Transport Committee on Oct. 30th, 2023

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

To return to anchorage near homes, do you have any idea of the impact the presence of these ships might have on the mental health of people living there? The complaints I'm hearing come from people who say that the noise is unbearable, that they can't sleep at night, that they can hear machinery and see people wandering around on deck. Have you done studies on this?

[Ursule Boyer-Villemaire]

Unfortunately, I have not carried out any studies on this. We've mainly done studies on the mental health of residents exposed to coastal erosion and submersion.

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

Perhaps we should have invited you to our study on shoreline erosion. That might have been useful.

Do I have any time left, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

You still have a minute and a half.

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

My question will be for Mr. Campbell.

I feel very honoured to have you with us at the committee today, because I have read your book on Lac‑Mégantic. Anyone who reads this book gets very angry, because it becomes clear that the accident was really our own fault: there was a lack of oversight and mismanagement by the company, which caused a number of deaths.

Do you have the impression that Bill C‑33 will really change the dynamics in the railway sector?

[Bruce Campbell]

So, you're asking me whether it will change the safety management system.

I'm going to have to speak in English because my French.... I get by, but....

With the railways, since Lac-Mégantic, there have been some changes obviously. Have they been enough? Have they gone far enough? There have been lots of reports in the wake of Lac-Mégantic that have shown the main improvements that should be made. The Department of Transport keeps saying, yes, they're reviewing it. With railway policing, for example, they say they're reviewing it, but it was a recommendation of your standing committee that was released last May.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

I'm sorry, Mr. Campbell. I'm going to have to ask you to wrap it up. I don't want to cut you off, as this is an important subject, but you have five seconds perhaps.

[Bruce Campbell]

No, I'll let it go.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Campbell.

Next, we'll go to Mr. Bachrach.

Mr. Bachrach, you have six minutes. The floor is yours.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Campbell, it's good to see you back at committee.

We've had a bit of a discussion already about safety management systems. There are some minor changes in this bill before us that empower the minister to require changes to safety management systems if they're found to be deficient.

There's a larger question around safety management systems because, as you've written several times, they have become the primary approach for ensuring the safety of our rail system and have taken over from more conventional rules and enforcement as a form of self-regulation.

One of the suggestions you have made is that safety management systems should be publicly transparent. Canadians, rail communities and rail workers should be able to better understand the systems that are being relied on to ensure rail safety. Why do you think that's in the best interest of our country?

[Bruce Campbell]

I think public access, generally, is in the best interest. If it stays within Transport Canada or related agencies, we don't know what's going on.

We've had safety management systems from almost the beginning back in 2001 or 2002. There have been numerous reviews. In 2021, the Auditor General said it remained to be seen if SMS was just checking off regulatory boxes and not examining its effectiveness. Just before that, the environment commissioner and the Auditor General's office said that the window was still open for a recurrence of Lac-Mégantic.

The recommendations of the committee are pretty strong in terms of public access and community access. Sometimes it sounds to me like another Groundhog Day. They keep coming back. Let's resolve it, once and for all, and mandate good safety management systems that are accessible to the public as the Transportation Safety Board and the OAG have recommended.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Campbell.

On your comment about Groundhog Day, I was thinking something similar earlier. We've had so many meetings at this committee where the rail companies have come to talk in glowing terms about their safety record. Then we hear from the watchdogs, the Auditor General and the Transportation Safety Board. They share a very different story.

The message that I hear, particularly from Kathy Fox and the Transportation Safety Board, is that Canadians should continue to be very concerned because the progress has been far too slow in addressing the identified shortcomings of the rail safety system. The companies are not willing to make the investments they need to make. The government—I think this is the larger issue—and Transport Canada are not willing to stand up to them.

I was speaking with a bureaucrat who's now in a different department, and it was interesting. He described the regulatory approach in different sectors. He said that when it comes to the air sector the federal government has a pretty hands-on approach. They have a good line of sight of what's going on. When it comes to the marine sector they have a pretty strong regulatory approach. But when it comes to railroads, it does seem like these companies are bigger than the government. The government doesn't have what it takes to actually regulate them in a way that protects the public from the things like we've seen at Lac-Mégantic, Saskatchewan, and of course across the border in East Palestine.

To what degree should Canadians still be concerned about the inadequacies and lack of effective regulation in the rail sector?

[Bruce Campbell]

Look, I think they should be. I think the Auditor General most recently has said that they should be.

