Transport Committee on Jan. 26th, 2023

[Martin R. Landry]

I can try to answer this.

We've gone back 25 years in history, and we've never had an event such as the one we had on the 23rd and 24th.

It wasn't necessarily linked to the snow itself or the snow accumulation. It was really linked to the power failures that took effect. Obviously the infrastructure depends on electricity. For example, all the grade crossings where the barriers come down obviously require electricity. Those events combined with hitting a tree.

I mentioned in my opening remarks, I think, that we as a country have to look at increasing the resiliency of our transportation infrastructure. Weather events are becoming more and more frequent. You hear about the storm of the century. Well, it arrives almost every year now. I think we have to accept the fact that we're going to have to build infrastructure resiliency into the transportation sector in order to minimize the impacts of these weather events, as they appear to be much more frequent.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

I'll follow that up with a question. I know CN declined to be here today and indicated that they may be here at some later point.

Sir, would you lay some of the blame for this event at the feet of CN or the government? Why or why not?

[Martin R. Landry]

I don't think it's an issue of putting the blame, because frankly a combination of factors created this situation. I think this part of our review will be understanding all of the variables that were in play.

Without calling it blame, I think a lot of us need to take stock of what happened and address the elements that are under our control to make sure that, if ever one of these events happens again, the impacts on our passengers are minimized.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Unfortunately, Mr. Rogers, that concludes the time you have for your line of questioning.

Mr. Barsalou‑Duval, you have the floor for two and half minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I find it unusual that there are no CN representatives here today to answer our questions. The tracks do belong to CN, after all. It is very frustrating not to get any answers to our questions. In my opinion, and other people have said this as well, this shows a huge lack of respect on the part of CN.

I hope some CN representatives will appear before the committee as soon as possible. It is as though the passengers were taken hostage, since it took so long to clear the track during these incidents.

I wonder if the response would have been a quicker if VIA Rail owned the tracks rather than CN. Let me explain: CN transports freight. A blocked rail car carrying grain or scrap metal might not be as problematic as a blocked passenger car.

Mr. Landry, are VIA Rail and CN discussing this?

Do you think VIA Rail might have responded more quickly if it owned the tracks itself?

[Martin R. Landry]

I will begin to answer the question and will then pass it on to my colleague.

It is hard to say whether CN's response time could have been better. Rather than the response itself, I think the issue is that there is usually no need to respond.

Given the protocols we have in place for our own infrastructure, we believe that at no time during that storm was VIA Rail's infrastructure unavailable for rail traffic.

Perhaps Michael can deal with the proactive steps we have taken to weatherproof our own infrastructure in order to enable our trains to continue to operate.

[Michael Brankley]

With our Via infrastructure, as part of our winter readiness activation, we take specific steps. In this case, I can give some quick examples. We clean the existing snow condition prior to the arrival of the new snow. In this particular storm, we distributed generators to key locations to ensure an uninterrupted supply of electricity to the infrastructure.

We also maintain very strict vegetation controls on our infrastructure to lessen the risk of tree falls blocking access, delaying passengers or damaging our equipment.

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

Thank you.

We were talking about communication problems earlier. You said that you communicate with train employees from the VIA Rail control centre, and that those employees in turn provide the information to the customers.

Was there sufficient communication? Was the issue between the control centre and train 55 or between train employees and customers?

Are there any other ways to provide information other than over the train loudspeakers?

We know that some rail old cars are old. They are older than I am. The sound quality is probably not optimal in all cases.

Have you used other ways of communicating with people or are you considering doing that?

[Rita Toporowski]

Thank you for the question, Mr. Barsalou-Duval.

Yes, there are multiple modes of communication.

I think the communication breakdown was twofold. One of the messages we sent out from central that was direct by email to passengers on train 55 was in error. We said that the tree had been removed. It had not been removed. That was due to a communication issue we had with CN. We provided the wrong information to passengers directly. Obviously, they didn't take it well, because they saw that the tree was still there. That was a failure. From an on-train perspective, we had offered the same information to our crew, so they had the wrong information and they were conveying that to passengers. That creates anxiety and mistrust on the train.

In terms of other modes, as you mentioned, instead of using the audio system on board the train, part of the effort of the crew is to actually walk through the train and on a one-on-one basis, row by row, actually be present and visible, answering questions as they go along.

We had a multipronged approach. If there's something further that we can do, we will be looking for that in our efforts with regard to the review we will be doing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Ms. Toporowski.

Thank you very much, Mr. Barsalou-Duval.

Mr. Boulerice, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Canada is a G7 country. Unfortunately, when it comes to rail lines, we are literally a 19th century country, and it seems as though the legislative and regulatory framework has not changed either.

There is competition between providing a public service to enable Canadians to travel within Canada, and private companies whose focus is shipping containers. These private companies have the upper hand.

In this system, freight is more important than people. I think this bears mentioning. Ownership of the rail tracks is a big part of the problem, and I think that some day we have to consider nationalizing our rail infrastructure in Canada.

