Evidence of meeting #24 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was rail.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Karen Hogan  Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
Dawn Campbell  Principal, Office of the Auditor General
Marc Brazeau  President and Chief Executive Officer, Railway Association of Canada
Kyle Mulligan  Chief Engineer, Canadian Pacific Railway
Tom Brown  Assistant Vice-President of Safety, Canadian National Railway Company
Clerk of the Committee  Ms. Alexie Labelle

7:55 p.m.

Conservative

Stephanie Kusie Conservative Calgary Midnapore, AB

Mr. Chair, I agree with your point that Mr. Bachrach should certainly wait until his time comes to speak to bring about his motion again.

However, I am concerned that the minister is not here today. The motion we passed specifically referred to the minister appearing here. It is the majority of members who asked for this. I don't want this to become a concerning precedent that when the majority of members of our committee pass something, it is not seen through within the committee.

I'm also worried, on a larger scale, that this is following the precedent of the government House leader who decides, even when called, who shows up and who doesn't. I think it's very important that if the majority of this committee pass a motion, the contents of the motion should be followed. I want to stand in solidarity with my NDP colleague there.

It's very clear. When a motion is passed, the majority of the committee members have spoken. What is outlined within the motion should be executed.

8 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Vance Badawey

Thank you, Ms. Kusie.

I want to reiterate that although the motion was passed by the majority of the committee, it was also a question asked of the individual we were requesting to come. That individual and their respective team, whether from the private or public sector, would make that decision based on their time availability.

With that, your point is taken.

If I may, I will now move on to the witnesses.

Mr. Brown, from the Canadian National Railway, you have the floor for five minutes.

8 p.m.

Marc Brazeau President and Chief Executive Officer, Railway Association of Canada

Mr. Chair, I will take the opening five minutes, and then my colleagues and I will be pleased to answer any questions.

8 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Vance Badawey

That's fine. Go ahead, Mr. Brazeau.

8 p.m.

President and Chief Executive Officer, Railway Association of Canada

Marc Brazeau

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Members of the committee, good evening.

My name is Marc Brazeau, and I am the President and CEO of the Railway Association of Canada (RAC). It's a pleasure to meet with you all to discuss the issue of rail safety.

Here with me this evening are Tom Brown, assistant vice-president, CN; and Dr. Kyle Mulligan, chief engineer for CP. As both are subject matter experts on class 1 freight rail safety, these two gentlemen are well suited to join me in answering any questions you may have after my opening remarks.

Allow me to begin by giving you a brief overview of the Railway Association of Canada. The association represents close to 60 freight and passenger railway companies—railways that transport more than 100 million passengers and more than $300 billion worth of goods across our country each year. As part of the fifth largest rail network in the world, the association members truly are the backbone of Canada's transportation system.

Canada's rail sector isn't just safely transporting goods and people from coast to coast; it's powering our economy.

RAC members employ more than 36,000 Canadians in railway operations, technology, safety, security and leadership positions. This highly productive workforce moves close to 70% of all surface goods and half of the nation's exports every year, delivering Canada's products to the country and to the world.

To put this into perspective, Canada's freight railways move more than 900,000 tonnes of goods every day, transporting everything from the cars we drive to the food we eat. To deliver these goods, more than 3,800 locomotives pull more than 5.7 million carloads across the country each and every year.

Safety is our number one priority. The Canadian railway industry has developed a strong safety record, thanks to substantial investments. Since 1999, Canada's railways have invested more than $33 billion to ensure the safety and efficiency of their networks, and they remain fully committed to fostering a robust safety culture.

This total includes investments in railway-roadway crossings to ensure they meet stringent federal regulations that require crossings to have adequate sightings, proper signals and reflectors, and physical barriers in hundreds of locations from coast to coast to coast.

The RAC's mission is to work with all levels of government and communities across the country to ensure that Canada's rail sector remains globally competitive, sustainable, and most importantly, safe.

At the federal level, our association provides an essential link between federal regulators and RAC members, and works collaboratively with departments and agencies such as Transport Canada, the Canadian Transportation Agency, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, among others, to help develop new regulations, rules and standards.

The RAC's reputation as a trusted advocate for railways can be attributed to the fact that we collect industry data, undertake research and analysis, and use this information to help develop evidence-based policy positions.

Since today's meeting is focused on rail safety in Canada, please allow me to share a few key statistics.

