Transport Committee on April 9th, 2019

[Gagan Sikand, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Okay. You said that, in 2016, you had the bird's-eye view cameras.

[John-Paul Pelletier]

That's correct.

[Gagan Sikand, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Have you seen a different with those?

[John-Paul Pelletier]

Where we've seen a difference with bird's-eye view cameras is.... They're typically designed to aid in low-speed manoeuvring. As you can imagine, manoeuvring a 45-foot long, 102-inch wide motorcoach can be fairly challenging. We use the bird's-eye view camera particularly in and around parking lots and for low-speed manoeuvring. We can say that our operators who have purchased this equipment say that avoiding one minor collision—which would typically be a side-swipe of a pole in a parking lot or backing into a structure in a parking lot—is where it would be most effective and will more than pay for the cost. So, we have seen it to be quite effective in avoiding low-speed manoeuvring collisions.

[Gagan Sikand, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Now we're on to Mr. Rogers.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Mr. Benson, I was just reading your your executive summary. You talk about how you're supportive, of course, of seat belts, but then you list 11 serious concerns that your membership has highlighted in terms of how we function with seat belts on school buses, the challenge of enforcement and so on.

Is it possible to address all of these concerns by using monitors? Would they be able to take care of most of that?

[Phil Benson]

I think the comment here, as I said, is this: federally regulated and provincially implemented. So, the experience in the IBT is, in fact, monitors, and we have them at some locations. Yes, it addresses most of the concerns. But with things like attempts of boards, depending on the province, wanting to cut education costs—not that any would want to do that recently—you end up going down the food chain, and you end up with our members and non-union drivers bearing the brunt of it. This is followed by driving issues: getting properly trained drivers, the retention of drivers, etc. All these issues flow from it.

It's easy to put seat belts on, but to ensure that the provinces do it and everybody does it correctly is something beyond your purview. So, we're putting it on the table for people to understand that the seat belts are, of course, a needed safety issue. However, at the same time, one just can't do that without understanding the other concerns that have to be addressed. We're addressing them from a labour perspective.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

I appreciate where you're coming from.

Again, it says in your statement that, “Notwithstanding the statistics, the 'egg crate' method of protecting children in school buses is not sufficient for higher speed collisions, T-bone accidents and roll overs. Restrain[t] systems are the best solution....”

Most of the concerns—from the previous panellists, as well—were about high speed on the highway in terms of restraints. The lower speed doesn't seem to be the issue in terms of protecting children in school buses. So, from that perspective, do you think that school buses with safety belts in high-speed situations would be a positive step forward?

[Phil Benson]

Yes, but I'll address the low speed too, because since we've done the studies our science has changed. Let's just take concussions. A small five-mile-an-hour accident, with a small child hitting their head, on the egg-crate model, we know the damage that concussions can do today. Even a “minor” injury can be quite damning.

To respond to Mr. Hardie, if I may, about the issue of how we restrain small children, California moves more small children than we do in Canada every day. Clearly if the government or Transport Canada wants to find out how they do it it's pretty easy to do it. The issue becomes for us not the implementation; seat belts are always the easy things. I think Mr. Switzer and Mr. Pelletier have raised this, that it's the other issues that go around, everything from grandfathering to equipment. For us drivers we've talked about the need for strong enforcement, which simply doesn't occur, to get the bad actors and even the good actors cleaned up. These are all things that are part and parcel of ensuring that our children are transported safely. Seat belts are not the only thing that must be addressed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

We now got to Mr. Liepert, for three minutes.

[Ron Liepert, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

One of the problems with being the last guy up is that all the good questions have been asked. I was sitting here thinking that our analysts were going to have their work cut out for them trying to come up with some concluding recommendations for our report because there has been a wide variety of views on all of these issues by our witnesses. The one, though, that keeps coming up consistently is that—and we heard it again today—motorcoach is the second-safest mode of transportation next to airlines. It raises the question that if it's already the second-safest mode of transportation, are we spinning our wheels by actually undertaking this study because it looks like this is, in the views of many of our witnesses, a committee looking for problems where there don't seem to be that many problems?

