Thank you.
The Union of Canadian Transportation Employees, UCTE, is a national union representing federal inspectors who review all modes of transportation, including rail, as well as those who inspect the transportation of dangerous goods.
UCTE has long been a proponent of stronger safety measures in the transportation of goods and people in Canada, regardless of the method. Since transportation by rail is a major factor for a range of materials, including many dangerous ones, our members are invested in safety issues in rail transportation, including improving and enhancing Transport Canada's safety management systems.
We will not review the many instances and incidents—some of them tragic—that have occurred in the rail sector in recent years. Sadly, many of these situations could have been avoided or prevented. Instead, we hope that this time, with your committee's work and subsequent actions by Transport Canada and the industry, things can be different.
First of all, we want to thank the committee for studying this issue and making rail safety a priority for Canadians. Our presentation today will focus primarily on Transport Canada's rail safety management system, or SMS for short. We continue to have a number of outstanding concerns that have not been addressed, despite the fact that UCTE has raised these issues in formal and informal consultations with Transport Canada and previously with parliamentary committees.
Many of our concerns are raised in a report that we commissioned in 2020, which undertook a full review of Transport Canada's SMS. This report, entitled “Transportation Safety Management Systems—Still not right” was released in 2021 and delivered to the Minister of Transport and departmental officials. We have provided a copy of this report to the clerk of the committee to distribute to you. We hope to have the opportunity to speak to your committee about this report and SMS in Canada across all modes of transportation sometime in the near future.
Last year, we made a submission to Transport Canada on its proposal to introduce a safety culture policy statement for the railway sector. In that statement, we recorded that given Canada's recent record on safety in rail transportation, it is our view that a [Technical difficulty—Editor] be nearly enough. It should and must be swiftly followed by actions. We would like to note that we're still waiting for those actions from Transport Canada, the regulator.
Some of those actions should include more random and unannounced inspections of rail company operations and equipment; hiring more rail inspectors to ensure compliance with outlined policies and procedures; stiffer penalties for infractions as a deterrent to not following outlined processes and policies; suspension of rail operation licences for repeat offenders; a focus on safety first as the priority of the regulator, Transport Canada, and not competing priorities that put rail company operations on the same footing as the safety of Canadians; whistleblowing protections that are enshrined in legislation to ensure that employees who come forward with safety concerns will not be harassed and/or threatened; and a full review of the rail safety management system to ensure that it's up to date and provides maximum protection for workers and the Canadian public.
This is not the first, second or third time that we have brought these recommendations to the attention of Transport Canada or policy-makers. Following the rail tragedy at Lac-Mégantic in 2014, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Transport was charged with conducting a safety investigation on all modes of transportation.
At that time, UCTE appeared before the committee and offered the following observations and recommendations about SMS and related safety measures.
SMS ought never to be a replacement for direct and unannounced inspections by Transport Canada inspectors with powers to revoke licences and impose monetary penalties.
Inspections, not SMS audits, should be the primary means by which companies are held accountable to laws and regulations ensuring safety.
SMS audits and inspections are completely different functions. Audits and inspections, and the inspectors doing them, should not be separated within each modal safety division. Without separation, audits become a substitute for inspections.
Ministerial delegations to private companies or industry associations should not be permitted.
Inspector-to-staff ratios by department and mode should be increased significantly, and new inspectors hired should have specialized safety knowledge.
Accident and incident reporting by inspectors and company officials should be mandatory for all modes. There should be a searchable online database accessible to the public—