Transport Committee on April 11th, 2016

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

I want to talk about the state of inspections by Transport Canada, not necessarily to Ms. Collins and Mr. Teeter, but to the others. I hate to ask whether there are sufficient inspections, but do you get the sense that there is activity on the ground, on the rail lines, by inspectors actually physically viewing what's going on?

[Brian Stevens, National Rail Director, Unifor]

Excuse me, it's Brian Stevens here. If I may, on this one—

[Pierre Arseneau]

Is the question for me?

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

No, it's not for you, Monsieur Arseneau.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

No, Mr. Arseneau. The question was directed to....

[Brian Stevens]

First off, one of the things that we're here advocating as well, as it's in line with the intent of the committee, is that we want the public to have confidence in safe railway transportation.

All of us are railroaders. We have more iron in our blood than what we could get from any kind of an injection because we're born on the railway, we've worked on the railway, and we continue to advocate on behalf of the railway.

When it comes to railway inspections, from the perspective of our group, the mechanical group, it's a hit and miss. Out in the field there are some inspectors or some sectors of the country where we have inspectors who will intervene based on calls we would make to the inspector provided we have the right car number, the right train number, the right location. That happens.

But in terms of what we might see in comparison, say, to the trucking industry in a provincial sector where they will shut down a section of highway, and every tractor trailer that comes by will get stopped and inspected, we don't see that.

The reason I suspect we don't see that, as Jerry commented earlier, is that it's about train velocity. The railway barons do not want you, or Transport Canada, or anybody else slowing their trains down. In fact, some of the CEOs are out there advocating that in order to make the railway safer, trains should be moving faster.

In terms of Transport Canada, we need to see more inspectors out there. We need to see them more as interventionists not as auditors because they play a key role in ensuring that the public has confidence in rail safety.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much, Mr. Stevens.

Mr. Hardie, I'm sorry but your time is up.

Ms. Duncan.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I just want to thank each of you for your powerful interventions here. I couldn't have asked for more, and I want to thank you for your service towards Canadians by continuing to step forward and identify these same issues.

I am deeply troubled by your testimony. I look at the reviews that have gone on in the past. I look at the fatigue management review that finally was kickstarted in 2007. I'm appalled that a government would think a serious issue like fatigue management and public safety should be negotiated. Of course, then there was an agreement, and then nothing happened.

I have a question I would like to put to each of you. Frankly, I have to say as a former chief of enforcement for Environment Canada that it is a delight to hear the testimony of actual field enforcement staff. It's very rare that we actually get you to come to the table of the parliamentary committees, and it's really fantastic.

I am hearing between the lines from each one of you, and in the briefs you have been presenting over the years, over two decades, that the SMS self-regulation system put in place by the former Liberal government is not working towards public safety. I'm hearing each one of you calling for greater government intervention, more field inspections, more powers to our rail enforcers, and more protections for our rail workers and for the communities your trains go through.

I would like to hear from each one of you whether or not you think it's time to get serious about regulating this industrial sector again.

[Don Ashley]

I think given the industry today and looking back on history in the railway industry, I don't think we're at a point where we can just trust. I think there has to be follow-up.

SMS is trust. Right? I write a document and say that this is what I'm going to do, and I give it to you, and you review it and say, “That's good. You're going to do all this stuff.” That's provided that I'm actually going to do that. Right?

We're not at a point where we're at that trust area, and we can't be at that trust area when I'm hauling 100 cars of propane through your community of 100,000 citizens. We just can't have that blind faith. We need regulations.

[Brian Stevens]

I wholeheartedly agree. Both Don and I spend a lot of time responding to exemptions from rules. Currently now the mechanism in the industry is that the railways write the rules. As someone whispered in my ear, Colonel Sanders is keeping an eye on the chickens.

The railways are writing the rules. Then they get the rules approved by Transport and the minister. Then what do they do? The first thing they do is that they come around and run the rules, and then they ask for an exemption from the rules. Can you believe that?

It's like saying we're going to have a speed limit on Highway 417 of 100 kilometres an hour, but some people can go to the police station and say, “Listen, I got me a brand new vehicle. I think I can do 120. Can you give me an exemption so that when I get stopped, I can say that I can ignore the rules.”

Don and I spend an awful lot of time responding to exemptions from rules that are designed to ensure, first, that railways are operating safely and, second, that they are in the public interest. We continuously respond to those, and for the most part, whatever the railways want, it seems they get.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Ms. Collins.

[Christine Collins]

We support SMS as an additional layer. There can never be too much safety consciousness.

However, the problem is, it's not an additional layer; it's become a replacement layer. I can tell you here that there will rarely be unannounced inspections. Whether it's rail or whether it's aviation, unannounced inspections, which are necessary for the safety and security of the travelling public, are non-existent. Regular inspections are really on the downslope, and it is because of the SMS audits. An audit should never be confused with an inspection, but there is mass confusion out there that an auditor, who is not the same classification or the same type of position as an inspector, checks the boxes off of a company's SMS and it's the same as an inspection. It is not. SMS should be an additional layer but it's become a replacement layer, and that is so, so wrong. It's not just in rail; it's as huge a problem, if not more, in aviation.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

One more minute.

Mr. Arseneau.

[Pierre Arseneau]

For us, it is clear that deregulation in the railway industry is not an option. Companies cannot deregulate themselves without creating a real risk for Canadians.

