Transport Committee on April 13th, 2016

[Sean Finn]

Sure.

[Jim Vena]

You know what? Go ahead. They've had enough of listening to me, Sean.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Sean Finn]

Prior to Lac-Mégantic, as we trained first responders, there would be a meeting and we'd discuss the nature of the products in the cars and their frequency, but not in great detail. That was prior to July 6, 2013. The day after July 6, 2013, we started providing to municipalities, because of a re-regulation but also because we thought it was the right thing to do, detailed information of last year's transportation broken down by commodity and by car. That's not real time; that's last year. It's not sufficient, but they all had it to allow them to prepare their plans. How much propane was going through Surrey in July?

We went one step further. Last year in June we announced an app called AskRail, and Surrey is registered, just so you know, but also there are over a thousand first responders in Canada who have on their BlackBerrys access to real-time information. You can stand on the side of the rail line, put in the car number as it goes by, and the BlackBerry will tell you what's in the car, how much is in the car, and what the first responder intervention is. If that's not sufficient, you can ask about the whole train, if you want, to get the same information.

As I said, finally now with the risk assessments we will be launching very soon.... Because the challenge often, as you know, is that fire chiefs are very good, but sometimes it gets lost in translation. Rest assured that today there's not a town in Canada on CN's main line that does not have access to real-time information on dangerous goods. If they register, they will receive it.

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

Okay. Just following up on that, is it only the first responders? Can anybody have that access to that app?

[Sean Finn]

Not the general public, obviously, but we've asked first responders, the fire chief in Surrey or in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, to turn to the mayor and ask the mayor, “Who should have access to this in order to prepare a first responders' intervention?” Often it will be some councillors who sit on public security committees. The mayors themselves in Quebec must have it because ultimately they're responsible for their first responders, but also the local community more broadly.

If you have a citizen sitting on a public safety committee, he'll have access to it, but what you don't want, obviously, is some third party saying how many cars a week of propane will go by this crossing when they're not really involved with the first responders.

That's your answer. Towns will decide, based on the use of that information, who should have access to it. But I want to be clear; it's not access to the general public because that would go beyond what needs to be done to make sure we're ready for a first responder intervention.

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

I wouldn't disagree with that because that just opens it up to all sorts of things. If somebody knows propane's coming along, then there could be an incident. I get all of that.

That whole thing will be in place by—

[Sean Finn]

It's already in place.

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

It is in place now. I wanted to double ensure that we're getting this.

[Jim Vena]

Last June at FCM we announced it and peopled registered. As we speak today, there are a thousand first responders, probably over 500 communities, that have the information and are using it.

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

Okay. My next question would then be, why would all the union bodies that deal with railways say that's not the case?

[Jim Vena]

You would have to ask them. I have no idea. They know about it. They know what's going on.

[Sean Finn]

We announced it at the FCM annual meeting with over 2,000 delegates, so they're aware of it obviously.

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

I understand.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

We are now out of time.

To all of the gentlemen from CN, thank you very much for your information. We look forward to ensuring that you get a copy of our report when we're finished this study.

[Jim Vena]

Thank you very much. We appreciate your having us here.

The invitation's open, first of all, to come to our new training centre in Winnipeg, or if you happen to be in Chicago. The only reason we have two is because with passports we can't easily get people across the border on both sides. We would love to have you out.

I'd love to spend the full day explaining what we do on safety. I'd love to get the feedback from anybody in the room. The offer is open. Please come out and visit us. We'd love to spend the time with you.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

I'll suspend the meeting for two minutes, so that we can switch the people over.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

I call the meeting back to order.

We now have representatives from Canadian Pacific Railway, Keith Shearer, general manager of regulatory and operating practices; Jim Kozey, director of hazardous materials programs; and Peter Edwards, vice-president of human resources and labour relations.

Gentlemen, I'll turn the floor over to you and ask you to keep your presentations as brief as you can, covering off the key points that you know we're very interested in.

Mr. Shearer, you have the floor.