Over the past decade, from 2010 to 2019, the freight rail accident rate in Canada has decreased by 20%, and the passenger rail accident rate has decreased by 59%. Since 2010, the dangerous goods accident rate has improved by 31%. Over 99.99% of dangerous goods carloads moved by train reach their destination without a release.

In 2019, railways invested a record $3.1 billion into Canadian assets, breaking the previous record of $2.4 billion set in 2018. Over the past decade, Canada's railways have invested $19.5 billion into their networks to improve safety, resiliency and network fluidity.

In short, we are proud that Canada's rail network is among the safest in the world, and we remain committed to building on this stellar safety record.

I would like to highlight the importance of Operation Lifesaver Canada, an initiative dedicated to preventing collisions at railway crossings and railway trespassing incidents in Canada.

Every year, roughly 100 Canadians die or suffer serious injuries as a result of collisions at railway crossings or trespassing on railway property. Operation Lifesaver is a partnership initiative of the RAC and Transport Canada that works to educate Canadians about the hazards associated with tracks and trains through public awareness campaigns, driver training programs, and outreach to schools and community groups.

This year marks Operation Lifesaver's 40th anniversary of saving lives. To this end, they organize and participate in various events, produce and distribute educational material, run driver education programs, hold safety presentations and spread the rail safety message through traditional media and social media networks.

Even with increased train traffic and more vehicles on the road, the number of deaths and the injuries along Canada’s railways is dropping. However, we believe our job will not be done until there are no numbers to report.

Another joint program that we are proud of is the proximity initiative, which is a partnership between RAC and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. As Canada's population grows, new residential and commercial developments are being built in communities across the country.

The FCM and the RAC recognize that it is in Canada’s economic interest to develop appropriate relationships between railways and communities, to promote proper planning and communication practices and to offer dispute resolution mechanisms for resolving unanticipated problems.

Our shared goal is to provide the public with helpful resources and reference information on rail infrastructure and operations, municipal land planning guidelines, dispute resolution models and government regulations.

We believe that sourcing information easily can improve the dialogue between railways and municipalities and help ensure that both parties continue to attain common goals that benefit each other and the country as a whole.

The RAC safety culture improvement initiative assists Canadian railways by measuring employee perceptions of organizational safety culture through a comprehensive survey and focus group discussion. Once the data is collected and analyzed, a final report is submitted to the railway companies, which enables them to identify opportunities to enhance their safety culture by implementing initiatives that will have a positive impact relative to strengthening their safety culture.

In conclusion, I want to assure committee members that the Canadian railway industry's dedication to safety is rooted in our culture. It is unrelenting. We will continue to strive to improve our safety record.

RAC members, including CN and CP who are with us this evening, are committed to operating the safest railways throughout Canada and North America.

My colleagues and I look forward to your questions.

Thank you.

8:05 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Vance Badawey

Thank you, Mr. Brazeau.

We're now going to our first line of questioning.

First up on behalf of the Conservative Party is Mr. Soroka for six minutes.

8:05 p.m.

Conservative

Gerald Soroka Conservative Yellowhead, AB

Mr. Chair, I'll be splitting my time with Mr. Shipley and Mr. Shipley is going to go first.

8:05 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Vance Badawey

Mr. Shipley, go ahead.

8:10 p.m.

Conservative

Doug Shipley Conservative Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, first of all, to my team for allowing me this time, because it's a very important and very heartfelt issue I'd like to bring up today.

It goes back to a young student in my riding named Kevin Morgan. He was a grade eight student at Portage View elementary school in Barrie. Shortly before 9:30 a.m. on Sunday, February 21, he was out walking his family dog, Eva, along the Canadian Pacific Railway near Highway 90 on Baldwick Lane in Springwater Township. This is near my home in an area I'm very familiar with and where I walk my dog as well. Unfortunately, that morning the dog got loose. Kevin reached out and put his own life on the line to save his dog. His dog, Eva, was successful in missing the train, but Kevin was not and passed away that morning. Obviously, it was a tragic incident. Kyle Mulligan is probably familiar with this incident because it's very recent.

I'd like to ask our three witnesses here today: What can we do? This goes on a lot of the time around our area. There are a lot of rail tracks that go through Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte. Kids and adults, but a kid in this particular instance, walk on them all the time.

Is there anything we can do or anything you can do to help? Maybe there could be an advertising program. In Ontario there are many ads on TV about safety regarding hydro dams and flooding, but I don't recall seeing a lot of ads promoting safety for this. It's obviously a shame Kevin passed away. He was due to graduate grade eight in June. Some people are looking for a way to honour this young boy. Perhaps we could do it here on this committee.

