Transport committee  I can assure the committee that safety action was taken from this occurrence and will be part of the final report, which we hope to release later in March or early April.

Transport committee  Mr. Chair, we're resourced for a baseline of occurrences, but when we get either a very large investigation such as Lac-Mégantic, or when we get a series of smaller investigations, it can stretch our resources. We can't predict when these things are going to happen or how they'

Transport committee  Mr. Chair, we don't compare rail versus pipeline safety other than to say that each mode of transport has its risks and each mode of transport has to be conducted as safety as possible.

Transport committee  Mr. Chair, there are different ways of comparing risk. When a unit train carrying crude oil derails, it depends on a lot of factors, how much oil is lost, where it's lost, the impact on the environment and the possibility of casualties versus, for example, a pipeline, which can p

Transport committee  Mr. Chair, it would be difficult to say that, because it's not what the train is carrying that causes the derailment. It's the track; it's the wheels; it's other factors. Therefore, what we say is if you're going to carry oil or any other dangerous good by rail, you need to take

Transport committee  I don't have all the underlying activity data. That is one of the challenges and one of the initiatives we are working on with Transport Canada and the railway industry, including the major railways and the Railway Association of Canada. If we look at a million train miles, the

Transport committee  It starts with the fact that the railways are first and foremost responsible to manage the safety of their operations, as any transportation operator is. You need a strong framework with regulations, and then you need strong oversight to make sure companies are able to identify t

Transport committee  Citizens want to be reassured that the transportation systems in this country are working effectively and safely, and that if you board a plane, train or ship, you're going to arrive safely, etc. I understand that. Trying to show somebody a safety management system is very diffi

Transport committee  It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation. You need sound safety culture to support a solid safety management system, but culture alone without the process won't be effective.

Transport committee  With respect to the MacMillan yard occurrence, it's the Transportation Safety Board that's investigating it. We have completed the investigation. We are in the final stages of producing a report, and we will be releasing it imminently. I can't give you a specific date today. That

Transport committee  That is not the case at all. In fact, I see it as an advantage. We can ask people for information, because they know that their testimony is protected by the Act and we are not there to determine civil or criminal liability. That leads them to trust investigators more when they

Transport committee  When it comes to safety management systems being on the TSB watch-list, you are correct in saying that they have been on it since 2010. However, if we were to look at each of the different versions of the watch-list, we would see that it has evolved over the years to now being mu

Transport committee  To be clear, Mr. Chair, they are contributing to some occurrences but not all; I don't want to say all. Certainly in some cases they are. Some of them are ongoing, and when these reports are issued, you will certainly see how Transport Canada oversight has been a contributing fac

Transport committee  Uncontrolled movements arise from three situations. Since time is short, I won't describe each one in detail. We observed 78 cases in 2019, but concluded that they were going down in 2020 and 2021. We do not know if this reduction was attributable to measures taken by stakeholder

Transport committee  We have certainly seen improvements, specifically with regard to monitoring conducted by Transport Canada. However, we want to see more marked progress in some areas. For example, all railway companies in Canada have been subjected to a safety management system audit. The idea wa