Transport Committee on Jan. 26th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 48 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Thursday, February 3, 2022, the committee is meeting to discuss air passenger protection.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House Order of Thursday, June 23, 2022. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.

Members of the committee, appearing before us today from 10 a.m. until 11:30 a.m., we have, from Via Rail Canada, Mr. Martin R. Landry, interim president and chief executive officer. We have Mr. Michael Brankley, vice-president, railway operations, and Ms. Rita Toporowski, chief customer officer.

I would like to thank you on behalf of this committee for your presence. We very much appreciate it, as do Canadians.

I'd also like to state on the record that invitations to this meeting were sent to CN. They declined but have expressed an interest in appearing at a later date. Invitations were also sent to the Railway Association of Canada, which also declined the committee's invitation.

Before we begin I would just like to say that a sound check has been conducted for the benefit of our interpreters.

Now I would like to turn to Mr. Landry for his opening remarks.

You have five minutes. The floor is yours.

[Martin R. Landry, Interim President and Chief Executive Officer, VIA Rail Canada Inc.]

Mr. Chair, dear committee members, thank you for having us here today on this beautiful winter day.

I would like to address my very first words to our loyal passengers, their families, friends and loved ones. On behalf of Via Rail Canada, I apologize to all of you that were on the trains that were delayed for an extended period of time or cancelled during the busy holiday season.

I am joined today by my colleagues Rita Toporowski, chief customer officer, and Michael Brankley, vice president of Railway Operations.

We would like to thank you for this opportunity to review the events that disrupted our services between December 23 and December 26.

We will not shy away from our responsibilities or from the fact that, when passengers choose to travel with us, they count on VIA to get them safely to their destination. We have standard readiness plans as well as winter storm protocols, and it's obvious that we need to review these plans to enhance their effectiveness.

We believe it's important to highlight that there were two distinct events that led to the disruption of our operations. First, on December 23, the storm brought trees on the tracks, prolonged power outages, frozen rail switches and significant challenges that even led us to bring trains back to their points of departure.

As many of you probably already know, we own and maintain less than 3% of the tracks on which we operate. Therefore, the majority of the infrastructure that we operate on is owned by other rail companies, mostly freight companies.

In the case of the events we are here to discuss, the tracks belong to CN. In accordance with our industry standards, it is the owners who are responsible for assisting us as quickly as possible in the event of problems related to railway infrastructure. On the night of December 23, we were in constant communication with CN's control centre, and given the extreme weather conditions, CN was facing its own set of challenges.

Then, in addition to this event, in the mid-morning of December 24 a freight train derailed just east of Toronto. Unfortunately this left us with no other choice than to cancel all of our services on our Montreal-Toronto and Ottawa-Toronto routes for three days, from December 24 to December 26.

While this issue, particularly when coupled with truly extreme weather conditions, was largely out of our control, we took immediate actions to address the impact of the disruptions on our passengers by providing them with a refund, along with travel credits to those who were on immobilized trains.

Again, I want to be clear. This is not to point the finger at other parties or to absolve Via of its role in the frustrations experienced by our passengers, their families and friends. I make this point to help committee members understand the environment in which we operate.

Also, we have hired external experts to help review our performance, and we intend to use the lessons learned to enhance our performance. We already know that there are elements that we could have better addressed. I'll give you a few examples.

Despite the fact that the situation was constantly evolving, we should have been more thorough in our communications to reassure our passengers and their families.

Despite having increased all our food and water supplies on board our trains and at intermediate stops, as per our winter protocols, we had limited success in getting additional supplies to our immobilized trains due to road closures and the location of some of our trains.

The challenges that were faced during the holiday season point to a need to increase the resiliency of our transportation infrastructure in order to deal with severe weather-related issues caused by climate change. Extraordinary weather events are becoming more and more common. We need to act quickly in order to preserve the integrity of our transportation system. We believe we owe it to our passengers to do better, and we owe it to ourselves as an organization.

In closing, I want to thank my colleagues across the network who worked tirelessly to move our passengers safely from coast to coast to coast. Their dedication and sense of duty helped us get more than 17,000 people to their destinations on December 23 and allowed a safe resumption of services on December 27.

