Transport Committee on April 13th, 2021

[Dr. Kyle Mulligan]

I'll just add very quickly, Tom.

As a qualified locomotive engineer myself, having operated trains for the last four years at CP, I can definitely see the value in terms of the inward-facing and outward-facing cameras. Part of our railway technology group, which I lead, does derailments and incident investigations, so having that video information is critical, not only to solving the issue but preventing it altogether. This plays hand in hand with the technology we've added in terms of data analytics, where we're actually auditing the event recorders on board for operators' actions. If you tie that to the video, it becomes very powerful in terms of ensuring compliance.

[Tom Brown]

I would agree with Kyle. The benefits here will be a lot of educational gain. We focus a lot on infrastructure spending and technology, but this LVVR, locomotive voice and video recording, helps us address and correct some of the behavioural issues that we might have in the cab or some errors and provide some educational guidance to our operating crews.

[Maninder Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Thank you for that answer. I know that rail safety is definitely of utmost importance to our government. It's good to hear that some of the measures that are put into force, whether it's slowing down the dangerous goods trains or requiring video recorders to be installed in locomotives, are helping.

Mr. Chair, how much time do I have left?

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

You have about 30 seconds.

[Maninder Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Really quickly, Mr. Brazeau, you mentioned Operation Lifesaver Canada to help prevent death at railway crossings. Is there something that really stands out to you in terms of messaging that we should be able to convey to our constituents?

[Marc Brazeau]

I think that any time we have additional partners, that will help us get the message out, communicate our videos and educate the general population about the importance of being safe around railway crossings and not to trespass. We're always looking for additional partners to help convey that message, so if there's anything that we can do with the federal government, municipalities, provincial governments.... We've done a lot of outreach in the last two years alone with our social media, but we're always looking for opportunities to expand that coverage, and any support we get there would be much appreciated.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Brazeau, and thank you, Mr. Sidhu. Those were great questions.

We're now going to the Bloc.

Mr. Barsalou-Duval, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My question is for Mr. Brazeau from the Railway Association of Canada. It is about oil.

In her report, the Auditor General, who appeared just before you, pointed out that a fairly significant increase in the transportation of oil by rail had been observed and that this could increase the safety risks.

Mr. Brazeau, have you seen that same increase in the transportation of oil? Is there any way to quantify it? Can you give us an idea of what this increase in oil transportation will look like over a 10- or 15-year period? Just briefly, how are you adapting to that?

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Mr. Brazeau, you're on mute.

[Marc Brazeau]

Yes, that's the classic error of 2020 and 2021, I guess.

We have seen an increase in the amount of oil transported by rail, but it's still a small percentage of the total amount of oil transported, because pipelines are still the primary way to transport oil. Railroads have the capacity to do this, but they are not there to replace pipelines. Rather, they are there to assist in the transportation of oil, when necessary. New, stronger and safer rail cars have been built. They are in use today. So there has been an increase, yes, but it is still a small amount of the total amount of oil being transported.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Thank you.

In her report, the Auditor General talks about a 45% increase between 2017 and 2018, which is still major.

I grew up next to a railroad track. I lived there for about 25 years. When I was a little kid, I would go to the window and count the cars in the middle of the night. I was always excited about the train going by. I couldn't wait to say that the train was going to go by. It was like an event in the day for me as a little boy.

Of course, when we saw the Lac-Mégantic accident in 2014, I was a little older. Instead, that excitement turned to fear, and I think it was the same for a lot of people, because of the transportation of oil. We no longer saw trains as a means of transporting goods, but as a threat, especially when we saw so much oil on the tracks.

Perhaps this is not a general feeling, but where I live, many people feel that trains carrying oil pass more often at night than during the day to avoid being seen.

Is it true or a coincidence? Or is it a comment not based on reality?

[Marc Brazeau]

Personally, I am not able to answer your question. My colleagues would be better able to tell you which trains run during the day or at night. I know there are trains that run 24 hours a day. There may be some areas where there is a higher probability of a train running at a certain time.

The Lac-Mégantic tragedy is so sombre that it remains in our thoughts to this day. Many changes have been made since then, and safety has been strengthened in terms of systems, culture, equipment, training and everything else related to the operation of a train. However, I can confirm that the amount of oil transported by train has increased. The fact remains that 99.99% of all dangerous goods transported by train arrive at their destination without incident.

It is important to keep in mind that the success rate of transporting dangerous goods remains extremely high, and this is due to the implementation of several technologies and safety systems.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Thank you.

