to bring forward, given that if we can't trust these railcars, let alone...? Accidents will happen, whether safety management systems actually keep the rails in good order and the trains in good order. But when those trains are going through urban areas, 40 miles an hour is too fast.

[Lisa Raitt, Conservative, Halton, ON]

Yes.

You know, I did say that you have to take a closer look at the operations of CN, and that's why I indicated at the front that I think it would be appropriate if the committee were to invite CN in to talk about its operations.

That being said, with respect to the cars, we removed from flammable service those first ones, the DOT-111s, because they didn't have the continuous protection underneath, and I'm glad we did that. So now we have the new standard of car that we expect to be retrofitted to the CPC 1232s. Those are the cars that were involved in this incident. Currently we know that nine of them were ruptured—we don't know for sure, because the Transportation Safety Board has to do its analysis—so it does give us pause. That's why we continue to work on this new standard with the United States, which is a leap forward from what the 1232s are. We're very close to having an idea of what this new standard will be, because certainly industry wants to know what it will be. The means of containment are just one aspect though. I think, as well, operations have to be looked at.

The Transportation Safety Board, in the wake of Lac-Mégantic, gave immediate updates regarding what it felt was going to be needed in terms of the incident and the investigation, and we will wait to see what it says with respect to this derailment. I can tell you that officials have already asked CN for its mitigation plan with respect to moving forward, and it is working out those details right now to ensure that it is looking at all aspects of its operations as well.

I think the best thing I can say with respect to it is that there is a role for operations that are mitigated, and there is a role for making sure that the means of containment are as safe as possible. We are working to set a very strong timeline on the phasing out of the worst of these cars. Three years to move them out as CN retrofits is pretty fast, and, of course, it is taking a look at this new tank car standard as well.

We're going to continue to work on this. In the meantime, CN has to ensure that it's operating as safely as possible, and that it understands what happened in this particular incident, and it has to report on that to Transport Canada. From there we'll take further action if necessary.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you. Your time has expired.

Mr. Watson, you get the last five minutes.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

I hope that before the minister leaves the table we'll have an opportunity to canvass committee members as to whether or not they'd be interested in inviting CN at its earliest possible opportunity to appear before the committee.

Chair, you can take a couple of minutes from the end of my time if you wish to do that.

I just want to return to a couple of items here. First of all, just to review what we've heard here today, the last time this committee asked about the number of inspectors, there were about 100. There are now 117. The TDG directorate was at 35, and we now hear it's at 94. So the amount of oversight has gone up dramatically. We also know that oil by rail went from 173,000 cars in 2013 down to 140,000 last year, so the ratio of oversight has been improving dramatically since the Auditor General last had a report on activities here.

Regarding some of the arcane stuff about the estimates, we've heard a lot about the idea of a cut. An actual cut is a dollar spent on a specific purpose that isn't being spent on that purpose any longer. That would be an operational cut. What they call a capital cut, which happens when a dollar originally invested in a capital investment is no longer being spent, is not a cut, is it?

In the case of grants and contributions, if people don't apply for a program and the money is not spent, that's not a cut, is it?

[Lisa Raitt, Conservative, Halton, ON]

It is not.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

It's not a cut. So we have to be careful and much more detailed when we look at estimates and we track spending over time and the purposes to which money is allotted to be sure that we're not mis-characterizing something as a cut when it could be many other things. In fact, as I've said, we've seen increases in a number of programs.

Minister, I have one other question. I think the Canada Post five-point plan would be a matter of interest. Perhaps you can give this committee an update on the progress relative to that and the necessity of the changes therein.

[Lisa Raitt, Conservative, Halton, ON]

It would be my pleasure. Thank you very much.

Indeed, as everybody knows, the reason why Canada Post approached us with changing some aspects of their operation was that, fundamentally, they've been delivering 1.2 billion fewer letters than they did in 2006. Indeed, according to our most-up-to-date information, I've been told that we saw another 6% decline in letter mail last year.

As a result, Canada Post has had to take some decisions with respect to how they operate. One of them has to do with the provision and delivery of door-to-door mail and converting to community mailboxes the rest of the households in Canada that currently do not have to go to a community mailbox. They are consulting with communities across the country, it's my understanding, with respect to both the siting of the community mailboxes and how to undertake and ensure that communities are aware of what's going on, for the conversion to go as smoothly as possible.

Canada Post so far is on the right track. They have increased as well in terms of the number of parcels they delivered last year. That said, they still are seeing that incredible gap in revenue as a result of people simply using email as opposed to using letter mail anymore. We continue to monitor it. It is a significant plan that they've put forward. They do need to ensure that they save money, because they have an obligation to operate on a self-sustaining basis under their own legislation. This is the way they said they would get there. We support their five-point plan and we want to make sure the implementation is as easy as possible on the communities.

If I may, I could add one last thing on a topic that Mr. McGuinty had asked me earlier about regarding whether or not I'd be willing to provide information to the committee.

I have had the opportunity to confer with my officials in this last 15 minutes, and we'd be happy to provide the information to the committee, Mr. McGuinty.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Outstanding.

[Lisa Raitt, Conservative, Halton, ON]

I just needed a moment to ask them, because I don't make promises for other people, unlike you guys.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

You have 10 seconds if you want them, Mr. Watson.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Can I have a rebuttal, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Sorry—

[Lisa Raitt, Conservative, Halton, ON]

I got the last word.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

On that, Mr. Watson alluded to this. In her opening comments, the minister suggested that the committee should invite CN. In order to do this, the normal procedure is that we need 48 hours' notice, but if there is unanimous consent from the committee to do that, you can do it here today.

Mr. Mai.

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

Can we also invite the TSB at the same time as CN? I wouldn't want to have just CN here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

You would like to have them?

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

I would like to have CN but also the TSB, the Transportation Safety Board, at the same time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Mr. Watson.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Chair, just on a point relative to CN, I was simply issuing the invite as to whether or not there was an appetite from the committee to have them come here.

With respect to the TSB, I imagine that's in relation to Gogama, and the fact that their investigations wouldn't be complete yet.... I would suggest that we consider that at some point when the investigations are complete, but CN could certainly come and describe how they're cooperating or not cooperating with respect to investigations.

If there's no consensus from the committee, then obviously we can move this into a business meeting later this week, and we can talk about these matters in more substantive detail.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Yes, and on Thursday the committee does have it scheduled to talk business.

Is there unanimous consent to have CN here or not?

Mr. McGuinty.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Mr. Chair, I have just two quick things.

The minister meets with CN quite regularly. She has an advisory committee—CN, CP and others. I'm quite convinced that she's perfectly capable of eliciting from CN the information she wants.

I also have to say that I'm a little bit leery, because the last time the minister came and graciously conferred a project on this committee, which was back in—

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

So are you in favour of having them or not?

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Well, just let me complete my thought. Back in 2013, even before we finished and you tabled the report, sir, the minister issued regs, rail safety regulations, before this work was even done, and to a certain extent—for Canadians watching—with hundreds of thousands of dollars of costs, prejudging the outcome of the work of this committee. It's a little hard now for the minister to come here and say that we should meet with CN. I'm all—