We thank you for your time today. We welcome any questions you may have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Landry.

We will begin our line of questioning today with Mr. Muys.

Mr. Muys, the floor is yours. You have six minutes.

[Dan Muys, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the senior representatives from Via Rail who are with us today at transport committee.

Certainly, much of the attention about the holiday travel mess that we saw has been directed at the airlines and the minister's inaction. That has been front and centre. However, we do know that there was an unfortunate incident that spanned a few days in the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal corridor. Yes, weather, and yes, the CN derailment were factors, but our interest at the committee here is to look at passengers and dig deeper into that. What happened? What could have been prevented? What lessons can we learn from that? Where are there gaps in federal regulations that we can address? Your input is valuable on that, and I know your desire is to see the same.

I would note on behalf of my colleagues and I think all committee members some disappointment. We had invited CN to appear. It sounds like they may appear in the future, so we look forward to that.

We do appreciate the statement you put out on January 10 and the fact that you are here this morning, so let me start with that. One of the commitments you made in that statement was to offer, as you said again this morning, a full refund along with travel credits for passengers who were on the trains that were completely immobilized.

Has that already happened? If not, when will it happen?

[Martin R. Landry]

I will invite my colleague Rita Toporowski, who is responsible for our client interfaces, to address the committee on this matter.

[Rita Toporowski, Chief Customer Officer, VIA Rail Canada Inc.]

Thank you, Martin, and thank you, Mr. Muys.

On behalf of Via Rail, as the chief customer officer, I'd like to apologize to all the passengers who were more than inconvenienced and were actually in uncomfortable conditions over a lengthy period of time overnight on December 23, and to all the passengers who experienced cancellations and disruption to their travel plans.

With respect to your specific question, yes, we have actioned all the refunds for the passengers who were impacted overnight on the 23rd and into the 24th. For all the passengers who were impacted at that point in time with lengthy delays and who finally got to their destinations, we gave them full refunds. In addition to that, we gave them a 100% credit for future travel, should they wish to use it.

As well, for any passengers who were inconvenienced due to cancellations that happened on the 24th through to the 26th, we actioned full refunds. That was completed on January 15.

[Dan Muys, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

That's good to hear. Certainly, we've heard the stories of those who were stuck on the train for 18 hours, where washrooms were out of service and food and water appeared scarce by the end. Not just a refund but some sort of compensation or recognition of the hardships they endured is appropriate, so it's good to hear that this has happened.

I know you're conducting an investigation. You've brought in external experts, which we applaud. Where were the failures? Where was the lack of preparedness for this to happen? I mean, over the course of 18 hours, certainly one would think we could evacuate a train. Why did that not happen?

[Martin R. Landry]

A number of events led to the situation we had to deal with between the 23rd and the 24th. Weather was one of them, but obviously the power outages caused significant challenges on the infrastructure.

In terms of the initial key lessons, one that we regret is our lack of communication. When we have significant delays, I think our passengers expect us to keep them informed. I think on that front we can do far better. It was a fluid situation. I think we have to remember that a lot of things were happening at the same time. Sometimes, essentially acknowledging that we don't know all the facts, as opposed to staying silent, is reassuring. Communication is one of the key aspects.

The other aspect is improving our customer care. We have protocols to deal with winter storms where we increase our food and meals on board. Clearly, that was not sufficient in this case. Part of our lessons learned will be to build on this and look at other areas, such as operations, to see how we improve our performance and avoid repeating this poor experience for our passengers.

[Dan Muys, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

You referred to your winter storm protocols. One of the consistent things that we've heard with the airlines, as well, was the lack of communication, and you touched on that.

From what I recall, there were people still arriving at Union Station in Toronto to catch trains that were obviously not running. If there's a derailment, as there was, and if there are trees on the lines or frozen switches, you'd think you would know that further in advance to let people know, so that they're not commuting in at that time, during a storm, to Union Station to catch a train that doesn't exist.

Is that one of the things you're going to review? Communication seems to be a common gap here.

[Martin R. Landry]

Absolutely.

[Dan Muys, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

What are the requirements under federal regulations to communicate with customers when these sorts of things happen? Is there a certain time period if there's a delay or a cancellation?

