Transport committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning, everybody, and thank you for the opportunity to present to the committee as well. Essentially I'll echo Richard's comments. The APTA is obviously the body that represents the Atlantic provinces. With more than 300 members, most of them haul

Transport committee  You can start, Richard.

Transport committee  Mr. Chairman, simply, every time we have a new driver, they have to go through certain training, whether it's for dangerous goods or not. Shippers should have the same accountability. If there's a new employee, they should get proper training for dangerous goods: loading the truc

Transport committee  For the driver or—

Transport committee  It is regulated provincially, although we seem to follow all the same standards. We're always working toward harmonization for training in our industry. More than ever, we've been working together on training. For example, regarding long combination vehicles, we are all following

Transport committee  A simulator is made to add on to the live training. With most companies that have simulators, it complements the actual training. The technology is fantastic and it's great, but it can't take away from the real training. I mean, we have a couple of members who do have a simulat

Transport committee  It's accurate. We need to look at mandatory entry-level training. As an industry, we need to make it a skilled trade. Never mind dangerous goods, the driver has a lot of responsibilities, a lot of regulations to worry about. Therefore, we feel that those two items, training and

Transport committee  I didn't see the stats. I'm not sure whether that's accurate or not. It's up to each province to audit their carriers to make sure they're following the safety procedures and that they get audited when they reach a certain threshold in their safety percentage.

Transport committee  As an industry, we all follow the national safety code, but it's up to the province to enforce it. Essentially, that's how the industry is set up today.

Transport committee  That's right.

Transport committee  In some capacity you need to report every incident, I'm assuming, to Transport Canada, but every province obviously legislates the safety stats of each carrier, which would incorporate their entire record in there.

Transport committee  At our association we support that as well. It would bring us to the next level that we need to be at as an industry. Paper logs are vulnerable, if you want to use that word, but electronic logs are the way of the future for our industry. More and more carriers have them, whether

Transport committee  Each driving school today is private. We put out the standards and push what the industry recommends and supports, but in certain capacities there should be some mandatory entry-level training for drivers. That would bring us to the next level for our industry and would put struc

Transport committee  The entire responsibility, if there is an issue, lies with the driver and the carrier; therefore, when working so closely with shippers in loading and unloading product, there should be some sort of responsibility from a shipper's standpoint to be properly trained to know which d

Transport committee  That's a tough question. Each incident is really an isolated incident, whether it involves a driver fault or improper loading or improper paperwork as a result of the incident or due to the extent of the spill or its impact. Who is responsible for what and to what exact extent