Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm a lobbyist for Teamsters Canada and with me is Mr. Don Ashley. He's the national legislative director for the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference. I'll be dealing with some background issues and Mr. Ashley will be dealing with the bill itself.
Just to start, the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference represents the running trades, main lines and most of the short lines. With other components of teamsters divisions, we represent approximately 65% of rail labour.
I want to thank you for having me before the committee. In case this is the last time we get to come here during this Parliamentary lifespan, I'd like to thank the members present and past for their courtesy and for all their hard work. I think we've achieved a lot. We still have a lot to do, but I do want to thank you. If we have a chance to come back, that's great. If we don't, again, thank you very much.
As background, of course, we've seen recently that we have derailments and we have track issues with CPC-1232 cars. Previously, before the committee, we raised our concerns about the CPC-1232 cars, about whether they were actually suitable and if they would work. As we know, from the Gogama tragedy and elsewhere close to tragedy, there seem to be severe problems with them. Similarly, we all have concerns about the new 1711s.
The other issue that is a great concern to me is the movement of dilbit. After Lac-Mégantic and that tragedy—and our prayers and concerns still go out to the families there, that's going to be a long healing process—the issue of dilbit was not a concern from the experts that I attended meetings with, and I certainly attend a lot of them. The issue was shale oil. Clearly, after the Gogama accident, that region and track, that whole dilbit issue and synbit has to be reviewed again. I know it will be in upcoming meetings going forward, but that was a great surprise to me. It's not something that I expected.
Of course, we have Bill C-52.
The other thing we have been very busy with—you can see my stack of notes—is the safety management system regulations that will be in effect on April 1. We have been very busy over the last three weeks to a month being briefed on the bill, on the safety management systems, the processes, the updates, when it's going to happen. To be honest, there are parts we're confused about, parts we're disappointed with, and other parts we're quite pleased with.
One issue that's quite interesting for us is one of the issues that was raised before the committee during the Railway Safety Act amendments. That was the direct line from workers to Transport Canada rail safety, a 1-800 number to report safety issues. I'll ask you as I did last time, where's our 1-800 number? It seems to have not quite vanished, but I do not understand why it's a particular problem to set up a 1-800 number.
It's our position, as a matter of policy, that we do not support private members' bills on areas of transport and the Transportation Act unless the subject matter is tangential to the overall safety scheme. I think Bill C-52 really proves our point on that issue.
That being said, we want to thank Ms. Bateman for bringing it because obviously she had concerns. We would have supported the bill in a way because we did not find it particularly offensive in part. It is important for members to bring forward private members' bills. I'm not discouraging members to do it. However, quite often, acts like the Transportation Act are quite complex and it's very hard to just take out one little section without realizing there are a lot of other implications.
With that, I'll pass it over to Mr. Ashley to deal with the bill.