We had the head of pediatrics here, and, again, there was the whole question about school buses and seat belts, which prompted Mr. Sikand's question. The head of pediatrics responded that—and these are my words and not his—very few, if any, children are actually.... They don't deal with injuries and near-death injuries in the pediatrics ward from children inside the bus; it's outside the bus. So we spend an awful lot of our time on whether there should be seat belts in buses, or shouldn't be seat belts and back and forth.

I don't want to take up too much time, Madam Chair, because I want my colleague to have his full 15 minutes here.

Are there any closing comments that any of you would want to make relative to what I've just been blathering on about?

[Doug Switzer]

I appreciate you blathering on about that because I think that's very much my concern and my problem—and perhaps it came through in my comments— that we are the safest mode of highway transportation. To the point about whether you are unsafe on a coach without a seat belt, no, you are not unsafe on a coach without a seat belt. We've had coaches without seat belts for years and the number of fatalities is very small. Fortunately, we have very few accidents. One of my frustrations, given my problems with getting government attention on this, is humbly we only have these kinds of questions after Humboldt. Fortunately, we only have one every eight or 10 years. So it's in fits and starts.

But as I said in my opening remarks, there is always something you should be doing more. I always have a list of things I'm trying to go to the government with to say, you have to fix this, we have to do this, can we move forward on that? But it's not big, and it's not sexy and it's not part of a huge crisis. So, you're right, there isn't a crisis with motorcoach safety, but that is never an excuse for not always trying to find a way to do it better and safer. There's always something you could be tweaking to move forward.

[Ron Liepert, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

I'd be curious to hear about them.

[Phil Benson]

I would agree, particularly on ELDs. We were before this committee with the CTA for 10 years fighting to get ELDs. We couldn't get them because America wasn't doing them. I think the answer is when you have.... We talk about the costs. You just need one catastrophic accident and we always come after; it doesn't matter if it's air, rail or roads, we come here and talk to you. After something happens like Lac-Mégantic, we come and talk to you about what should have happened and wasn't happening. The thing is, if you have just one catastrophic accident with small children and you take into account the cost to health care and everything else we're doing, it's not going to come to $400 million when we're talking about the costs, but it would be significant and so the answer is I....

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Time is up. I do want to make sure that your colleague gets his 15 minutes.

[Ron Liepert, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

Okay.

[A voice]

We'll talk later.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you, gentlemen, very much. We will suspend for a half minute, in order for you to leave the table.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

We're resuming discussion. We are not going in camera, as we decided at our last meeting, to discuss this motion. We will resume the debate on Mr. Kmiec's motion. Everybody has it before them.

Is there any discussion?

Mr. Badawey.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'll preface my comments by repeating what I said at the last meeting. Although we're tight on time, I don't want to lose this opportunity of time presented to the committee. Quite frankly, I think most people around the table agree with it. However, once again, time is a problem. We do have a set schedule, coming up to the end of our term in June.

What I would propose, Madam Chair, is agreeing to the motion. The only thing I would amend for now—because depending on time, it can change later on, with respect to some of the things we're sinking our teeth into right now—is the sentence that says, “no less than two meetings”. I would say, “no less than one hour”, which would be half a meeting, “of the Committee be dedicated to this study”.

I do want to repeat what I just said. If, in fact, we do come into more time, based on what we're getting into next, then possibly we can consider giving more time to this particular issue at that time. I'm just uncomfortable with dedicating it now, because I don't want to impede the other processes we're involving ourselves in.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Your amendment is, where it says, “no less than two meetings”, to indicate that we dedicate one hour to this issue.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Correct.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

“No less than a one-hour meeting”.... Is that what your wording was?

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Right.