Transport Committee on Feb. 27th, 2020

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Please answer the question.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

All right. In Canada, the CP police and the CN police monitor the railroads. They are responsible for ensuring that the property of the railroad is respected, and they have the ability to prosecute.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Minister, recently we saw derailments in Guernsey, Saskatchewan, only kilometres apart and mere months apart.

What have you found in terms of your investigation of those two derailments?

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

That investigation is under way. In the interim, I have imposed a ministerial order, which reduces the speed of both key trains and high-risk key trains.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Minister, in terms of the impacts of the blockades and things like what we have seen recently in the latest rail strike, what tools does Transport Canada have at its disposal to report to Parliament and Canadians, through our committee, the hard costs on the Canadian economy?

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

That's something we monitor, and we get information from the shippers. We get information from the railroad companies themselves.

However, having said that, it's a very complex thing to analyze. As I said yesterday, it will take probably about six months to fully analyze the impacts. They are bigger than most people think, due to the blockades that have slowed down our system. We will be looking at those numbers.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Does Transport Canada have concrete data on that, or is that proprietary information specifically for CN and CP?

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

We only get the information if they provide it to us. It is not something that we typically follow.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

How is it that the railways are the only entities in Canada that know what's actually happening in the rail freight market? Based on your answer, it seems that the department is relying on anecdotal input from stakeholders. In the age of big data, this doesn't seem right. Do you feel that this is good enough?

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

We talked to CN and CP and asked them for costing data, for example about the consequences of the current blockade, and they are very willingly providing us with that data.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

What are the consequences of a duopoly or monopoly of our rail system on our shippers, which are at the whim and the whimsy of our two rail carriers?

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

That's a very big question. We could talk about that for quite a while. In some cases it does mean that certain shippers have access only to one railroad. That is one of the reasons I brought in Bill C-49; it was to provide the option of interswitching in a fair manner to shippers.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Where are we with that right now?

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

It's in effect. It has been in effect since the summer of 2018, I believe.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

With that, I'm going to transfer my remaining minute to my colleague Luc Berthold.

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

Thank you very much.

Good day, Minister Garneau.

On February 5, we learned that CN's rail traffic control centre in Montreal would be shutting down in October. This tragic news is causing a great deal of concern about rail safety. As for loss of expertise, it is estimated that only 15% of controllers will be moving on to work in the other centre.

Does your government intend to ask CN to stay that decision?

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

The answer is no.

CN has made its decision. The railway is well aware of the need for safe rail traffic control across Canada. That's why it has decided to transfer—

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

Are you aware that there may be issues in terms of official languages, that new controllers will be hired to replace those in Montreal and that there will be resulting safety issues?

CN is doing the risk assessment. Will Transport Canada inspectors ensure that the appropriate safety measures are in place?

There are a lot of concerns at this time. Unfortunately, the workers that have reached out to you have not gotten a response.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

That is a question that was raised. Safety is very important.

Regarding official languages, CN assures us that it is important for people working at the control centre to be able to communicate in French with train conductors in Quebec. That is a service that will be ensured.

CN is very aware of its obligations with regard to official languages, as they are closely related to operational safety.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Minister. Thank you, Mr. Berthold.

Mr. Rogers.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Welcome, Minister, and welcome to members of your staff, as well. It's good to see you here today answering questions for the committee.

The first question I have, Minister, is in regard to supplementary estimates (B). Can you elaborate on the $7.1 million in additional funding that's going towards protection of the North Atlantic right whales? I understand that the money is being used in part to acquire another Dash 8 airplane for surveillance.

Why did we need this additional capacity? What type of work will they be doing, and how does it serve to protect or help protect the whales?

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

Thank you for the question.

In fact, earlier today, Minister Jordan and I announced this year's measures with respect to the protection of North Atlantic right whales. A very important part of that is for us to be able to do surveillance over the area in question, in this case the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and particularly the lanes where we allow ships to go faster on the condition of not having any North Atlantic right whales in those lanes. If we spot one, we impose a speed restriction limit of 10 knots for 15 days after that.

Our interest, of course, is to protect North Atlantic right whales from collisions with ships. Therefore, we needed this additional aircraft to be able to do literally hundreds of hours of surveillance over the gulf during the summer period.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

What will be the frequency of the surveillance? Is it something that will be ongoing?

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

It is something that is ongoing. Last year, we really became aware of the fact that we were short an asset because we had to fly out, sometimes twice a day, if I'm not mistaken, over the gulf. The only times we restricted ourselves was when certain weather conditions would not permit us to do that.

We take the job very seriously, and it's important for us to provide the information so that everyone who's out there in the gulf—I'm talking about maritime shipping, ferries, cruise lines and fishermen—is aware of where the North Atlantic right whales are located so they can take that into consideration as they go about their operations or if they're transiting the area.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Thank you for that. I'd agree. I think it's crucially important to protect the whales with this kind of service.

In your speech, you also mentioned that you want to reduce physical and regulatory barriers to the efficient movement of international commerce in the transportation system. Can you elaborate on the types of barriers you're talking about and what could be done to reduce some of those?