Unfortunately, there are one or two of those questions I won't be able to answer, namely as to whether the Transport Canada inspectors are competent or not.
My understanding is that it is done randomly, and many times it is done at the request of one of the parties, who asks for Transport Canada to intervene. This was the case in Alberta, where they were having many issues with the SMS process. That's why we recommended that perhaps they should take a more hands-on approach, start finding out which areas are problematic, and go from there.
If anyone from Transport Canada or any of the committee members wish to contact me afterwards, I can provide specific information from the research section in our union as to which cities and which companies are having problems, and they can zero in on those areas.