Evidence of meeting #129 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was passengers.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Stéphane Lauzon Liberal Argenteuil—La Petite-Nation, QC
Very well.
I want to revisit the water situation, just to be sure I understood correctly.
You said that there weren't enough supplies but that you were given water until almost the end of the trip. Did you run out of water only at the end of the trip?
Liberal
Stéphane Lauzon Liberal Argenteuil—La Petite-Nation, QC
All right.
In the train car you were in, did you hear about any fellow passengers in need of special attention, medical assistance for example, who were tended to by members of the staff?
Liberal
Stéphane Lauzon Liberal Argenteuil—La Petite-Nation, QC
All right.
You said you noticed a change in staff behaviour. You said that you received good service from staff for the first four hours of the trip, but that they didn't know what to do after that.
Do you think staff were responsible for that change?
Passenger, As an Individual
I would say it wasn't so much staff as it was the company.
Liberal
Stéphane Lauzon Liberal Argenteuil—La Petite-Nation, QC
All right.
You're saying the company was responsible for the change in behaviour, according to the information that was communicated to you.
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
Thank you, Mr. Lauzon.
If colleagues will permit it, I had a quick question to follow up on Mr. Lauzon's question regarding food. There was mention of the fact that sometimes these trains could be stuck in areas where they don't have access to be able to order pizzas. This past summer, I was able to tour the Gagetown training facility in New Brunswick, and they showed me the storage area where they store the food packets provided to our soldiers as they're going through their training. These last six months to a year...their freeze-dried foods. They fit into very small packages.
To you, Mr. Coderre, and then to you, Ms. Murray, do you think this is perhaps a solution, where every train can have freeze-dried meals for every single person in there? They don't have to be heated. They are able to just be opened up and eaten. Is that something you think would have been a good solution to have in place during your incident?
Passenger, As an Individual
I think so. Something with more substance would have been better, and that would probably have done the trick, yes.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
Thank you.
Ms. Murray, do you think that is something that would have been helpful for the staff and the team who were on the train?
Director, Atlantic Region, Unifor
I think being able to offer anything with any sustenance would have been very helpful. We could find space for something like that without needing refrigeration, etc., and it's not a terrible idea to look at, for sure.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
Thank you very much, and thank you, colleagues, for allowing me the opportunity to ask that question.
On behalf of all members of our committee, I want to thank you, Mr. Coderre, as well as you, Ms. Murray, and you, Mr. Kennedy, for appearing before us and providing your feedback on how we can ensure that this does not happen again or that we are better prepared when it does.
With that, I'd like to ask the witnesses to log off. You can be dismissed now.
We will stick around to have a discussion relating to the motion put forward by Mr. Lawrence. I will suspend for two minutes as we do that. Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
I call this meeting back to order.
Colleagues, thanks for your patience with this. I want to confirm with everyone that the motion put forward by Mr. Lawrence has been now distributed in both official languages, so that's out of the way.
I believe now that that's been done, we actually might have unanimous consent to adopt the motion.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
That's wonderful. Thank you very much, colleagues. You made that easy.
The meeting is now adjourned.