Transport Committee on June 11th, 2015

[Laureen Kinney]

Just a moment, please.

Ms. Diogo, do you know?

[Brigitte Diogo]

Yes, I believe so. I will check the date in my notes.

[Laureen Kinney]

Yes.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

So an audit has been carried out since 2013. I am not talking about a simple inspection, but an actual audit.

[Brigitte Diogo]

Yes.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Thank you.

The statistics on the number of inspectors seem a bit worrisome to me. Your deputy minister, Louis Lévesque, also used to be my deputy minister. Could you say hello to him for me? I admire him very much.

He testified before this committee on March 10, 2015. I was not in attendance, but I read the transcript. He said: “On the transportation of dangerous goods and rail safety, we currently have, as of the end of December, 117 rail safety oversight personnel...”. I believe our chair said that there were 116 of them when the Lac-Mégantic incident happened. That's only one more employee. The statistic is clear, as it came from the deputy minister. You understand why we are worried.

What happened in Lac-Mégantic was a huge disaster, and 47 lives were wiped out. Have all the financial costs of that disaster been estimated, including the cost of cleanup and rebuilding? Can a figure be put on it?

[Laureen Kinney]

No, I wouldn't be able to speculate on those costs. I think there were very substantial costs at the municipal and the provincial level, as well as at the federal level, but I have not seen any accumulation of those costs.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

In other countries when a catastrophe happens they are able to put a number on it. Is there somebody responsible for assessing the amount of money that it represents?

[Laureen Kinney]

I don't know that anybody has that responsibility. I couldn't speak to that. It's certainly not within my responsibilities, but I would say that in general these figures are always subject to substantial change and do take several years in most cases to finalize.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

When I went to Fukushima, there was an assessment done. It was questionable, but at least they had the magnitude. I wonder if this committee has investigated.... Somebody is responsible for assessing the amount of money it represents. It's important for this country to know.

It is massive, after all. I don't know whether this is true, but according to the deputy minister, one inspector has been added. However, the Auditor General has noted many shortcomings and asked that the regulations be strengthened. You are telling us that you have strengthened the regulations, but that you need resources to implement them. In this case, one of the indicators is definitely the number of inspectors. According to the deputy minister, one inspector has been added since 2013.

[Laureen Kinney]

Mr. Chair, it's a somewhat complicated and sadly bureaucratic answer to get to the details of the staffing levels over that time, so we've tried to generally report to committees and other interested parties on a quarterly basis on the level of staffing because it does change substantially. As I mentioned earlier, I can say there has been an increase. Since the spring of 2014 we have increased by 20 inspectors, net. Again it's complicated because we lose inspectors through attrition. We are facing the same demographics as many other industries and government departments, so this number fluctuates constantly.

However, if I may just add one more line to that, we do actually go through an annual process. We look at the needs, we look at the risk-based inspection plan and the other requirements of the program, and we go through a budgeting process within the department. We allocate the appropriate funds each year as required to do that work. That is an ongoing process and it's very thorough.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

I don't understand why the deputy was so clear, yet today you say it is very complicated. I'm a bit lost because it's essential to know how many inspectors we have. Did you say you increased by 24?

[Laureen Kinney]

It was 20 total oversight personnel in rail safety.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Twenty, so we are not at 117. We are at what then?

[Laureen Kinney]

As of April 1, 2015, we were at 122 oversight positions staffed in rail safety. That includes people who are dedicated to inspections. Some of them do inspections and audits. Others do just audits, and others are engineers or have other types of capacities to do specialized types of inspections.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Hoang Mai]

Thank you, Mr. Dion. Unfortunately, your time is up.

Thank you, Ms. Kinney.

I now give the floor to Mr. Watson for seven minutes.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Vice-Chair.

Welcome to the officials and also welcome to Mr. Dion today at committee.

We have you back to look at the implementation of the recommendations contained in chapter 7 of the 2013 fall report of the Auditor General of Canada. To refresh our memories, the period or the timeline that was under audit by the Office of the Auditor General if I'm correct was April 1, 2011 to March 31, 2012. That now represents a period over three years ago from where we are at right now today, so your ability to make progress or not against your action plan is important not just for the interest of the committee but obviously for public safety and the public at large.

We'll begin with recommendation 7.26. The Auditor General had recommended that:

Transport Canada should complete the implementation of the recommendations raised in the Railway Safety Act review and relevant recommendations of the rail safety review conducted by the House of Commons Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities [and] integrate the changes into the regulatory framework for federal railways to comply with and for the Department to oversee.

Now going back to the period under the audit, there were 32 of 56 recommendations from the RSA review completed and 10 of 14 from the review by the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, which were completed at that time. You've given us an update on that today. Your action plan was released subsequent to November 2013. In terms of your actions, as I understand them now, the coming into force of railway operating certificates and the ability to, as a compliance mechanism if necessary, remove their right to operate was in November of 2014. Am I correct on that timeline?

[Laureen Kinney]

If I may...?

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Yes.

[Laureen Kinney]

It was January 2015.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

I'm sorry. That's right. It was January 2015 for railway operating certificates. They were published in November and came into force in January.

The coming into force of the administrative monetary penalties regulations was in April 2015, correct?

[Laureen Kinney]

That's right.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

That's an additional compliance mechanism for violations.

The safety management system regulations came into force in April 2015. The transportation information regulations, the information you require federal railway companies to submit to Transport Canada for purposes of evaluating their safety, came into force in April 2015. As well, of course, in terms of the grade crossings regulations, I believe that was in November of 2014, and they're all complete as well—very good progress.

On recommendation 7.32, monitoring and mitigating safety issues, in terms of the annual risk-based plan to address and track long-standing safety issues, I think you indicated in your statement that it has been undertaken. That was in January of 2014. Is that correct, Ms. Kinney?

[Laureen Kinney]

That's correct.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Can you briefly tell us about the rail safety integrated gateway data system? That was implemented in July of 2014. How do oversight personnel at Transport Canada use that system and what are they tracking?