Evidence of meeting #49 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 crossing.
A video is available from Parliament.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
5:15 p.m.
Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer, Canadian National Railway Company
I think it worked well. We reacted very quickly and had the right people there to respond.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
Thank you.
Mr. Sullivan, you have four and a half or five minutes.
5:15 p.m.
NDP
Mike Sullivan NDP York South—Weston, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
One of the things you said at the beginning of your presentation was that in spite of our best efforts we're still going to have derailments.
When we have derailments with tank cars full of crude oil, they're going to burn and explode. We learned that the DOT-111s weren't safe at 12 miles an hour in Lac-Mégantic. Now we've learned that the CPC-1232s aren't safe at 43 miles an hour at Gogama.
At what speed is CN prepared to run these trains so they can be viewed by the public as safe?
5:15 p.m.
Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer, Canadian National Railway Company
I don't want to correct you, but I think you said 12.5 miles an hour for Lac-Mégantic.
5:20 p.m.
NDP
Mike Sullivan NDP York South—Weston, ON
That was the speed at which the last car broke, according to the Transportation Safety Board.
5:20 p.m.
Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer, Canadian National Railway Company
I think the speed when it derailed was—
5:20 p.m.
NDP
Mike Sullivan NDP York South—Weston, ON
The speed when it derailed was 60, but the speed at the last car was 12.
5:20 p.m.
Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer, Canadian National Railway Company
It's a moot point because the bottom line is that we operate on a daily basis, and have for years...all sorts of products that are used by everyone in North America and in Canada. We handle products that are poisonous by inhalation, which are used in everyday plastics, and we handle them in a safe manner.
5:20 p.m.
NDP
Mike Sullivan NDP York South—Weston, ON
Clearly you can handle them in a safe manner, but if the cars they are in aren't capable of withstanding a collision or a derailment at 43 miles an hour, then they have to go slower than that. That's very clearly what the public is going to demand.
What will happen to CN if the public says and the government says that 20 miles an hour is as fast as you can run the 1232s until 10 years from now when we get the TC-117s? That's going to have to be the response, I suspect.
You promised the last time you were here to give us a copy of the corridor risk assessments. We didn't get them. What we got instead was a manual on how you do a risk assessment. Can you please provide those risk assessments?
5:20 p.m.
Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer, Canadian National Railway Company
As I said, we're more than willing. We've given them to Transport Canada already.
5:20 p.m.
NDP
Mike Sullivan NDP York South—Weston, ON
Transport Canada has told us they will not give them to us without your permission.
Do you give them permission to give them to us?
5:20 p.m.
Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer, Canadian National Railway Company
I would not withhold permission on the risk assessment.
5:20 p.m.
NDP
Mike Sullivan NDP York South—Weston, ON
Thank you so much.
We've heard that you intend to clean up the Gogama situation. You did leave a tank car burning as part of your ERAP. In other words, we understand that part of the process of cleaning up the site is to just let it burn.
Is that clearly what we understand the ERAP to be? If that's in a residential neighbourhood in downtown Toronto, that's not an acceptable solution.
5:20 p.m.
Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer, Canadian National Railway Company
You look at the situation where you are. It's very difficult. If it's contained and in one spot, it makes a lot of sense for us to not try to put it out. You have to make sure that the danger in trying to put it out is more than the danger of letting it burn. In that situation, that's what we did.
5:20 p.m.
NDP
Mike Sullivan NDP York South—Weston, ON
You said that your trains are now 8,000 feet to 9,000 feet long. They're too long for most of your sidings across the country.
5:20 p.m.
Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer, Canadian National Railway Company
No, they're not. We've built the railroad to have sidings long enough to—
5:20 p.m.
NDP
Mike Sullivan NDP York South—Weston, ON
So if you have to run these trains at 20 miles an hour, or at 15, or whatever the safe speed is for these 1232 cars, you can in fact move them onto a siding and let other trains go past, including VIA.
5:20 p.m.
Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer, Canadian National Railway Company
I don't know where you're getting the 15 miles or 20 miles an hour—
5:20 p.m.
NDP
5:20 p.m.
Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer, Canadian National Railway Company
—but any time you start slowing down the speed of trains....
It's just as difficult the other way. We operate VIA trains. I came over by VIA this morning, and we were going at 90 miles an hour on our railroad on the Kingston subdivision. That gives you a different challenge on how you operate the railroad. If you slow something down, it gives you challenge of capacity and it gives you a challenge of how you operate, so that's very important.
I came over here safely. I wasn't worried about it, running at 95 miles and close to 100 miles an hour. I looked out the window to see how fast we were going and I was comfortable with how we operate.
Capacity is very important to the railroad.
5:20 p.m.
NDP
Mike Sullivan NDP York South—Weston, ON
I understand that capacity and profit are very important, but if the 1232 cars can't be run safely at 43 miles an hour....
We clearly have had yet another extreme railroad disaster, and there but for the grace of God it wasn't in an inhabited area.
5:20 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
If you have a question, I need you to ask it because you're out of time.
5:20 p.m.
NDP
Mike Sullivan NDP York South—Weston, ON
I do.
To operate these cars safely, they will need to slow down, will they not?
5:20 p.m.
Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer, Canadian National Railway Company
I think we're clear on the tank cars. We accept what the government has said. We support the changes that we think have to happen in the industry and the type of car that has to be built.
The 1232 car is safer than the DOT-111 car. Is it as safe as the new car that is going to be put in place? No. The reinforcement, the steel, the bottom outlet valves, the top valves, the end caps, the amount of insulation in there, the amount of heat it can take, we're on record saying that's what we want and it's important for us to do that.
We have performed risk assessments. We've decided we are going to include the speed of not just crude trains, because people want it to go only on crude trains, but any train that carries more than what the key train facility is and the number of cars. We're slowing them down and they are going into census metropolitan areas at 35 mph.
We already have a PIH/TIH restriction at 35, at gateways, and we've included any dangerous goods at that speed. We do our own risk assessments to take a look and make sure that we're smart about what we're doing.