Proceedings of the Subcommittee on
Transportation Safety
Standing Senate Committee on
Transport and Communications
Issue 6 - Evidence
OTTAWA, Thursday, February 13, 1997
The Subcommittee on Transportation Safety of the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications met this day at 12:10 p.m. to study the state of transportation safety and security in Canada.
Senator J. Michael Forrestall (Chairman) in the Chair.
[English]
The Chairman: I wish to welcome our witnesses today. This committee is charged by the Senate to inquire into the state of transportation safety and security in Canada. To that end, your views will be most welcome by all members of the committee.
Please proceed.
Ms Cathy Walker, National Health and Safety Director, Canadian Automobile Workers: Mr. Chairman, the CAW is the largest transportation union in Canada. While we began as an auto, auto parts and aerospace union, we have expanded into all facets of transportation. Today, the vast majority of the jobs of our 215,000 members are to build, service and operate automobiles, passenger and transport trucks, buses, armoured cars, subways, commuter rail, passenger and freight rail, boats and ships and airplanes. In 1994, to reflect this change, we changed our name to the National Automobile, Aerospace, Transportation and General Workers Union of Canada.
The safety of our members in the transportation industry is often synonymous with public safety. If a truck or bus is unsafe, it is dangerous to the driver and other drivers in proximity to the truck or bus, as well as to the passengers of the bus. If a boat, ship or ferry is not seaworthy, our members may be drowned along with the passengers. If a plane is defective, it may be our members who plunge to their deaths. If a VIA Rail train derails, our members who work on them are in jeopardy, along with the passengers. If a freight train carrying a hazardous commodity derails, it is our members who must come out to repair the cars, risking their health and, sometimes, their lives.
Our members' jobs, both their tasks and their numbers, have a direct impact on public safety. When rail maintenance procedures are eroded in the interests of cutting costs to remain competitive, it is our members who are instructed to perform fewer safety procedures. When rail shopcraft workers are laid off, resulting in rail cars, passenger coaches and locomotives maintained less well, the likelihood of derailments is increased and public safety suffers.
When regulatory requirements for numbers of flight attendants are reduced, passengers are at risk in accidents when there will be fewer flight attendants to help passengers escape a burning aircraft. When armoured cars are allowed to operate with two-person crews instead of three-person crews, criminals are more likely to rob the armoured cars, and crowds in shopping malls are at risk of being shot.
Mr. Chairman, one of the questions you raised in your initial approach to us was on the issue of deregulation. I would like to turn to that issue specifically.
Businesses put forward the proposition that less regulation is better. The government has bought that argument to the detriment of public safety. We say just the opposite. Laws work. They compel corporations and individuals to modify their behaviour in accordance with society's wishes. They ensure that the dictate of profit will not be the only mechanism which influences corporate behaviour.
It is not, however, just our opinion. The Commission of Inquiry into the Air Ontario Crash at Dryden, Ontario, made specific reference to this issue in the chapters entitled "Effects of Deregulation and Downsizing on Aviation Safety" and "Aviation Regulation: Resourcing Process". Specifically, Mr. Justice Virgil Moshansky said:
The effect of Economic Regulatory Reform, combined with deficit reduction or, more specifically, the five-year Memorandum of Understanding between Transport Canada and the Treasury Board, created a synergy that in my opinion, based on the evidence before this Commission, had an adverse impact on the effective application of safety standards.
We have with us today Mr. Ben Bachl from CAW Local 2213 who worked on the aircraft that crashed at Dryden.
Had the Transport Canada Aviation Regulation Directorate been in a position to discharge all its responsibilities in an effective and timely manner, some of the factors that contributed to the Dryden accident may not have arisen.
When railway companies are under intense pressure to compete, they are not in an objective position to develop standards of safety. The Honourable Mr. Justice Samuel Grange, in his report on the 1979 Mississauga train derailment, described the situation very well:
The railways are answerable to their shareholders; the Canadian Transportation Commission is answerable to the public.
Business tries to claim that detailed safety regulations make companies less competitive. We disagree. Detailed safety regulations simply level the playing field so that companies who employ sound safety practices will not be competitively disadvantaged by those who do not. Some companies claim that safety regulations pose a hindrance to their ability in enhancing technological change. Once again, we disagree. Sound regulation forces technological change that meets the needs of society as a whole.
