Transport Committee on May 16th, 2016

[Jean Laporte, Chief Operating Officer, Transportation Safety Board of Canada]

I can add that we have memorandums of understanding with those organizations that clarify the coordination of activities and how we interact in terms of the actual site, the evidence, and the interviewing of witnesses. All those things are predefined in those memorandums.

[Angelo Iacono, Liberal, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

In 2014 Ontario was the province where the most crossing accidents occurred, comprising 24% of all crossing accidents, which was unchanged from the five-year average. Alberta had the second-highest total, with 22% of crossing accidents, compared to 24% for the five-year average. Those two provinces were followed by Saskatchewan with 18%, Quebec and British Columbia with 12% each, and Manitoba, with 9% of crossing accidents in Canada.

If we have a national system with national safety rules, why are we seeing such regional disparity?

[Kathy Fox]

It's very difficult to give a general answer to that question without looking at the specifics, because there are thousands of railway crossings in Canada.

Some of them, about a third of them, are controlled crossings with gates, bells, and whistles. Many of them are what we call “passive” crossings. I would really have to drill down, look at each one for the statistics, and see where those accidents occurred—whether they were in major municipalities or on rural roads—before I would generalize.

Railway crossing safety is something that we have identified on our watch-list. Originally, the issue was that there were no grade crossings regulations. There were guidelines out there for municipalities, road authorities, and railway companies to use. We were very pleased when Transport Canada implemented the new grade crossings regulations in 2014.

Over the next several years, under those regulations, all of the crossings need to be reassessed to make sure they meet the new grade crossings regulations and that they're as safe as they can be. Certainly, if there are issues there, we would hope that they would be addressed by the road authority, the railway, and Transport Canada, which oversees it.

Did you want to add anything, Kirby?

[Kirby Jang, Director, Investigations Rail and Pipeline, Transportation Safety Board of Canada]

I think that's a good summary. It is actually very difficult to generalize about crossing safety in specific locations. We look at the general trend. Over the past 10 years, there has been a slight decrease. Certainly, that's not the answer for many of the provinces that are still showing high rates of accidents.

[Angelo Iacono, Liberal, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Thank you.

I'll be sharing my time with Gagan.

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

Why do we leave it up to the municipalities to ask for the upgrades to the dangerous railway crossings? Why doesn't the TSB do it themselves?

[Kathy Fox]

Our mandate is to investigate occurrences and identify causes and contributing factors to accidents, as well as underlying safety deficiencies. Our role, therefore, is to make recommendations, and over the years we have made a number of recommendations with respect to crossing safety. Most recently, in Ottawa, as part of our investigation into the fatal crash of an OC Transpo bus with VIA Rail, we recommended that Transport provide explicit guidance on when grade separation should be provided. That's part of the problem: the more opportunity there is for vehicles and trains to meet at a level-grade crossing, the more risk you have. We also made a specific recommendation to the City of Ottawa to review conditions at three specific crossings. Under the regulations, assessments fall within the mandate of the road authorities, the railway companies, and Transport Canada. It's not our mandate to go out and assess each individual crossing. In the course of an investigation, however, we certainly identify deficiencies in specific crossings, and we would expect safety action to be taken as a result of that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you.

Ms. Duncan.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Mrs. Fox, for being here. We've all been waiting for your testimony with bated breath. We really appreciate the work that you've been doing over the years.

The inspectors who testified some time back recommended that the power to issue a direction be extended to the Transportation Safety Board. Some of this arises from their consternation about the gap between the recommendations for investigations by the Transportation Safety Board and any action by the department.

Should TSB have some limited power of direction where there is a need for an immediate response?

[Kathy Fox]

The best model that's been adopted, not only in Canada but in other developed countries, is to have an independent accident investigator—and on our part, we are totally independent of Transport Canada—who identifies safety deficiencies, makes recommendations, and provides arguments for change. We don't make prescriptive recommendations. If we were to become involved in prescribing solutions, this might have unintended consequences. We could be put in a conflict of interest down the road.

We have been very successful to date, particularly in the rail mode, where 88% of our recommendations since 1990 have been implemented. The responses have been judged as fully satisfactory. We now have 18 that we are continuing to push, through our watch-list and our annual reassessment of recommendations, and we're confident that in time they will be implemented. Our concern is how long it takes to get them implemented.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I'm not sure that the communities are happy to sit and wait for the response.

In your investigation into Lac-Mégantic, you identified an unbelievable list of violations by MMA, including runaway train, safety deficiencies in training, oversight, operational practices, lack of consultation with employees in doing risk assessments, problems managing equipment, problems with the remote control, issues with rules compliance, issues with fatigue management, and lack of investment in infrastructure and maintenance.

I'm wondering if you are finding a pattern of problems where Transport Canada allows exemptions that lead to incidents. This seems to be the case in Lac-Mégantic, where there was an exemption regarding having two employees on the line. Have you seen a pattern that you think would warrant looking into the power to grant exemptions?

[Kathy Fox]

There may be reasons for flexibility in applying the regulations. From our perspective, you always have to look at the safety. We've seen weaknesses in the risk assessments done by the companies or the regulator that have contributed to accidents in the past. It might be too restrictive to say there can never be an exemption, but I think they have to be dealt with carefully to make sure that safety isn't compromised.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

It certainly is in auditing a sector. I've worked with industrial sectors for a long time, and I've never seen such blatant powers of exemption. The Auditor General, in his 2013 report, raised a good number concerns about failings in the department's inspection regime, such as poor follow-up inspections to verify compliance, failed enforcement action, and a lack of enforcement training.