An accident like Lac-Mégantic rarely happens. The odds are.... But since Lac-Mégantic, I can list half a dozen or more derailments and spills. Fortunately, no one's died, but it could happen.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

My last question is about private corporate rail police. I think we heard earlier the railroads making an argument for the continuation of private police forces that would investigate them and their parent company when things go wrong. The argument they made is that this way the Canadian taxpayer doesn't have to pay for it. They pay for it as corporations.

In the U.K., the corporations still pay for it, but there's an accountable police force that reports to a civilian oversight body. Is that not the kind of system we should have here in Canada?

[Bruce Campbell]

Absolutely. That's right.

I'm sure you're familiar with what happened at Field, B.C. It's been reported on by The Fifth Estate.

They were investigating themselves. The person whom they assigned to investigate wanted information, but they didn't give it to him. He ended up resigning.

The investigator from the Transportation Safety Board said he thought there were grounds for investigating the criminality involved there. The Canadian Pacific immediately—

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Now there's an ongoing RCMP investigation.

Thank you, Mr. Campbell.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Campbell and Mr. Bachrach.

Next, we have Mr. Muys.

The floor is yours for five minutes, please.

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

Thank you.

Thank you in particular to Mr. McLellan. We haven't had the perspective of the short-lines yet in our study of this bill. I noted your comment that it's 20% of the Canadian volume. Obviously, that's a significant piece that hasn't had any representation. I was also struck by your figure of a 90% operating ratio, which is phenomenal.

I know the question's been asked, but some additional regulatory burdens are being added with Bill C-33. Does that concern you, given the tight ratio?

[Rick McLellan]

There are some complications when it comes to some of the negative impacts versus some of the stacking of economic and labour agreements. When you talk about federal sick days versus days that we provide in our agreements and those types of things, when they stack one upon the other then it becomes incumbent on us to be able to have the support and the staff to still supply and maintain the service.

What I feel is a little bit overwhelming is that we did not have an opportunity to provide our input. We already had levers in our agreements that allowed for employees to take time off for necessary personal events and those kinds of things.

Sometimes I think when we go about this, we think of the industry in general but we don't think about the small players who play a very important part in the industry, and the difference that makes for us. A small thing for a larger business may mean something huge for someone smaller. We're seeing some of the after-effects of that.

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

We heard the same thing from the ports. We asked Transport Canada officials whether a cost analysis had been done, and the answer was no. The burden on a small port is significantly higher because it's also operating with leaner ratios and less capacity than larger ports.

Thank you for that input.

You talked about a policy imbalance. Obviously, one of the things you've had a chance to talk a bit about is the short-line tax credit in the U.S. versus in Canada. Are there other examples of where that exists, or other burdens overall?

[Rick McLellan]

To the best of my knowledge.... Having a large parcel of our network in the United States, we get to see all the funding arms that they typically have the ability to tap into. We find that the states—and the United States, in general—have a vested interest in rail service and rail service to customers. We feel that for us, the small players in the game, it's not often the case that there's a vested interest in the longevity of how we do business today and tomorrow, and how we help our customers grow their businesses from within.

I'm sure other countries—I don't know specifically of any off-hand—have a vested interest in their transportation rail network and how important that is to the economy, because I think we make a huge difference.

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

In that vein, we've heard from witnesses that Bill C-33 has no material impact at all on supply chains, that it's a missed opportunity and that nothing at all might have been preferable to the bill. How do you react to that?

You've talked about having the right people in the right place as probably being more important than anything else. Is this just more burden and more red tape that's unnecessary?

[Rick McLellan]

It's that and keeping in mind the importance of our short-line railways in Canada. We form a huge part and parcel of the integrity of the rail infrastructure, as well as the economy. For some key players we deal with, rail is the only option. If we go away, they close their business down. That affects communities. That affects taxes. That affects jobs. That affects a lot of people.

I would appreciate more of an open vision of the short-line work and the opportunities that we provide in our country, and the government having a better perspective of how important we are and supporting us for the future.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Muys.

Next, we have Mr. Badawey.

The floor is yours. You have five minutes.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have to say to Mr. McLellan that short-line railways are critical to the internal multimodal networks across the country. If it were not for you folks, the main lines just wouldn't be able to handle it or even attach to a lot of the other ports—other methods of transportation that are contained within the ports, whether they be water, road or air. Good on you folks for doing what you do.

With that, I asked a question earlier of Mr. Cato—you might have heard it—with respect to capital investments in a binational matter. In your view, do you see the need to integrate those capital investments when it comes to our multimodal networks, both in Canada and in the States?