What can be done to try to prevent this in the future?

8:10 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Vance Badawey

Thank you, Mr. Shipley.

Mr. Brazeau, I'll go to you.

8:10 p.m.

President and Chief Executive Officer, Railway Association of Canada

Marc Brazeau

First of all, that is a very tragic incident and unfortunately we've seen more of those in the last couple of years as a result of trespassing onto property, even at railway crossings. That's why it's important that we continue to work with Transport Canada in delivering the importance of being safe around railways and being safe around railway crossings. Operation Lifesaver is a program that's been around for a number of years.

We've really tried to utilize social media in a much more effective manner than we have in the past to get the message out, especially to young people. We've introduced a number of new videos, again aimed at young teenagers, young people, especially in schools about the importance of being aware of trains.

Trains are very quiet and one can come up and surprise a lot of people. That's why we have to continue as an industry to work with our partners, whether it be Transport Canada or the municipalities, provinces, our railway companies to deliver the important message of being safe around railways and to not trespass.

That's something we are committed to as an industry, and if we can do it in the honour of that young boy who passed away in a very tragic way we want to be able to do that. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, until we have zero incidents to report in terms of fatalities, we're not going to stop the work that we're doing right now.

8:10 p.m.

Conservative

Doug Shipley Conservative Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON

Thank you very much for that. Yes, maybe we can talk down the road about his name. If something can be done, it would be great.

You mentioned that $33 billion has been put into safety. Perhaps a little more of that could be put into something that keeps children safe, especially, in the hope it doesn't happen again and that his death isn't in vain.

Thank you to the rest of the committee. I'll hand it back to Mr. Soroka.

8:10 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Vance Badawey

Thank you, Mr. Shipley.

Mr. Soroka, the floor is yours.

8:10 p.m.

Conservative

Gerald Soroka Conservative Yellowhead, AB

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to our witnesses.

My question will be for Mr. Brown and Mr. Mulligan.

As I read through the recommendation, I couldn't help but wonder about the lack of direction this government has provided to you. I also question whether the safety inspections and audits being carried out are effective measures, since in 2019 there were a higher than usual number of accidents.

What improvements are you making in order to have a safer railway system? What do you feel are areas in which we need more support or direction from this government?

8:10 p.m.

Dr. Kyle Mulligan Chief Engineer, Canadian Pacific Railway

I think I can start with that, Tom.

It's an excellent question, and thank you for it.

In terms of safety improvements and the direction from the government, here at CP specifically and at CN we are moving towards more machine-based, data-driven inspection technologies, more performance-based technologies. We really, truly work hand in hand with Transport Canada.

More recently we have developed cold wheel technology to better assess the operation of air brakes and have integrated machine vision inspection systems, which are high-speed cameras, with the remote safety inspector desks, who have all eyes on our trains.

What this has done is it has moved us away from a traditional visual, static inspection in which the train is not moving. We're moving our inspections to a dynamic, in motion, performance-based inspection. This is resulting in far more equipment being picked out and sent to maintenance shops, and as I mentioned before, it's resulting in many more eyes on the equipment, using the technology.

8:15 p.m.

Conservative

Gerald Soroka Conservative Yellowhead, AB

I'll also put that question to Mr. Brown.

8:15 p.m.

Tom Brown Assistant Vice-President of Safety, Canadian National Railway Company

Thank you, Mr. Soroka.

Basically, what Kyle was saying is that we are investing the majority of our money in technology. Some of the technologies we have are mature technologies. They're ones that you may not know are out there, but they're wayside inspection systems that have been around for a long time. They measure wheel heat to prevent any derailed cars.

We have slide detectors, for example, most common in the mountain territories, that will notify a crew if we have an avalanche of snow or if stone is starting to slide down a cliff. We have what's known as a dragging equipment detector. This tells you if there's something dragging from the undercarriage.

Where we're moving further in technology though is at CN we have built an autonomous track inspection program. You'll see them on trains. They're a small boxcar on the back of a train that highlights safety on them. What's in them is computer equipment that takes multiple measurements of the rail and uses a lot of track geometry and algorithms and feeds back a report directly to our wayside personnel.

The benefit of this is we can develop algorithms that can use predictive analytics when we're trying to schedule our maintenance. If you have these railcars moving across our system 24-7, 365 days a year, just think of the increased frequency of track inspections.

