Transport Committee on April 11th, 2016

[Don Ashley]

I don't know if I could give you the total number of how many people have been disciplined for whistle-blowing, but I can tell you it's certainly there, and the discipline they get would not be as a result of whistle-blowing. It would be as a result of something they did the next day or cumulatively because they would have a target on their back and be under extreme scrutiny for that measure.

[Phil Benson]

When we did the 2011 amendments, you always have to have a poster person. Ours was Brother McDavid. Brother McDavid was fired for not having his shoelaces correctly tied. He never had a problem as an employee until he became a rep for the union. Then all of a sudden, he was told, “You didn't do this” and “You didn't do that”. But that was a culminating event. Of course, he got his job back. There was a grievance that we had to spend money on. When you have companies firing people for not having their bootlaces correctly tied, all of you can figure out what it's like out there.

[Brian Stevens]

From Unifor's perspective, from a mechanical perspective, if someone makes a call to Transport and it deals with Bredenbury or Melville, Saskatchewan, you have to know there are only one or two people there, so it has to be one of two.

I can go to the recent situation in Lethbridge where Transport Canada came as a result of some communications we provided them. Three of our members in Lethbridge are no longer working. That's going through the grievance procedure. As Don says, they're not fired for whistle-blowing. They were fired for failing a PTR proficiency test, because their zipper wasn't done all the way up. It happens. We go through the system and the machinations, but it's not hard to tell what's going on.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Arseneau, to conclude, I would like to know if there have been similar cases in your union.

[Pierre Arseneau]

I don't have any recent examples, but we note that people do not have the feeling that the system is watertight, particularly in cases where people communicate verbally. Even if they did not call the company directly, in light of the fact that they know it is a structure put in place by the company, people will obviously be very wary. In any case, it will not be effective.

You need to put in place a truly watertight system so that people feel entirely confident. Otherwise, you are wasting your time.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Thank you.

[Pierre Arseneau]

I have no examples to give you.

[Don Ashley]

If I could just add one quick point with regard to the discipline thing, in recent years, with American influences coming up here, there have been changes in the management of the railway. Discipline used to be like a demerit system. You'd get demerits. If you got five demerits one day and you did the same thing a month later, you might get 10 demerits for that. Now it's an automatic 30-day suspension. Then the next time, it's a 60-day suspension. If you're lucky, you get the 60 days and not just put out on the street.

Everybody out there is working to support their families. They can't make a decision that's going to put them at home for 30 days without a paycheque. That's what's happening. That culture of fear takes away from safety.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Ms. Block.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

I just want to follow up on the comments made about the intermodal or multimodal approach to the transportation of safety goods. Building on something Mr. Stevens said prior to his last comment reminding us that the focus is to keep the cars on the track, perhaps you can explain to me why a multimodal approach isn't appropriate. If you have the right systems, regulations, and oversight in place within each mode of transportation, you would need to have a different approach for different modes, if I understood you correctly.

[Brian Stevens]

You did, but I will let Christine handle it first.

[Christine Collins]

I was speaking about the dangerous goods inspectors. The issue is that the dangerous goods inspectors come from their environment. You have civil aviation dangerous goods inspectors whose experience is with aviation. You have rail inspectors and you have marine inspectors. But when you put together in a group where they are all multimodal dangerous goods inspectors, today they're doing rail and tomorrow they're doing aviation. They're going to get two days in training, if they're lucky, because Transport has cut training dollars, too. That's the way they're going to do inspections.

What I'm suggesting is that dangerous goods inspectors for rail should be part of the inspection team for the rail safety inspectors. They shouldn't be out in a totally different section, not being the rail expert on dangerous goods, as part of the inspection. That's the problem with multimodal inspection.

I'm sure the users would prefer to have someone who is an expert in dealing with dangerous goods specific to rail, rather than having an inspector of a rail line who comes from an aviation background and whose experience is with aviation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much, Ms. Collins.

Mr. Massé.

[Rémi Massé, Liberal, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Once again, I thank all of the witnesses for having agreed to come to this meeting. I appreciate their presence greatly.

I represent a riding in the Lower St-Lawrence and the Gaspé, and the citizens there are very concerned by all of the issues around rail safety. The Auditor General tabled a report in the fall of 2013 in which he made a series of recommendations. The previous government had committed to ensuring that all of these recommendations would be implemented in an action plan that was to be ready by 2016.

I would like to hear about the progress that has been made on that action plan.

[Brian Stevens]

A number of working groups have come out of that. Some of them have made some progress, some of them have made no progress, and some of them have been dismantled.

It's a frustrating road ahead to get some of these activities moving. Fatigue management is now two and a half or three years old. Missed signals is probably about four years old. There are many of these working groups, but there's no urgency.

I guess it goes back to Don's point earlier, as the advisory committee has not met since the spring of 2015. There's no urgency on it. I think that's where it comes from.

As my friends to the left of me here said earlier, the minister needs to come out and take a solid position. It flows down from that. The advisory committees get back working together. The working groups are tasked with getting stuff done. It just seems like there's no urgency today.

[Phil Benson]

On the dangerous goods side, there have been a number of advisory councils and many committees ongoing and going forward, and we participate on most of them.

