Transport Committee on March 24th, 2015

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

As I already said to Mr. McGuinty, I am quite flexible on this.

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

What is your opinion on the matter?

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

I am quite inclined to show flexibility with regard to all of your amendments and all of your changes. To my mind, the objective here is rail safety and the safety of our ridings.

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

So you are favourable to that. Perfect.

In reply to a question put by one of my Conservative colleagues, you mentioned that there was “a huge team of inspectors” in Canada. My Liberal colleague asked if you thought there were enough. Do you know how many inspectors there are in Canada?

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

I will have to check the exact number with the members of the committee and perhaps with the minister's representative.

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

Do you think there are enough inspectors even though you do not know how many there are in Canada?

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

I don't know how many there are.

I will have to clarify this question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

I'm sorry, is this a point of order, Mr. Watson?

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Yes, in fairness to the member, questions like that are not necessarily inherent to the bill we're discussing. Those are matters for departmental officials and/or the minister to be giving in response to a member's question, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Yes, the member said that she didn't know. I'm sure she will look into it.

Ms. Morin.

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

On that point of order,

the member mentioned several times in her statement that she wants to give powers to rail safety inspectors. I think it is a good bill, but if we do not have enough inspectors, adding these measures will not necessarily be helpful. I think it is thus entirely appropriate that I ask her if she thinks we have a sufficient number of inspectors in our country.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Ms. Morin, in fairness, I think your question probably should be asked of the officials. Is there enough to look after business so to speak if Ms. Bateman's bill were implemented? Probably—

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

I will move on to another topic, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Bateman, you said that you wanted to give the minister the power to close these crossings. If the minister shuts down a railway crossing, who is going to pay for that? What will happen in that regard? Will we ask the railway company to take a position on the matter? Does the Department of Transport have money to invest in this sector? As for the federal program my colleague was talking about, a lot of municipalities complain that they have trouble with that program because it is not accessible enough.

What is being done about the cost of repairs? How long will it take if a railway crossing is closed by the minister and the railway company decides not to pay? How long will the railway crossing stay closed? What are the expectations in that regard?

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Let Ms. Bateman answer that.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for your question, Ms. Morin. You talked about costs. What is the cost of a major disaster? I want to point out that the objective of my bill is totally about prevention.

Just in case I didn't get that.... The goal here for me is prevention. What is the cost if a child is flattened under a train, or a senior? There are huge costs, so prevention has underlined every single one of the changes that both this committee and the Minister of Transport have made. There was a huge cost when the OC Transpo bus was hit. There was a huge disruption in my riding very recently when a truck ran into a railcar. Fortunately nobody was killed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

I'm going to have to cut you off there, Ms. Bateman. You're out of time.

Now we'll move to Mr. Braid, for five minutes.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Ms. Bateman, for your concern about this very important issue and the excellent work that you've done advocating for these changes through your private member's bill, and the work you've done representing not only all of your constituents but the one in particular who motivated and inspired you to move forward.

There have been one or two questions about the consultations that you've done. I'm curious specifically about consultations that you may have done with the municipality, in your case, and any particular feedback that they may have provided on the merits of your bill.

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Thank you for that question.

There's no question that I've spoken to many people about this. Inevitably, the consultations with the municipality would gravitate to the Waverley underpass, which as of two hours ago has been decreed the number one infrastructure priority for the City of Winnipeg. But we also sent out a direct mailer and asked people questions. It went to every member in the community. We thought the question was going to be about infrastructure. We were actually trying to distill what this key infrastructure piece was, what people cared about most. What we found was that once they mentioned a certain underpass, they would then expound on the safety issues and the problems. We even got calls in our riding about boards flying up and hitting cars as they drove by at one crossing.

The information has come to us in many ways. People care about safety. Obviously, human safety is number one, but people don't want their cars being damaged with boards flying up and hitting them as they go over the crossing at about 20 kilometres an hour. So yes, it came from a number of sources.

To answer your question, the municipality inevitably knitted the concerns into the Waverley underpass that they want...under the Building Canada fund. But it was quite wonderful to see the almost unanimous support for this, and the fact that people said, yes, that makes sense.

To Ms. Young's earlier question, people were amazed that the minister couldn't close down something that was unsafe in their neighbourhood.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

You've touched on perhaps one or two examples. Thinking optimistically, assuming that the bill is successful and it passes, could you give us some examples of the types of situations that will be dealt with or prevented as a result of your bill being in place and in force?

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

That was my total motivation so I'm very happy to do that.

My children are now 17 and 23, but when they were a little younger, we'd go for bike rides and we'd go over that crossing or other crossings on the way to a city park. You want to make sure that, when you start across with a family of four, you finish with a family of four and that nobody's got their bike caught in an unsafe crossing point. Certainly, that was one of the motivations. Also, there's the lady whose motorized wheelchair got caught, and thank goodness for this good Samaritan who helped her out because she was trapped under and elderly. She was waiting for a hip replacement apparently and she was wedged under this motorized chair, but she got pulled to safety.

There's a senior's home on one side and a little Italian grocery store on the other side of this crossing. It would be really nice if it were safe for seniors to go safely. It's also very important that cars not be damaged on their way. Of course, the community is back and forth, and those parts of the community are an integral part of the whole community, so you want it to be safe to transverse that area.

There's one crossing in particular that was my motivation, but every time I drive anywhere in my riding, there are a lot of crossings. That's western Canada.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Do you have any thoughts on how the elements of your bill, once it's in force, may positively influence how new grade crossings are built in the future? Have you drawn that connection at all and can you provide any thoughts on how this might resolve in safer grade crossings being built in the first place?

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

What an absolutely wonderful thought.

It wasn't part of our deliberations going into the bill, but clearly with the negotiations, even when you look at a repair to an existing crossing.... One of our crossings was closed last Thanksgiving weekend, and negotiations resulted between the municipality and the rail company. I think it's very important to think that best practices would result in making future crossings safer.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Mr. Sullivan, you have five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Bateman, for your private member's bill.

Following up on my colleague's questions about the closure of a railway crossing, who pays for that? When you say closure, obviously that could be simply closing the road. Does it also mean closing the rail? Who would get the priority?

[Joyce Bateman, Conservative, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Well, I hope the safety gets the priority, always. That's the motivation. When the OC Transpo happened in Ottawa, I don't think anybody was talking about who gets priority. You have to deal with safety. The whole premise of my bill is prevention, preventing disasters before they occur.

The cost of closing a rail crossing.... For example, the one that got closed—and I can only speak from what I personally experienced. Last Thanksgiving weekend, there was a rail crossing closed in my riding. It meant you had to go down probably three-quarters of a kilometre in one direction or two and a half kilometres in the other. Those were both access points, so it wasn't impossible. You could still get to the other side; it just took a little longer.