Evidence of meeting #8 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was employees.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Kelly Block Conservative Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK
Okay, good. Thank you.
Also in October 2015, CP announced that it had, through negotiations with its 450 U.S. engineers, brought an end to a mileage-based wage system and replaced it with a more standard cycle with two consecutive days off with wages paid hourly. Is this something that you could see bringing into Canada?
Vice-President, Human Resources and Labour Relations, Canadian Pacific Railway
We'd love to do it—
Conservative
Vice-President, Human Resources and Labour Relations, Canadian Pacific Railway
—or some system of it. Are there some pluses and minuses to it? Yes. Have we offered it? Yes, we have.
Conservative
Kelly Block Conservative Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK
Do you think that this system would satisfy concerns with fatigue management?
Vice-President, Human Resources and Labour Relations, Canadian Pacific Railway
Yes. But like anything it depends. The details are important.
Conservative
Kelly Block Conservative Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK
Are the discussions around fatigue included in the bargaining process?
Vice-President, Human Resources and Labour Relations, Canadian Pacific Railway
Yes, very much so. We offered all those cycles that you spoke of. We offered a number of runs, days off; number of hours, days off; on various different.... Do you want to do a 10-, 8-, or 12-hour day? Do you want to do six round trips and that's your month, or six round trips one month, seven the next, and that's your month? All these were on the table. They weren't taken.
Right now everybody has the ultimate choice. After your three and a half hour trip, you can take, in your home, 24 hours off or you can take 15 minutes off. That's why we can't predict when the next person's going to come to work, because every day everybody makes a different decision on what they want to do and we have to respond to that decision. They could say, I'm going to go right now, put me back on the line. One always affects the next. I can't tell you when you're going to work until he tells me what he's going to take for rest.
In fact, in certain circumstances they don't have to tell us how long they're going to work in a day until halfway through the shift. Imagine trying to run a factory where I said, “Are you going to work eight or 10 hours today or 10 or 12 hours?” and the answer is, “Ask me at lunch.” Every day the day changes. They have the right to take it or not take it and you have to ask them. It's very difficult to predict.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
Thank you very much, Mr. Edwards and Ms. Block.
We're on five-minute blocks in order to try to give everybody a chance again on this round.
Mr. Badawey, you're next for five minutes.
Liberal
Vance Badawey Liberal Niagara Centre, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll preface my comments by stating that I was going to ask the same question of CN. Unfortunately, it seems that they went back to their ivory towers in Edmonton and are no longer here or interested. But I'll ask you the same question, folks. I do appreciate your attendance here today as well.
When it comes to CP and CN, I'm sure you have asset management plans in place that look after asset condition, asset repair and maintenance life cycle, and of course, at the end of that life cycle, asset replacement. With that, I'm assuming that you have a responsible financing strategy attached to that so that you can keep up with that life-cycle repair, maintenance, and of course replacement at the end of the day. I'm taking that the answer is yes.
General Manager, Regulatory and Operating Practices, Canadian Pacific Railway
They're long-term assets if you're talking about the rolling stock, the locomotives and the cars.
Liberal
Vance Badawey Liberal Niagara Centre, ON
Not just the rolling stock, but also the track, the crossings, etc.
General Manager, Regulatory and Operating Practices, Canadian Pacific Railway
Yes, that is ours. A lot of the rolling stock, like the cars in particular, we may not own, but there's a regulatory regime on how we inspect and maintain them.
Liberal
Vance Badawey Liberal Niagara Centre, ON
That means identifying what kind of condition they're in and the life cycle. I'm sure you have records of all that and you respond accordingly in terms of using them, or not using them.
General Manager, Regulatory and Operating Practices, Canadian Pacific Railway
Yes, and generally if it's freight cars you're talking about, it's market dictated.
Liberal
Vance Badawey Liberal Niagara Centre, ON
I also assume each of you heard about today's media reports dealing with the high-risk rail crossings. The report is stating that Ontario has no fewer than 222 rail crossings that are dangerous. If you go in to Manitoba, there's 83. If you go on to Saskatchewan, there's 60 some-odd rail crossings that are unsafe. I'm sure you can appreciate the fact that these numbers are big and impact communities and municipalities. They also put a risk on some of those areas within your accident management plans that may have been, should have been, and will be identified.
How are these identified in today's media reports? How are these identified rail crossings prioritized within your accident management plan with respect to life cycle, replacement, and financing the same?
General Manager, Regulatory and Operating Practices, Canadian Pacific Railway
I'll deal generally with crossings and how crossings are managed in Canada. As you've heard, there's a new regulation that came into place last year on grade crossings. We participated in the making of that regulation, and I'll cut to the chase here. We are compliant with the regulatory requirements, but we believe they fell short. The reason they fell short is that we're not looking at a corridor when we're talking about grade crossings. We're talking about single crossings.
One of the problems we have here is that we're upgrading, or being asked to upgrade, every single crossing without asking the question of whether the crossing needs to be there to begin with. Is it safe? Why do we have it? In our view we should look at the corridor, identify the safe locations to cross, make them as safe as we possibly can, and close the rest. That's the approach we believe should be taken. That's difficult to achieve in our current regulatory environment.
Liberal
Vance Badawey Liberal Niagara Centre, ON
You gave me the answer and I appreciate that. You mentioned two points there. You mentioned about the regulatory requirements falling short, which is point number one. Secondly, I'm assuming—and please correct me if I'm wrong—that within your accident management plans you identified these crossings as being delinquent. With that I would assume again that they would be then looked at, repaired, replaced, or even done away with.
What I'm getting at is, within your accident management plan, are you bringing the recommendations forward within those regulatory requirements to try to make it better so that either they're going to be removed, fixed, or brought up to date again within those accident management plans, and as a priority?
General Manager, Regulatory and Operating Practices, Canadian Pacific Railway
It's not quite like that. Fixed or brought up to the new standard? Absolutely, we're working with the municipalities to do that. Removed is an entirely different discussion, and it's nearly impossible for us to do that.
Liberal
Vance Badawey Liberal Niagara Centre, ON
I thought I heard you mention earlier there were some corridors where you can remove these crossings, or you would prefer to remove them.
General Manager, Regulatory and Operating Practices, Canadian Pacific Railway
We would like to. We believe that's the right approach, but we have no ability to do that. The CTA has the ability to grant access by opening crossings. They review crossing opening proposals. Transport Canada looks at the safety of the individual crossings, but nobody is looking holistically at the whole corridor, and that's what we believe needs to be done.
Liberal
Vance Badawey Liberal Niagara Centre, ON
Having said that, have you made recommendations to move in that direction?
General Manager, Regulatory and Operating Practices, Canadian Pacific Railway
Yes.
General Manager, Regulatory and Operating Practices, Canadian Pacific Railway
I wouldn't say turned down. They haven't been acted upon.