Evidence of meeting #9 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 bnsf.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Associate General Counsel, Operations and Regulatory, BNSF Railway Company
As I said, I have not been privy to that. We can check to see if any of those studies have been done and get back to you.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
That would be good, because at least it would speak to the responsiveness of your organization to what you're hearing from the communities.
Back to Chief Garis, did you have any statistics on the number of events we were talking about?
Fire Chief, Surrey Fire Service, City of Surrey
Yes, I can draw a reference to two events. On January 5, 2015, the slide occurred at 11:30 p.m., which is interesting, and the train arrived at 1:45 a.m., then stopped for three hours and four minutes. The other occasion was February 18, 2016, when a tree fell across the tracks south of McBride, resulting in a blockage for 1 hour and 39 minutes.
So I can draw reference to at least two occasions where it's either been a mudslide or a fallen tree across the tracks.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Thank you, Chief, and I would look forward to any records that the rail company could provide on the number of incidents along that corridor.
Conservative
Dianne Lynn Watts Conservative South Surrey—White Rock, BC
Picking up on that, because I know there have been smaller ones that BNSF has been aware of and cleaned up, I want to look at this from a 30,000 foot level. When the train comes through Blaine and then through Surrey, it's a flood plain around that entire area, then it goes up onto the foreshore and then back down onto the flood plain.
Looking down the road, knowing that those conditions exist, the rising water levels and the weather patterns and all of that, has any thought been given to of how that's going to impact that line? Or is it mainly a case of day-to-day operations and you simply deal with things as they come up?
Associate General Counsel, Operations and Regulatory, BNSF Railway Company
We look at things in the short term, the mid term, and the long term. As Johan pointed out, we have geotechnicians, and we have meteorologists looking at these issues, and we're responding. If we're being told that there are going to be climactic events going on in the area that could affect the structure of the tracks, we go in. Recently, we put in 15 train carloads of rip-rap to bolster that particular area.
I think you also have to recognize the fact that we have one track that goes through there and that we're required as a common carrier to provide service. So we have that one track. I think Mr. Hardie has pointed out very well that people are considering options to move that track. We're willing to listen to that, have a conversation, and go through that, but we can't drive that decision. There's a great deal of activity that the Canadian government and the provincial and local governments have to participate in as well.
We are open to discussions regarding what we can do, but we are a company that's required to move freight and to move passengers for the good of the public and the good of the economy, and we do everything we can to do that within the parameters of what's available to us. Right now, the only parameter that's available to us is this track.
Conservative
Dianne Lynn Watts Conservative South Surrey—White Rock, BC
Right, and I understand that, but you own the track and you own the right-of-way.
Associate General Counsel, Operations and Regulatory, BNSF Railway Company
Yes.
Conservative
Dianne Lynn Watts Conservative South Surrey—White Rock, BC
So there would be some onus on all rail companies to look at the condition of the line. Indeed, I've asked this of other rail companies as well.
There have been mudslides. The residents send us pictures every time there's one—
Associate General Counsel, Operations and Regulatory, BNSF Railway Company
And we're very sympathetic.
Conservative
Dianne Lynn Watts Conservative South Surrey—White Rock, BC
—and it has been significant.
Aside from that, projecting into the future and looking at that, I would suggest that if nothing's done and it's just a wait-and-see attitude with any rail company, there are going to be some problems down the road, as I see it. Maybe it's something that we should have a look at in this committee: what do need to do in looking at those conditions? I would suggest that those conditions will deteriorate. The lady who was killed on the promenade there by the train last year....
Associate General Counsel, Operations and Regulatory, BNSF Railway Company
The Amtrak train, yes.
Conservative
Dianne Lynn Watts Conservative South Surrey—White Rock, BC
Then a couple of years ago.... I mean, we can go on about the deaths, but I'm thinking that we need to have a different kind of lens as we look into the future. As I think you pointed out, there are short-term issues, there are medium-term ones, and then there's the long term, right? I think that if we don't start planning now, we're going to end up being down there, and we're going to have a mess on our hands.
Associate General Counsel, Operations and Regulatory, BNSF Railway Company
I'd just like to say that we would agree with you in terms how we need to have a dialogue that allows all the constituencies to coexist well. We have a duty and an obligation to move freight. We also have a duty and an obligation to be good corporate citizens with regard to those in the communities around us.
We like to think we're responsive. We've put forth some suggestions with respect to what to do at Crescent Beach. You're raising an issue, and we have limited things we can do because we only have one right-of-way, and trying to obtain another right-of-way is probably impossible.
Associate General Counsel, Operations and Regulatory, BNSF Railway Company
Well, for us to do it independently, it would be.
Associate General Counsel, Operations and Regulatory, BNSF Railway Company
That's why I think our railroad—
Conservative
Associate General Counsel, Operations and Regulatory, BNSF Railway Company
—would welcome the conversation and discussion. As I said before—
Conservative
Associate General Counsel, Operations and Regulatory, BNSF Railway Company
—it would be very, very expensive.