I will take a few seconds to read an excerpt from a report published by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, TSB, after the Lac-Mégantic accident. It found that small companies were not providing the required training. The report states the following:

12. Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway did not provide effective training or oversight to ensure that crews understood and complied with rules governing train securement. 13. When making significant operational changes on its network, Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway did not thoroughly identify and manage the risks to ensure safe operations. 14. Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway safety management system was missing key processes, and others were not being effectively used. As a result, Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway did not have a fully functioning safety management system to effectively manage risks. 15. Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway's weak safety culture contributed to the continuation of unsafe conditions and unsafe practices, and compromised Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway's ability to effectively manage safety. Deregulation was taking place. The small company wanted to limit its spending.

The TSB report published after the Lac-Mégantic events talks about the locomotive that caught fire in Nantes. It says that, a few days before, the locomotive was repaired in the United States hastily and using inappropriate equipment. They did not wait for the right equipment before getting it back on the tracks because they were in a hurry, the company was small and there was a spike in transportation.

We can definitely not trust that companies, at least the small ones, will self-regulate. First of all, as we have seen, they even allowed one engineer to operate....

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

I'm sorry, Mr. Arseneau.

Hopefully you can get that last point. We are over time. I'm allowing everybody to have excess time because the issues are so important and the information is so helpful.

Mr. Fraser, you have six minutes.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much to each of our witnesses. We very much appreciate your presence here today.

I want to touch a little more on the issue of fatigue management. I note that during a 2014 teamster survey, there were a couple of statistics that came out that I found quite shocking, to be honest. One of the stats that I've seen suggested that only 13% of their members were getting adequate sleep on working days. Another statistic indicated that nearly three quarters admitted at one point or another they'd actually fallen asleep on the job.

To build on Mr. Hardie's line of questioning before I get into a few of my own, I notice each of you called for deregulation and for not leaving things to the collective bargaining process when it came to fatigue management. When it came to the issue of potentially stacking days by workers to avoid any kind of overworking, are there specific regulations based on science you can point us to or recommendations you can point us to that would form the basis of regulations?

Mr. Benson.

[Phil Benson]

Whether it's air, road, or rail, there are always going to be some members who want to get their hours in. I know that when we did the roads—because I helped to do that—I took a lot of heat from members who felt they were safe.

Part of regulation is to ensure they are safe and, as a union's job, we can't agree to anything that isn't safe. When you have regulations that would permit that to occur, it's not a failure of the worker: it's a failure of the regulations. It's also the failure of a company who would take advantage of it and knowingly allow a worker to work too long.

So the answer is yes. You just have to look at the trucking regs and the hours of service. You can look at the new pilot regs. You will see the aspects of it.

I'll give you the simplest way possible. This doesn't deal with all fatigue science, but it's a very simple way to look at it. Look at how many hours somebody is tied up in their job. Take 10 to 12 hours to get 8 hours' rest. If it adds up to more than 24 hours, you have a violation of fatigue science. In these cases where the workers are waiting a long time to get out and are working 12 hours, they're effectively doing 16-, 18- and 20-hour days. Tack on 10 hours' sleep, and it's a violation.

In no other industry is that required. I will tell you that in trucking they wanted to go to 18 hours. If you look at that study, you'll find that the sleep scientists who looked at it said that in good conscience not only was it bad for public safety, but it was also terrible for the health of these workers. They would not permit it; hence, the reason we're asking for a study, because that's exactly what's happening. These workers are going to work and causing a great deal of damage to their own bodies over time with various diseases. It's a cost to health care that companies are allowed to make a profit from.

The answer, if workers do this, is that you need to have regulations in place to stop it. That is something that came up in trucking and that came up in air, and we all have to be strong and tell people, “No, you can't do it.”

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I want to shift the conversation towards some other practices by railway companies where you might think it would be beneficial to have them more regulated. One of the witnesses—I can't recall who—mentioned that there's a practice in the industry of putting an employee on call, when they may not know when they actually need to come to work—

Thank you. I'm being pointed at the correct witness.

Mr. Ashley, could you perhaps elaborate on what kind of regulation you could see ending that practice or on other dangerous practices that you think are deserving of regulation?

[Don Ashley]

Sure. We've looked at different avenues such as time pools, where the on-call employee protects a certain window of time each day. Instead of having 10 employees on a board waiting to go to work, you have them split up into three groups of three employees who protect a certain time.

You know that if you're rested for eight o'clock in the morning, you have to protect for a call between eight o'clock and, say, two o'clock in the afternoon, and then you're not expected to protect a call in the next period. Somebody else is. That way, it reduces the fact of your getting fatigued again waiting to go to work. There are all these examples out there of time pools or scheduling assignments that address that issue of anticipation, but they've all been removed from....

[Phil Benson]

I have a comment. You know when you're waiting for a plane and they say they're changing the crew? That's because they have time pools. They have people waiting. There's a little window of opportunity in which they can call you to work. After that, the ability they have to call you to work diminishes, and it diminishes to zero. You know that if you're supposed to be ready for eight in the morning by their rules, and that if by noon you're not getting called out, you're not getting called out that day. You're getting called out tomorrow.

They have no problem with doing this in the air world. It's a very simple computer program. There's no reason why they can't do it in the rail world as well if parliamentarians here stand up and say, “Fix it and do it.”

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Madam Chair, how are we doing for time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

You have 30 seconds.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Perhaps I'll waive my remaining 30 seconds and pass it on to the next member.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Mr. Sikand.

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

Firstly, thank you for being here.

The matter of a 1-800 number for whistle-blowers was raised. If I'm not mistaken, I heard you have been waiting for this for five years. I wasn't part of the previous government, so could I first get some greater context around this, please?