But, again, on many of the issues that we'd have raised, things like municipalities getting direct access, the answer was no. A lot of good work has been done. We still have committees ongoing. I find it surprising that it takes three to four years, or two to three years after an accident occurs. I find it shocking. Was it 40 years ago for Hinton?

We still haven't dealt with fatigue. It just seems that in this industry, it takes way too long. I worked on 9/11. It was a hard time. It didn't take 15 years to get something done—though, to be honest, it was only about two-and-a-half years ago that we wrapped up the last little bit.

When I see problems in other sectors, we really seem to get the buy-in from industry. We get the buy-in and we move forward. In this one, it's zero. That's why I hope this committee, its staff and MPs, can work together, as I have worked on previous occasions. I think I've met about eight of you so far.

I hope you all get together and talk, your staff gets together and talks about it, because this committee really has a lot of power from my experience with previous committees. The recommendations you put forward are something we can carry forward and get done.

This is something that just has to get done. It's not just fatigue. It's not just inspectors. It's the industry itself. The railway companies need to be helped themselves to bring them into the 21st century. We can do better, we should do better, and I am looking forward to working with you to get there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Mr. Massé, you still have two minutes left,

[Rémi Massé, Liberal, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

I'd like to pass my time to Mr. Fraser.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Mr. Fraser.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

We haven't touched on the use of video and voice recorders after the 2012 TSB recommendations following the Burlington derailment. There was a recommendation to make video and voice recorders in locomotives mandatory.

Would this make workers and communities safer? How is the process going toward implementing that recommendation?

[Phil Benson]

First of all, this is just a reminder that three teamsters lost their lives in that tragedy.

The use of VDR has been an ongoing issue. We did have a working committee and, just so you know, the conclusion of the working committee was that it would do absolutely nothing for safety and that basically it was a TSB wish. It was very interesting because Mr. Stevens was there too. Just so you understand that, the then DG for rail safety told us that the Transport legal department, the TSB legal department, and Justice all said to just put VDR on rails.

For us it would be both a privacy and constitutional “no”. Where it's at is—he will talk about the study—that some negotiations were ongoing with TCRC and the company. TCRC previously has said that if it were for TSB purposes alone, there's a way to do it. The company's position is that they want to use it to monitor employees and, in our viewpoint, for discipline. So you can talk about the study, but that's where it's stuck. The companies don't want to spend $8 million to put it in to treat us like pilots with the same protection the pilots have, and that's where that's stuck.

[Don Ashley]

I can't really talk about the study because I'm under observer status for the TSB. There is a study going on right now, a safety study. I can tell you that our position is that we have no objections to LVVR being installed and operating under the current protections of the Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board Act. Our concern is that when those tapes get released to the carrier for viewing and compliance, that's going to create safety hazards and silent cabs. I talked about our members' fears about reporting safety issues. They're going to be focused on that camera. That camera is going to be on them for 12 hours a day. They're going to be focused on that camera, and it's going to distract them from their duties. They're not going to communicate with their co-worker for fear that everything is being recorded and it's Big Brother. Everything will recorded and your boss is going to see that all day long.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you, Mr. Ashley. Your time is up again.

Ms. Duncan.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Just quickly, I'd like to use my time for this, Madam Chair, because I'm a little bit concerned that we've made a number of requests to the government authorities for related information, and I don't believe these have been met yet. One I asked for was access to the risk analyses that were done, the risk assessment report. Secondly, I asked for the SMS for CN/CP for all lines in Alberta. I asked for a whole list of information on enforcement: the enforcement compliance policy; and a list of enforcement personnel indicating whether they were full-time or part-time, and their qualifications and job descriptions and training; and for a breakdown of time dedicated to paper audits versus field inspections; and also for the Faust report. I'm just wondering if maybe the clerk can follow up on those, because I think that information is going to be really important to doing our final report.

There's a lot of information here. I suggested when I recommended this study that the few days we had.... Well, there's so much we have to do in this committee, and the infrastructure too, so that it's really tough.

I just want to say how much I appreciate the calibre of the testimony of these witnesses. It's given us a lot of food for thought. However, I'm just wondering if I've got the right message, that a lot of the recommendations you're making today have been made many times over before. Am I hearing clearly that what you would like is more timely action and response on these and that you think that all stakeholders should be at the table when we make our recommendations?

[Phil Benson]

I think our frustration as teamsters and my personal frustration is that I don't know what more we have to do. To be blunt about it, a voice vote in the House and and Senate in the past Parliament is unheard of. It's unheard of anytime, so obviously we had to help make that happen. When Parliament has spoken, when this committee has spoken, when the previous minister has spoken.... Minister Lapierre just passed away. We eulogized him, and I talked about the important role he played in bringing hours of service to truckers.

How often do we have to come here? It's not us stopping it; it clearly isn't you stopping it; there's only one party left that's stopping it. And quite bluntly, when is somebody going to grow some gonads and say, “Get on with it”, and just say, “No”. Workers aren't going to go kill themselves. We're going to find out how much health costs are burdened; we're going to find out about it and fix it. We know precisely what's wrong. There are previous reports; go read them. We need action. So it's not the frustration of coming back over and over again. I will come back for the next 10 years if I have to, but we all agree it's a problem. We've all dealt with it; we've all supported it. Move forward.