[Martin R. Landry]

Obviously, if we have to cancel, the sooner we can inform the passengers, the better. We had to exercise that through the derailment portion of time, when we were making sure we could advise passengers the day before if we had to cancel their trains. That was to avoid their having to potentially come to the stations, and so that they could evaluate alternative scenarios for their travel needs.

That was one of the key learnings, and it's one that we'll apply more diligently in the future.

[Dan Muys, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

Are there requirements or protocols in place for the amount of food and water? We know in the air industry, for example, that even in the confined space, there's a certain amount of food and water in the front of the plane if they're stuck on the tarmac.

You run trains across the country for multiple days. Is there a review of that to make sure...? You know that 18 hours isn't that long of a period but, obviously, there was a shortage by the end.

[Martin R. Landry]

I'll ask my colleague Rita to address this.

[Rita Toporowski]

Thank you, MP Muys.

We have protocols for how we plan for the holiday season and the winter season in terms of the amount of food we put on. It's based on the number of passengers, but over and above that, we add x per cent of the number of meals, extra snacks, extra drinks and so forth. In addition to that, because of our experience over many years, we have dried emergency snacks in case of an emergency event when there's an unexpected delay. In addition to that, we also board additional cases of water.

We try as much as possible to plan. No delay is acceptable. In this particular case, it was beyond anything we'd experienced previously—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Ms. Toporowski. Unfortunately, we're out of time for that segment.

Thank you, Mr. Muys.

Go ahead, Mr. Iacono. You have six minutes.

[Angelo Iacono, Liberal, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to begin by welcoming the representatives of Via Rail Canada. It's always a pleasure to see my former colleagues. I'm also a proud passenger. I took the train yesterday, and it was very good, so I congratulate them for getting back to providing impeccable service.

Mr. Landry, in your letter of apology dated January 10, you state that you should have been more forthcoming with information on the trains that were delayed and the updates. Could you clarify that point?

What specific information should you have provided more voluntarily?

How often did you provide updates?

[Martin R. Landry]

Thank you for the question.

We have a protocol for situations where we have to stop a train. We have to communicate with passengers every 15 minutes. A train can be stopped for several hours. In this case, we are talking about more than 13 hours. Clearly, the situation wasn't changing every 15 minutes. Still, it was important to maintain contact with customers throughout that period. In some cases, that wasn't done. I think this lack of communication resulted in increased stress for passengers, who in some cases were faced with the unknown, overnight, during a snowstorm.

That said, it's important to keep in mind that the passengers on our immobilized trains were completely safe as long as they remained inside. In cases where trains are unable to travel, we keep passengers on board to ensure their safety.

[Angelo Iacono, Liberal, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

In other words, people were safer inside the train than outside, because the storm prevented them from getting off.

Is that correct?

[Martin R. Landry]

Yes, that's right.

In some cases, it was possible to stop the train in front of a Via Rail station, allowing passengers to access the facilities if they wished. However, some trains were stopped outside of areas accessible by road. In those cases, we made the decision to keep passengers on board the trains.

[Angelo Iacono, Liberal, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Has private ownership of some tracks complicated efforts to address delay issues and, if so, how?

Specifically, did the focus on freight have an impact on how quickly Via Rail was able to return to a normal level of service?

[Martin R. Landry]

In this regard, I would like to invite my colleague Mr. Brankley to address the committee.

[Michael Brankley, Vice-President, Railway Operations, VIA Rail Canada Inc.]

Thank you, MP Iacono.

Overnight on the 23rd, in the storm situation with the trains disabled online, I can state with confidence that no freight trains in that scenario were prioritized over Via Rail trains. We maintained contact with CN throughout the exercise.

[Angelo Iacono, Liberal, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Thank you.

During the holidays, was communication fluid enough between private infrastructure owners, such as CN and Via Rail?

Did communication happen on a daily basis?

[Michael Brankley]

Over the night of the 23rd, there were significant challenges throughout the railway infrastructure. We were in contact, but not always in contact to the level we would have desired. We've met with CN colleagues at this point and have identified some methods to improve those communications in emergency situations.