Thank you, Mr. Chair.
As the Auditor General indicated, assessing the effectiveness of safety management systems is an important measure. In addition, I would like to refer to paragraph 5.37 of our report, where we recommended that Transport Canada “should determine the extent to which its inspections and audits have improved the railway companies' compliance with regulations that mitigate key safety risks.”
Taking those two measures together and comparing how they correlate against accident rates, fatality rates, and seeing if there is a good correlation would be important. Those would be key measures.
For example, if the compliance rates are improving but the accident rates are not, then that would be an indicator that the department needs to go back and take a look at whether it is focusing on the right areas or what exactly the nature of the concern is there.
In respect to other jurisdictions, there are certainly examples of good practices, both within Canada and internationally. For example, the Canada Energy Regulator, which we included in our transport of dangerous goods report last fall, has established indicators that measure components of effectiveness. The Canada Energy Regulator has 60 indicators with specific targets, some of which are being used as performance measures for safety and environment oversight.