Your job is to investigate the incident and, presumably, the actions by the rail company. However, I noted that in the Wabamun incident, which I was directly affected by, while there inspections of the rail, it was determined in the end that some problems, such as defects in rail, couldn't be indicated without more careful inspection. I'm wondering what recommendations going forward... Do you think there has been sufficient response to the incident at Wabamun—and there were two more after that—with the allowance for using second hand or refurbished rail in repairing rail lines, particularly along waterways?

[Kathy Fox]

What I can say is that we have noted some areas with respect to rail infrastructure with testing by using ultrasound technology. It can have some blind spots depending on the condition of the rail. I know that the railway industry is investing quite heavily in new technology to improve rail track structure, since about 39% of our rail derailments on main tracks are attributed to track infrastructure issues. It's something we look at carefully whenever there's a derailment to see how often it was inspected and how it was inspected. In about nine of our 23 ongoing recommendations, we're looking specifically at that aspect.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

This is probably not a fair question to put to you, but given that there may be deficiencies in the efficacy of the detection of track defects, but in some cases, should there be rail relocations if you can't provide the assurance, particularly where there's dangerous cargo, and heavy cargo, and long trains going along these lines? Given that we don't know for sure that the inspections are catching the defects, should we be looking to other solutions to make sure that we don't have disasters?

[Kathy Fox]

I want to emphasize there have been a lot of technology improvements in rail inspections over the years. We certainly look at that. I don't want to conflate those issues with the issues about rerouting, because they can replace rail, and do replace rail quite regularly. Even if railway tracks were rerouted, you still have the basic issues, but now somewhere else.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Mr. Fraser.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

You noted during your remarks, Ms. Fox, that 88% of these recommendations had been actioned, which seems like a very impressive figure, quite frankly. Some of the numbers I was reviewing indicated that despite the successful implementations of the recommendations, accidents still seem to be on the rise. I'm using somewhat outdated numbers here, but it seems that in 2014, there were 174 accidents involving dangerous goods, which is up from the five-year average of 131. The statistics are similar when you look at the number of serious injuries in a number of different categories.

What I'm trying to reconcile is why accidents and incidents are on the rise when, seemingly, the rate of implementation is good. Is there any context you can provide on that?

[Kathy Fox]

When we look at the rail accidents overall, there were 1,200 in 2015, down 3% from the year before, and up 8% from the five-year average. Most of these accidents, or roughly 62%, are on non-main tracks. They're in yards, and they have a much lower risk than on main tracks where the speeds are higher and the consequences potentially more extensive.

While we're generally pleased with the progress that's been made on our recommendations, the fact is that five of our watch-list issues out of eight touch on rail safety. There are still a number of outstanding risks, notably with the transportation of flammable liquids, and we have at least four outstanding recommendations from Lac-Mégantic that would go a long way to reducing those risks. We have the issue of following signal indications, where we've had a number of accidents when a signal to slow down or stop was misperceived or misinterpreted, leading to a derailment or a collision. There's still quite a bit of work to be done there. We mentioned railway crossing safety, where there's still work to be done as well.

Those account for, I guess, the proportion of the accidents...outstanding. I certainly wouldn't want to give you the impression that we're sitting back in any way and saying that things are fine. There are still a number of issues that need to be addressed.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Thank you.

I don't have that impression; I'm only seeking further information.

On the issue of following the signal indicators, when you come up with these watch-list items, do you have recommendations on how best to overcome them?

[Kathy Fox]

Yes. In fact, all of our watch-list issues are based on outstanding recommendations, investigation reports, and other types of safety communications such as safety advisory letters. A number of accidents have happened over the years. The last, most notable one was the VIA 92 derailment near Burlington, in which, we believe, the signals were misinterpreted or misperceived.

We've made two recommendations in the last ten years. One was to increase the number of backup safety defences to reduce the chance of a misperception of a signal. The railway industry did adopt some measures, but they were primarily administrative measures, new rules. That isn't sufficient.

After the Burlington accident, we made another recommendation, which was for physical fail-safe defences that will actually stop or slow the train if a locomotive engineer doesn't respond appropriately to a signal. These systems have existed for many years in the United States. The United States is also moving forward with what's called positive train control, which will have the same effect. We haven't moved forward with that in Canada, and that's why we've assessed Transport's response to that recommendation as being only partially satisfactory. Definitely, more needs to be done to slow or stop a train, to make sure it follows the signal indication and is not entirely dependant on a human.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

On these technological advances that seem to be available but are not yet implemented—and perhaps this question is better put to Transport Canada—is there push-back from industry due to the cost of implementing a system like that?

[Kathy Fox]

That is perhaps one of the factors. In the case of the Canadian railways now that are aware of this recommendation, because they operate across the border and because there will be positive train control being implemented in the U.S. in the next few years, they want to make sure that whatever system they're going to implement in Canada is going to be compatible since they cross the border. That may explain, to some extent, the timing of their investments. This is a significant technological investment. We still believe solutions are available. Some companies in Canada may be experimenting with some of those now. The longer we wait, the more risk there will be in the system.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

On a similar but somewhat different line of questioning, I want to probe the area of whether passenger and freight have different rates of accidents. When I reviewed the stats, it seemed as though they did. Maybe I'm misinterpreting them.

Is there a difference in the rate of railway safety incidents involving passenger trains and freight trains, and if so, why?

[Kathy Fox]

With respect to rail accidents, in 2015, 34% involved freight trains, 5% involved passenger trains, and roughly 62%, the remainder, involved accidents on non-main tracks, primarily yards and switching areas. Again, I can't give you a simple answer to the question. There are certainly lots of freight trains, so you'd have to compare the volume of freight trains travelling across the country against the number of passenger trains. That would have an impact on those situations.