My next question is about what municipalities are requesting.

For years, I have been hearing municipalities complain that they would like to know in advance what types of goods will be passing through their area, so that they can adapt their services and ensure that firefighters are on the alert and that police and emergency services are ready. They want to be able to be proactive in their response in an informed way if something were to happen.

Is there any way that your organizations could commit to sharing this information with municipalities in advance?

[Marc Brazeau]

First responders already have access to this information. It is also available to any municipality that wants to have access to it.

The only thing I would like to emphasize is that it is not to the advantage of the municipalities and the general public that this information be made public, for security reasons—

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

I am sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Brazeau.

Mr. Chair, I would like to know whether we will have time for a second round.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Mr. Barsalou-Duval, because we had some lag time due to technical difficulties, I'll be allowing the meeting to go to 8:45. I'm hoping to get as far as I can based on the time that's remaining as well as the time individual members have.

That being said, I do thank you for your questions, because you're now past your time. I apologize.

As well, of course, Mr. Brazeau, thank you for your answers.

We're now going to move to our next speaker, who is representing the NDP, for six minutes.

Mr. Bachrach, you have the floor.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses.

I'd like to start with Mr. Brown.

Mr. Brown, CN, obviously, operates in northwest B.C. It's a big part of our history, a big part of our current economy. As I mentioned earlier in the meeting, there's been a marked increase in the transport of dangerous goods, especially products like liquid propane. This is of fairly significant concern to municipalities, to volunteer fire departments and to residents who live along the rail corridor. They look at major disasters like Lac-Mégantic and they think about their own community. They think about what would happen if there were a disaster of that magnitude and that scale in their local community.

I wonder if you can comment on whether your company models disaster response for a large industrial fire involving liquid propane, and on what such a disaster would look like relative to what we saw in Lac-Mégantic, which was a disaster involving crude oil. How would those two differ in their character?

[Tom Brown]

Thank you, Mr. Bachrach.

First of all, along your corridor we do provide training to communities and first responders. We do have emergency response equipment situated in Prince George, Smithers, Terrace and Prince Rupert, in the unlikely event of a dangerous goods derailment.

We do conduct exercises, but they're not full on Lac-Mégantic-type exercises. The exercise we'll do is a live-fire exercise, simulating a tank fire, with local first responders. We teach them how to address that type of a derailment, that type of a fire. We don't tabletop something like a Lac-Mégantic.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Could I ask why not? Do you have a plan for responding to a major disaster involving multiple cars of liquid propane? I look out my window and see trains with what looks like hundreds of cars parked in the rail yard containing that product. What would it look like if multiple cars were to be involved in an incident?

[Tom Brown]

Yes, we do. When we go through an exercise on how to approach a fire with dangerous goods, whether it's a single car, multiple cars, or just strictly a release of a dangerous goods product, all first responders, the fire departments, are all trained. In fact, in the last couple of years we've trained over 540 first responders in that type of scenario of single car or multiple car derailment with dangerous goods in the northern B.C. corridor.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Brown, I've also spoken with local fire departments, and I've heard a lot of concern, both from fire departments and municipalities, about taking on the added responsibility of maintaining training, of having proper equipment. Many of these fire departments are volunteer. They have their hands full just addressing structural fires in the community and responding to highway accidents, that sort of thing.

If a volunteer fire department did not feel it wanted to take on the added responsibility of responding to rail-related incidents involving dangerous goods, what would CN do in those instances?

[Tom Brown]

I really couldn't answer that. I can check and get back to you. I haven't had that situation as of yet. I was not aware that there's any fire department that was not willing to participate in the training that we provide or respond to a dangerous goods derailment.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Perhaps we can touch base offline.

My next question is around response times. You mentioned the communities that have teams and equipment in them. For communities that are farther away from those communities, a community such as Burns Lake, which is an hour and a half from Smithers and even farther from Prince George, does your company have a maximum response time for responding to a major incident involving dangerous goods?

[Tom Brown]

No, we do not have a maximum response time, just based on the geography of our track layout and the facilities. As I mentioned, we have emergency response gear in Prince George, Smithers, Terrace and Prince Rupert. We also have environmental caches positioned at Burns Lake.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

If there were a major incident in a community with residences nearby involving multiple cars of liquid propane, has your company modelled out what could happen over the course of the several hours that it could take for teams and equipment to arrive on the scene?