[Keith Shearer, General Manager, Regulatory and Operating Practices, Canadian Pacific Railway]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and good afternoon. We would like to congratulate you all for your election victories last fall. We thank you for the opportunity to appear today to discuss the important issue of rail safety.

As one of Canada's two class 1 railways, we operate a 22,000 kilometre network throughout Canada and the United States. We link thousands of communities with the North American economy and with international markets.

Rail continues to be the safest, most efficient means of transportation for many goods, commodities, and exports that drive the Canadian economy. Safety is at the heart of everything we do at CP. It has to be.

Simply put, the best way to provide effective reliable rail service for our customers is to operate as safely as possible at all times, without exception. Safety incidents, big or small, impede our ability to move goods efficiently. They cost time, money, slowdown the entire system, and can ultimately jeopardize the lives of our employees, neighbours, and the public. That's why at CP, we simply do not tolerate unsafe behaviour. We are working tirelessly to ensure operations are conducted safely and that we continue to improve our record.

The Canadian railway industry is one of the safest in the world. We are very proud that CP is the safest railway in North America. We have achieved the lowest frequency of train accidents in the North American railway industry in each of the last 10 years.

Although CP has achieved industry-leading safety performance, and we continue to see improvements year after year, more works remains. One accident is too many. There is room for improvement and that's what we're here to talk to you about today.

We will focus on three safety areas: the fatigue management regime, remote control device safety, and locomotive voice and video recorders.

I'll start with fatigue. Fatigue is a multifactorial problem. As such, fatigue must be addressed through a holistic program that strives to identify and to take into consideration all potential contributing factors. CP has devoted an extensive amount of time and resources to review, update, monitor, and expand this fatigue management program.

CP's fatigue management program begins at the point of hire. New employees are subject to a comprehensive medical assessment that includes an assessment of established medical conditions, including sleep disorders such as sleep apnea, metabolic disorders, mental health disorders, substance use disorders, and cardiovascular disorders. All of which can contribute to reduced fatigue tolerance.

This comprehensive medical assessment is industry-leading. Employees identified with at-risk medical conditions are not permitted to operate trains until these conditions have been addressed by a medical practitioner. The process of ongoing medical monitoring is then implemented to ensure that the medical conditions remain stable and are well controlled.

To complement the above, CP has an education program for its employees. The education program includes content on exercise, nutrition, and good sleep hygiene practices both at work and in the home environment.

Finally, CP has an employee and family assistance program that is available to our employees should they experience problems that may impact either their personal or work life.

In summary, fatigue management is a shared responsibility between the company, its employees, and the regulator. The employee's role in the system is to responsibly manage their rest and personal condition to ensure that they are able to safely perform their duties, and most importantly, to report and seek assistance if they have concerns about their ability to work safely.

I will now turn it over to Peter Edwards, our VP of human resources, to discuss the importance of personal choice, and how that impacts an employee's schedule and the schedules of others.

Peter.

[Peter Edwards, Vice-President, Human Resources and Labour Relations, Canadian Pacific Railway]

Thank you very much.

This is a topic I'm passionate about. I could talk on it for hours, for days even, without a note. I don't need notes to know what's on my mind and in my heart.

No matter what system you put in place, no matter what regulation you put in place, it all comes down to one thing—decisions, the decisions people make. In the case of rest, this is one of the most important factors as to whether a person is rested or not. We all know this in our personal life. We know that there are laws against driving while you're tired. We know that it's wrong to do it. But if we're honest, we'd all admit to having been on the highway and our heads have bobbed. We know that sometimes somebody else should be making that decision for us.

We've analyzed and looked at all the things that were the “myths” of work and rest in the railway and we tried to understand them on a level of detail that nobody in this industry—or in any industry—has attempted to do before. We're sharing this methodology with other railways.

We've looked at the old narrative, that the days were long, that there was no opportunity for rest, and that the days were unpredictable. When we got our information and we put everything...we didn't do a sample size and we didn't do averages. The truth gets lost in averages. You have to look at every piece of data. We looked at all 426,956 runs that were done in a year, and every person who went to work. That's how many person-days there were of people on the road. We looked at it and the average day, from the moment a person's foot hits our property to the moment that foot leaves the property, was six to seven hours. That's the typical day. The next typical longest day was seven to eight hours. The next typical longest day was four to five hours.