The second one which we're dealing with right now and have invested in is automated inspection portals. There are actually seven at CN, five within Canada—four right here where I am in Winnipeg. These are ultra-high definition panoramic cameras with high-density LED lights that capture a full 360° view of a train as it's going through the portal at track speed, regardless of weather. Even in the blizzard conditions we've been dealing with in the last couple of days in Winnipeg, they provide crystal-clear images. It checks the entire train, including the undercarriage.

Based on a set of algorithms that we have designed, it communicates to our mechanical team if there's an issue with any of our railcars. We'll be using this technology to reduce the likelihood of a railcar derailment.

Think about where we strategically place these types of portals. We have trains arriving that are coming up from the U.S. out of North Dakota or Minnesota and trains that are passing from coast to coast across Canada, moving up towards Toronto and the Atlantic provinces via our northern Ontario district. They're all checked. Every single railcar that moves through here is verified.

8:15 p.m.

Conservative

Gerald Soroka Conservative Yellowhead, AB

Mr. Brown, I think you've covered quite a bit—

8:15 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Vance Badawey

Thank you, Mr. Brown, and thank you, Mr. Soroka.

I did give you some leeway there. It was a good question and a great answer, so thank you very much.

We're now going to the Liberals.

Mr. Sidhu, you have the floor for six minutes.

April 13th, 2021 / 8:15 p.m.

Liberal

Maninder Sidhu Liberal Brampton East, ON

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses for being with us this evening.

Mr. Brazeau, you mentioned a few good points in terms of what your association is doing in terms of railway investments, the $33 billion. You have quite a big association. It includes five of the largest railways, and I think you said the industry employs close to 36,000 Canadians.

Mr. Brazeau, you mentioned the dangerous goods accident rate has declined by close to 30%. Can you or any of the other witnesses here comment on measures taken by Transport Canada to implement speed restrictions for trains carrying dangerous goods? I imagine this may be helping with the decline.

Does anyone want to chime in there?

8:20 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Vance Badawey

Mr. Brazeau.

Mr. Mulligan, do you want to go?

8:20 p.m.

Chief Engineer, Canadian Pacific Railway

Dr. Kyle Mulligan

Yes, I can start that off.

I actually worked heavily with Transport Canada, hand in hand, when their ministerial orders were issued slowing down the speed of key trains. What I can tell you is that dramatic improvements in terms of the updated rule have come out, moving us in a direction to enhance the safety of those trains, and it is taking effect.

As a specific example of what was done, we've committed to increasing rail grinding in these high-risk key train routes. This actually conditions the surface of the rail in a way that the autonomous or rail flaw detection vehicles that Tom described can pick up to 200% more defects in the rail. The learning that came out of that is we saw that if that surface isn't polished, let's say, for argument's sake, it does inhibit our ability to detect and remove rail, so as part of the conditions with Transport Canada, we've improved that.

In addition to the grinding, we've also doubled the amount of inspections we do with our rail flaw detection vehicles in those routes during specific winter months. What that's going to do is help find those defects and replace that rail so that it doesn't have an issue.

Finally, we've provisioned for enhancing broken rail technology in these areas. There are two types of areas you can use to classify routes that trains take. One is a signal territory, which is almost like there are traffic lights on the rail. The other one is a non-signal territory or a dark territory. Those areas don't benefit from broken rail detection technology like the signalled areas do. The new rule provisions for the class 1s to be able to add that technology to those areas to help enhance speed for productivity also enhance safety by deploying more technology in those areas.

8:20 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Vance Badawey

Thank you, Mr. Mulligan.

Mr. Sidhu.

8:20 p.m.

Liberal

Maninder Sidhu Liberal Brampton East, ON

Thank you for that detailed answer, Mr. Mulligan.

Can one of our witnesses comment on the new regulations Transport Canada passed requiring video recorders to be installed in locomotives? What are your thoughts on the improvement of safety? How can it be done?

8:20 p.m.

President and Chief Executive Officer, Railway Association of Canada

Marc Brazeau

I'll jump in first.

The railways have advocated for the use of LVVR in the locomotives. We see the on-board voice video recordings as a proactive safety management system. It will help the railway companies improve their training and their ability to respond to situations. We have worked very closely with Transport Canada on its implementation.

I'll refer to my colleagues, Kyle or Tom, to add to that.