Transport Committee on March 21st, 2016

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

I would mention there is a confidential reporting line that has been in place, I think, as part of your systems management. Have any calls to this reporting line resulted in proactive actions being taken for safety?

[Laureen Kinney]

Perhaps I may initially slightly clarify my comments from earlier. Transport Canada is always open to calls from employees at railway stations or from the general public, for that matter, and does act on those. In addition to that, there is a confidential formal reporting system through the Transportation Safety Board, which is what I was referring to.

Absolutely, though, I can tell you that Transport Canada has taken action to go out and investigate comments that have come in regarding employees' or union members' issues that have been raised, and actions have been taken in those cases, where required.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

I have a question. It's based on the route planning section on page 9 of the 2015 report that said that the Minister of Transport had ordered all railways to conduct risk assessments of key routes and file them by October 2014 and that the department was intending to complete a full review of the risk assessments over the course of the 2015 winter period.

Has this been done?

[Laureen Kinney]

Yes. I'm pleased to say that the risk assessments were all received and they were fully reviewed by our rail safety teams. That was completed during the time schedule planned, and we were able to look at that and consider whether any further actions were needed.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Was it determined that any further actions were required?

[Brigitte Diogo]

As part of the review, there were meetings in discussion with the companies either to clarify aspects of the risk assessment or to request additional information.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

I was just trying to determine if there were action items that were taken as a result of that review.

[Laureen Kinney]

I believe that some changes to the specific requirements of the key trains and routes risk assessments did come out of some of that conversation and some of the analysis, for example, to be a little clearer about definitions.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Would I be able to have a copy of the assessment that was completed over the 2015 period and what the action items were coming out of that?

[Laureen Kinney]

The assessments were done case by case, so each of those assessments were provided individually. They are fairly long and complex technical documents over very long routes in some cases, so they are quite bulky. The assessment was done in terms of each of those different ones, so as the assessments information was converted into changes to the system, I'm not sure we have a summary that would be easily available.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Is there a list of the action items taken?

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Your time is up. I think you got the point that Ms. Dabrusin was making. If there was a summary of some of those risk assessment locations and you could supply the committee with the information, it would be appreciated.

Mr. Badawey, you have six minutes.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

When looking at the report we've been discussing this afternoon, starting on page 9, if I may, it states, “During their appearance before the Committee, representatives of CN Railway offered to provide the company’s risk assessment for Ontario to the Committee but ultimately submitted only a description of the risk assessment process.”

Moving forward to the next paragraph, it says that the Auditor General recommended that Transport Canada “obtain better access to the railways’ own risk assessments”. Moving on to the following paragraph, it states, “Transport Canada has also finalized amendments to the Transportation Information Regulations, which were proposed in July 2014, that require the railways to provide more information to the department respecting track and other rail infrastructure.”

When you move on to page 25, the top paragraph states, “The Auditor General recommended that Transport Canada better define the SMS audit methodology and undertake analysis to gain a better understanding of its resource requirements to provide adequate rail safety oversight.”

With respect to delegation versus taking it on yourself as Transport Canada, ladies, who ultimately is accountable for ensuring that the March 2015 recommendations as well as the regulations are both not only understood but implemented and enforced?

The second question to that is: who is accountable then to measure the performance on a continual basis moving forward as the Auditor General recommended with ongoing audits ensuring the performance is consistent as well as the expectations as outlined in the recommendations and your own regulations are actually once again both implemented, and of course, enforced?

[Laureen Kinney]

Perhaps I can give a summary of that, and there might be more detailed questions.

In general, as with any regulatory requirement, under the safety management system regulations the companies are obliged to follow the regulations and to put in place systems that allow them to meet the requirements of any regulation or rule or engineering standard, so they are accountable for doing that.

Transport Canada is accountable for maintaining the oversight systems and does do that. As part of the implementation of the new safety management system regulations, Transport Canada did go through a very large review of just how we were applying safety management systems.

The results of the Auditor General's recommendations, and some of that input, and the comments that were made were all fed into the new requirements in terms of the legislative and the regulatory requirements. It was fed into the requirements for what documents and proof is needed to be provided by the companies, and our inspectors were provided with new training and new requirements on how to apply these requirements.

Guidelines were also then provided to the industry on how to do this in terms of meetings that were held and guidance that was provided to the industry. Through this first year of transition, as we've mentioned previously, the initial stages of doing inspections against the SMS requirements have been taking place. Starting in this new fiscal year, audits and evaluations will continue to be made of the new use of the safety management system, and we will be beginning to look at the actual performance effectiveness of the safety management system again on an ongoing, continuous basis.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Watts, you have six minutes.

[Dianne Lynn Watts, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Thank you.

Actually, my questioning was along the same line in terms of the risk assessments. With the new regulations they would have had to take remedial actions or do some work in terms of risk assessment and all of that, so that information is fed in to you. Is that correct?

[Laureen Kinney]

If I may clarify, in terms of the safety management systems regulations requirements, the railways must do risk assessments on various types of operations, with a major change in operation.

Those risk assessments are done by the railway company and are held by them. They are available on request by Transport Canada. They're not sent in on an updated basis. When we do an inspection or when we do an audit, that is part of the documentation that is reviewed by the inspector, typically, or someone doing an SMS evaluation, coming up over the next fiscal year.

[Dianne Lynn Watts, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Okay, so they don't yearly send them in to you or anything else.

My question, then, is this. How often are the inspections or the audits done for the railway companies? If they're doing their assessments and they have a stack of them and they're following all the regulations, when does Transport Canada go in there, just to make sure that the checks and balances are in place, and say, “Okay, now I want to see what you're doing”?

[Laureen Kinney]

It's a mix of inspections and audit evaluations, if you will, of safety management systems. There are inspections against the safety management system regulations, and those go happen on a regular basis, and there's a fairly substantial number per year as part of those 33,400 total inspections that I mentioned earlier.

In addition to that, there are specialized safety management system audits or evaluations that go on. In this first transition year, we've been doing safety management system inspections. Starting in the new fiscal year we will be doing, on a regular basis, the evaluation of the actual SMS programs and how they're working under this new regulatory requirement. Those will be done on a three- to five-year rotational cycle once the system is in place.

While the system is getting going we'll be looking more frequently I believe it's fair to say.

[Dianne Lynn Watts, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Am I hearing that it's every five years that there will be an audit from the railway companies on the information that they undertake?

[Laureen Kinney]

As to what we do in terms of the inspections, we do a risk-based system, but part of the response to the Transportation Safety Board recommendations in terms of doing the audits was to go to full audits on a more cyclical basis.

We're looking at between three to five years, depending on the risk assessment of the particular type of operation, the compliance record, and the other types of factors you'd take into account. That will depend on the company.

[Dianne Lynn Watts, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

But the company does their own risk assessment...?

[Laureen Kinney]

The companies are accountable to do their risk assessments, and Transport Canada then will be doing the safety management system audit evaluation.

I should note that if any major change in operation occurred and there was not a risk assessment done, then that would be something that Transport Canada could take action on, of course, but in the meantime the regular updating of the audits would occur on a three- to five-year risk-based cycle.

[Dianne Lynn Watts, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Do you find, in your experience, that when one does their own risk assessment, they may not fully disclose all of the information?