I began my comments by saying that our railroad truly appreciates the opportunity to come here to speak to this committee and to say that we are open to discussions. We will remain after the hearing to have more discussions. We will come back to Ottawa, if you so desire to hear from us, and continue these discussions.
These are serious issues. These are not things we take lightly. The fire chief mentioned a situation where we had somebody who didn't follow the protocols. Look, it's not an excuse. We take responsibility. We have 45,000 employees and somebody didn't do what they were supposed to do. Shame on us: we take the responsibility for that. But we are taking actions to address that, and we continue to listen to our communities and try to be responsive. It's not like we're saying no.
Regarding access issues, we've approached Transport Canada and asked them to become involved and work with us to find solutions. That meeting should take place here in the next several weeks. We're trying to be proactive and work with everybody.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
Thank you very much. We appreciate that.
Members mentioned several other reports. Could you forward to the clerk any information that would be helpful to the committee as we continue our railway study. We would appreciate it.
Thank you all for participating in this section of our meeting.
We will now switch to another panel. Thank you for your information. It has all been very helpful as we move forward.
We'll suspend for a minute while we switch our video conference.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
We will resume the meeting.
We have, by video conference from Montreal, from VIA Rail Canada Inc., Marc Beaulieu, chief of the transportation and safety office; and Jacques Fauteux, director of government and community relations.
By video conference from Toronto, Ontario, we have GO Transit, Greg Percy, the president.
Welcome to all of you, and my thanks to you for coming.
VIA Rail, would you like to go first?
Marc Beaulieu Chief, Transportation and Safety Office, VIA Rail Canada Inc.
Yes, I would, Madam Chair. Thank you.
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, members of the committee.
My name is Marc Beaulieu. I'm the chief transportation and safety officer for VIA Rail Canada.
I'm delighted to appear before you today, joined by my colleague, director of government and community relations, Jacques Fauteux.
Our president and CEO Mr. Yves Desjardins-Siciliano asked me to send his greetings and regrets that he is not able to meet you today to speak about VIA Rail's perspective on rail safety.
At VIA Rail our mandate is to provide safe, efficient, reliable, and environmentally sustainable transportation services that meet the needs of Canadian travellers from coast to coast. Above, safety and security are VIA Rail's top priorities, and we are always striving to improve in this area. All 2,500 employees of VIA Rail understand that safety is a group effort and that it is everyone's responsibility.
That objective is at the heart of everything we do, whether in our maintenance centres, at our stations, or on board our trains.
Our two key priorities in this area are ensuring the safety of our operations and informing the Canadian public about safety around railroads.
With regard to our operations, we're constantly making improvements to our safety management system. VIA Rail's safety management system provides the framework to implement safety policy and to comply with the Railway Safety Act and safety management system regulations. It is also the reference for setting goals and planning and measuring safety performance to implement SMS and continuously improve its performance. We foster a very strong safety culture.
In 2015, VIA Rail addressed the recommendations from Transport Canada's 2014 SMS audit. We've complied with revised and new SMS regulations and maintained and fostered strong participation by all employees, all ahead of the required timeline. In addition, we consulted with external experts to benchmark our SMS leading practices within and outside the industry in keeping with our commitment to go above and beyond mere compliance.
As I am sure you can appreciate, the current work demands on locomotive engineers are very high, with a significant cognitive effort, memory load, and concentration requirements. Most current locomotive engineers of ours have many years of experience and broad knowledge both in freight and passenger trains. In our succession plan, we have to further ensure the safety of our operations.
VIA Rail has designed an innovative approach to reduce both the mental workload and the risk for human error in train operations. We've developed an in-house GPS train tracking safety system, the first of its kind in Canada. The GPS tracking system assists locomotive engineers by providing notifications of upcoming speed changes or restrictions and approaching changes in applicable rules or landmarks along the route. As you know, VIA Rail operates primarily on shared tracks owned by freight operators.
Via Rail owns just 3% of the tracks used by our trains, so nearly 300 kilometres between Quebec and Ontario.
The fact that we operate mainly in a shared environment where our trains travel on freight rail lines is why we developed a safety system that could be effective on both our own infrastructure and the infrastructure of other partners.
VIA Rail has successfully completed the first live road test of a GPS-trained safety system in order to validate critical foundational system capabilities, accuracy, precision of real-time GPS feed, and track database in a real environment. This was a significant achievement, and further development and testing of the system is ongoing.
I am also very proud of the fact that in 2015, VIA Rail earned the Railway Association of Canada's safety award for our enterprise risk management system, which is designed to proactively address potential safety risks. The ERM system was honoured for its success in identifying and assessing key risks that aided the development and adoption of proactive measures to prevent potential incidents and to implement corrective measures.
As I mentioned earlier, VIA Rail puts tremendous efforts into educating Canadians about safety around rail property and trains. For many years, VIA Rail has worked with Operation Lifesaver in partnership with the Railway Association of Canada.
As a member of the board of directors—