What you find out in the railway industry is that because of the improvement in railway speed, and because of the improvement in railways, the days aren't as long as they used to be. The typical person is working about a seven-hour day, or a six- to seven-hour day. That's the distribution. If you go to the next page you can see the exact numbers. Every once in a while, though, you'll hear a horror story, usually from a long time ago, about somebody who worked 24 hours. I can tell you that last year we had two people who were paid for 24 hours. Nobody works 24 hours, or 18 hours, or 17 hours. They might be paid for that but they don't work it.

If you look at the distribution, you'll see two. Who are those people? They are two people who were on a train, going down the track. There was a detection and they got out and found some trees. Well, they couldn't back the train up all that distance, so we had to send somebody out to, first, clear the trees and, second, get them and bring them back. It wasn't some place you could just drive up to, so we had to get a high-rail vehicle and it took a long time. So they sat on the train, slept, and did whatever they wanted until we came to get them and took them home. That's the way we operate and that's the world we live in. There will always be trees that fall, there will always be landslides, and there will always be snow. Sometimes someone will get stuck on a train and they will have to stay there until we can come and get them.

Now, does that happen a lot? Out of the 426,956, it happened to two people.

First we talked about long days. The next one we talked about was opportunities for rest. We put together a piece here that is about a third of a person's schedule. This person was someone the union picked some time ago and said that we should look them because they were overworked. We didn't choose the person. The little red arrows here indicate every time this person could have taken more rest and decided not to. This is only a fraction of that month. In that month, on 21 separate occasions, the person said, “I can take more rest and I don't want it”.

Since the last negotiations and the negotiations before that, there are even more opportunities for rest. We've listed 10 opportunities for rest. When you go out and you're at the away-from-home terminal—if you go from Montreal to Smiths Falls—you can take 10 hours off, eight plus two. Then when you get back, you can take 26 hours off, 24 plus two. Do that enough times and you get 48, and then in the middle of the month you can book up to 72. Then in the next one you can do the 10 and 26, 10 and 26, and your 48, and then if you waive off a lot of rest, you can take the end of the month off.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much, Mr. Edwards. Just because our timing is so tight here with these panels and I know the committee wants to get some questions in, we'll just move on to Ms. Block. You can try to get some of your other points in during your answers to the members.

Ms. Block.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I want to thank our witnesses for joining us today. I know we have a short bit of time and a lot of questions that we'd like to ask.

I also want to recognize the range of experience that you represent—vice-president, director general, manager. I imagine you were selected because of some of the very technical questions we're going to be asking on remote control devices, fatigue, and other things.

I'm going to ask the same questions that I asked our witnesses on Monday, because I'd like to be able to compare apples to apples when I think about the answers that I receive.

My first question would be, I understand that the scheduling is done on a mileage basis. Is that correct?

[Peter Edwards]

You're given a run. You get certain breaks after a certain number of miles. Whether your day was two hours long or three hours long.... We have one run from Montreal to Smiths Falls, which is three and a half hours, and that's a full day. You might have a run that's two and a half hours or you might have one that's six hours. They're all a day, so it's not really mileage. But after certain mileage points you can take off an additional 48 plus two, 50 hours. At certain other points in the middle of your month you can take off up to three days in any one-minute increment. So you can do two days, 48 hours and 4 minutes, if you want.

That's why we have difficulty scheduling, because when people get off a train.... For example, on the Smiths Falls one, for the Montreal crew, which I travel with numerous times, it's a three and a half hour trip. One guy gets right on a train and goes right back and he's done two days' worth of work. The other guy always goes into Smiths Falls and I don't know why—nothing against Smiths Falls. It's all decisions and choices. We can't tell the next person when they're going to work, because every day they get to make that decision whether they want to do it or not.

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

It is also my understanding that this existing system for scheduling has been in place for over 100 years or more. Is that correct?

[Peter Edwards]

We've had railway scheduling. However, in the last dozen years we've added to the rest opportunities, quadrupled them at least.