The problem with trees in Quebec and Canada is nothing new. Snow storms are nothing new either. Tree branches falling on a train and slowing the train's progress are nothing new.

Why doesn't VIA Rail have equipment on board such as mechanical saws that employees could use to remove trees or tree branches that are blocking the train's path?

[Michael Brankley]

Thank you for the question, MP Boulerice.

I'll go back to our infrastructure during this storm. To my recollection, we have not had a fallen tree that has blocked our access or impacted passengers.

In terms of having equipment and personnel on board to cut trees down in that circumstance, this is not something that we have considered. Our employees are certainly not trained for that. They're experts in other areas. I would suggest that it may not best serve to have them act as maintenance of way personnel. There are specific people in the railway industry who are trained for that task.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

It seems however that those experts do not arrive at the site when needed, and passengers suffer as a result.

[Michael Brankley]

I also, again, apologize to our passengers for the extended delay that they experienced due to that tree fall. I can say, in regard to our infrastructure, that we would respond. I can't speak on behalf of other infrastructure owners.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Boulerice.

Thank you very much, Mr. Brankley.

Next we have Mr. Lewis.

Mr. Lewis, the floor is yours. You have five minutes.

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for coming out here this morning.

I'm going to ask some very pointed questions purely to wrap my brain around why it took so long. The reason I'm going to ask them this way is that there were railroad tracks behind my house and my parents' house, and I lived there from—boy, did I just age myself—1980. I think the railway ran for about 15 years.

In the very early 1980s, at two o'clock in the morning, a train derailed behind my house. There was a hundred years' flood and storm, one of the wildest storms you ever saw. Anhydrous ammonia tankers flipped over on their sides right in our backyard. I will say that the first responders were there fast, super-duper fast. We had a lot of people running around in our backyard to stop the leaks and so on and so forth.

Because I lived with the train tracks for so long, I know that there are always maintenance vehicles. They're pickup trucks that drive down the road, get to a cross-section, put the rails down and drive.

I realize this is a question for CN, so I appreciate the fact that you could defer to them, but could you explain to me why they couldn't get a maintenance truck from a road either from the front of the train on the tracks or from the back of the train on the tracks to the train to cut the tree off?

[Michael Brankley]

As I think Mr. Landry previously mentioned, one CN crew had a road accident in the snow conditions, and it was delayed in responding. Another crew did respond to the site via a vehicle referred to as a hi-rail, but at that time, due to the winds, they determined that they couldn't cut it at that time.

There was another tree down in front of train 69 at this point, so that crew relocated to move the tree they could to advance train 69. All of this is to say that CN was attempting to move the tree and did access the train on at least two occasions via hi-rail, but those emergency crews were performing activities to keep the network fluid, and that allowed our other trains to proceed.

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you for that.

Does the rail system mandate from Transport Canada mirror the mandate for the aviation system? I don't know the exact amount of time that airliners are allowed to leave people on the tarmac, but I know there's a number to it. Is it the same for trains?

[Martin R. Landry]

I don't believe we have a similar framework to the airlines.

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Do you believe, then, if you had that type of framework in place, that it would have been easier for your folks to make the decision that you were past this amount of time and, therefore, you had to put these emergency responses in place? Is that something that you believe would have been helpful?

[Martin R. Landry]

We've developed our own protocols to deal with unusual circumstances or these service disruptions. I think it also loops back to the discussions we had earlier about passenger rights, because it is linked to an ecosystem view and our ability to work in this ecosystem. This is not solely a Via Rail discussion. I think it has to include the host railways in an integrated fashion so that we don't solve a part of the problem and then have no solution for another part that creates an additional friction to the passenger experience.

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you.

I'm glad that you brought up passengers' rights. Canadians are very passionate and compassionate people. They're very understanding folks, but they still want their freedoms. I can only imagine being on a train for 13 hours, sitting there. I appreciate the fact that you talked about the communication, but I'm not surprised there were a couple of folks who said, “You know what? Enough is enough. I have to get off.”

I think it would be very helpful, and I really think that the minister's office should be the one driving this forward. I think that, if the aviation and all of our rail systems mirror each other, it makes the jobs of the companies to make the decisions at tough times a lot easier, especially over Christmas.

Thank you very much for your testimony and for your answers.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Lewis.

We have three minutes left.

Mr. Lauzon, you have the floor.

[Stéphane Lauzon, Liberal, Argenteuil—La Petite-Nation, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to begin by thanking Mr. Landry and his entire team for being here today to discuss this matter.

In you responses, you talked a lot about supply and communication with your customers, their families and your partners. Have you considered providing information about known circumstances, before the train even leaves?

I know you cannot predict a tree falling on a train, but in your protocols do you have to make any decisions before a train leaves the station?

[Martin R. Landry]

Thank you for your question.

That is something we will be looking at with our consultants, namely, the need to inform customers proactively of disturbances or potential problems.

It would then be up to the passengers to decide whether they still want to take the planned route or make a change, in which case we would refund their ticket, of course.