Transport Committee on April 13th, 2016

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

They haven't been acted upon.

[Keith Shearer]

When we were going through the grade crossing regulation review, our position was that it needed to be more than what we ended up with.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Duncan, you have five minutes.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you.

My understanding from the testimony that we heard from the unions representing the workers on Monday was that they were asking for scheduling of trains. It's not the issue of necessarily the scheduling of staff, although that would help. My understanding is that their concern is that there is no set schedule of trains, and that is why we're having this increased fatigue. I'll throw that out to you to respond as well. I'm a little puzzled with that. I just visited a steel plant. That's a very dangerous facility, and people are well trained and they have a clear work schedule of when the plant is up and when it's down, and so forth.

My questions follow on the questions that I put to CN. Those relate to the concerns that Canadian municipalities have been raising about the failure to be open and transparent...a notification of what is being made available. Now, my question to you, gentlemen, is this. My understanding is that there isn't necessarily advanced notification to municipalities and the first responders on the type of cargo that is going through daily. Can you explain this to me? What good is this gizmo that you can use to check the car if you have a disaster like Lac-Mégantic and the cars are burning? How the heck do you go in and find out what is in those cars that are burning?

Please explain to me how, in fact, you were actually responding to the calls by municipalities to have greater information, for the first responders to have greater information on what is flowing through these municipalities on a daily basis.

[Peter Edwards]

I can start with the one on scheduling. Why the steel plant can do it is because when the person leaves the steel plant at the end of their eight-to-four shift, we know they're coming to work at eight o'clock tomorrow morning. They can't say they want to do another shift right now, they want to come back in 12 hours, or they'd like to come back in 23 hours and two minutes, which is what our employees get to do. How can you make a schedule when you can't determine the amount of time off? I would challenge anyone to that one. That's a big problem.

Our carloads vary by week. As you know, we report, and that's how people measure the economy. A coal company might say, “There really are no orders in China” or “If you can make all the ships arrive in Vancouver at the right time so that we can unload and do all those other things...”. If all those pieces come into play, we could run a scheduled railway to the hour. No one would like that more than we would. It just doesn't seem to be the way the world is working. We can't control when the ships arrive, the production requires me to change, and the employees get to decide how long they work and how long they take off every single day.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Okay, what about my question about transparency and disclosure? That's my question to you.

[Jim Kozey, Director, Hazardous Materials Programs, Canadian Pacific Railway]

That's fine. That's rail.

We have a long history of working with municipalities in providing them with emergency response information. This predates protective direction 32. The railways work with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities to give a breakdown of hazardous materials by quarter, on an annual basis. In addition to that, you've heard about AskRail, which is real-live data, where, say for example in the instance of Lac-Mégantic, a first responder who was on scene could identify any car that was in there. They'd type in a number and they would get the contents of that, as well as the contents of the entire train. I have it on my iPhone; I could show you.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I have been talking to the chair of the FCM committee on rail transport. I'm not as assured from them as you are telling me they're assured. I repeat my request to this committee that we need to hear from the municipalities all the more so now that we're hearing about the information that's being revealed about these dangerous rail crossings. A good number of those rail crossings that are designated dangerous are ones that I and my constituents traverse daily.

I have put the request into Transport Canada to see all the risk assessment reports for the lines running through Alberta. Are you as a company willing to make them available to this committee? Would you be willing to meet with me and provide those to me?

[Keith Shearer]

Is that the risk assessments for the crossings?

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

No, it's the risk assessment generally that Transport Canada demanded that you provide about all risks affiliated with your lines.

[Keith Shearer]

For dangerous goods, those risk assessments we've made available to Transport Canada. We're more than willing to sit down with any community and go through the risk assessment. We are concerned, however, about making that publicly available. This is security-sensitive. This is confidential information that we really don't want to have out in the public.

[Peter Edwards]

You were speaking more of just to yourself.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

You've touched on an important issue that needs more time. Unfortunately, we don't seem to have it.

Mr. Fraser and Mr. McGuinty, you're going to share your time.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Yes, that's right. Thanks very much.

We don't have too much time, but I'd like to build on a few lines of questioning that my colleagues have already launched.

When I look at your union-selected overworked employee chart, it establishes an example, at least, of something that's quite troubling. Is that a trend you see, with employees stacking their time like that with CP?

[Peter Edwards]

We're going through every employee from last year. I have a chart over here, which I didn't submit so I can't hold up, apparently. But it's about four feet wide and six feet long, and it shows the entire year. We'll look at every decision point they've made and see the outliers. In January I invited the union to sit down with me and go through the ones I'm a little concerned about. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's absolutely perfect. We're going to have a sleep expert there as well—they can have one and we have the guy we like—and ask if it's good or bad. They got back to us after a month and said they weren't available until mid-April. They've cancelled that meeting since then, but we will get together with them.

We're not waiting. In the interim we're going through them and looking at every one. If there is somebody who's an outlier, we're trying to take action. We're now driving what we call fresh crews, well-rested crews, to a location and putting them in ahead of other crews, so that the crew behind can't go on. We're forcing them to take rest. I have over 41 grievances on that. I'm going to be going to arbitration at least 41 times, because we told them to take rest and that we'd have another crew do it. I'm getting spanked for trying to get people to rest.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Is there a pattern?

[Peter Edwards]

With some people, yes.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

It seems from your testimony that you're saying the problem is that people have the right to take rest but are choosing not to. To me that's somewhat insufficient, because it's a system that's not working, whether it's an individual's fault or not.

Why does this keep coming back to the collective bargaining table? Do you think regulation would be the better way to address the issue?

[Peter Edwards]

I'm not sure what the regulation would look like. There's the airline industry and that's completely different. The trucking industry works longer days; they work more weeks in a month. I don't think that's a model to go to. They only have one person in, and they have to steer.

We have a regimen that will allow lots of rest.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I am starting to cut into my colleague's time here, so I want to be respectful.

[Peter Edwards]

You have to get to the point where.... Can you force a schedule?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Thank you.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Thanks very much, Mr. Fraser.

Mr. Edwards, I have a couple of snapper questions, please.

What were your gross revenues in the last fiscal year?

[Peter Edwards]

That is...billion....