Deregulation goes hand in hand with business attempts to deunionize workplaces. This is just as true for shortline railways as it is for new airline carriers as it is for the trucking industry. Non-union workplaces are, however, less safe for the workers and less safe for the public. We have a section in our brief on union health and safety expertise. We have much more to say on the issue of deregulation, especially as if applies to rail safety.
Combined with the need for sound regulation is a need for effective enforcement. Does Transport Canada or do other regulatory bodies with responsibility for enforcing transport safety ever prosecute corporations? Is it often enough to secure compliance? Are the fines secured in the court system sufficiently high to ensure future compliance?
The Honourable Mr. Justice Grange, in his December 1980 report on the Mississauga derailment, recognized the need to penalize offenders. He said:
The best way to prevent similar occurrences, accidents or crimes, whichever word may be selected, is to make it more costly for railway companies to violate the law than to observe it.
An even better system than the prosecution method currently offered by the various transportation safety statutes is an administrative penalty system. Prosecution is a reactive, after-the-fact enforcement mechanism that penalizes illegal activities only after the offence has occurred. It serves no prevention function in the instant case but only as a deterrent with respect to future incidents, or for other employers if the penalty is made public. In safety enforcement, it is extremely rare that a conviction, let alone a stringent fine, is imposed without a fatality or a very serious injury having occurred. Absent a disaster, the state does not react.
Prosecutions are costly, time consuming of the inspectors' time, rely on prosecutors and judges who often view safety regulatory offences as, at best, white collar crime, require a high standard of proof in a court of law, and exclude the union as a party to the proceedings.
What is needed instead is the obligation of the state enforcement agency to write orders on all violations of safety regulations and to have at its disposal the ability to impose administrative penalties on violators. Administration sanctions for violations can be imposed by the regulatory agency prompted by the inspectorate who have, or should have, a thorough knowledge of safety regulations and the implications of non-compliance. Administrative penalties can be imposed quickly and in sufficient magnitude to ensure -- and I remind you of Justice Grange's comments -- that the cost of non-compliance is higher than the cost of compliance. An administrative penalty system can be set up so that a union is a party to the imposition of the initial penalty and to any appeal proceedings. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, stringent administrative sanctions can be imposed by the regulatory agency before accidents occur.
The diligence of the workers at the workplace cannot be underestimated. If workers had the power to shut down unsafe equipment without fear of reprisal from their employer, both their own safety and the safety of the public would be enhanced. Changes to statutes are needed to give workers the power to act in their own and in the public interest. Policies are needed to ensure they are encouraged to do so.
I could pause there at this stage for questions. If there are none, we could move on to rail safety.
The Chairman: Please.
Ms Walker: Our union represents the shopcraft workers who service and maintain locomotives, railway cars and passenger coaches. We also represent clerks, ticket agents and some on-board train personnel. Our members' work is critical to public safety. Rail is much safer and less polluting than highway travel by trucks and automobiles. That is a major advantage to this mode of transportation. As companies give rail safety a lower priority in the face of competitive pressure, they risk losing this advantage.
To ensure that safety does not deteriorate further, the number of safety inspectors should be increased, safety training should be strengthened, there should be more inspection points, and the direct involvement of workers in safety matters should be increased.
In 1985, the Conservative government introduced their transportation policy paper, "Freedom to Move: A Framework for Transportation Reform". In the government's view, transportation was too heavily regulated. The government developed policy and legislative reforms according to the principle that less regulation would "encourage innovation and enterprise" and that "greater reliance on competition and market forces will result in lower unit costs". Excited with the prospect of turning Canada's transportation system over to the free market economy, the government mentioned safety almost as an afterthought.
The National Transportation Act of 1967 was amended in 1987 to reflect the Conservative government's push towards deregulation and free market rules. Section 3(1)(a) of the act stated that "the national transportation system meets the highest practical safety standards", but there was no mechanism to ensure that this lofty ideal would be met. In response to labour demands for proper safety legislation in the rail industry, the government introduced the Railway Safety Act in 1988 and established the Transportation Safety Board of Canada under the Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board Act in 1989.
The government introduced deregulation in the rail industry before introducing safety-related statutes. By its actions, the government sent out a dangerous message: Economic considerations take priority over safety considerations.
In the case of the Mississauga derailment, profit margins were a factor in compromising safety at CP Rail. Mr. Justice Grange pointed out that CP Rail was reluctant to install "hot box" detectors or roller bearings because the cost was significant. The cost of evacuating half a million people from their homes after the accident far exceeded what it would have cost to prevent the accident. We do not know the extent of the environmental damage in the community. This is an example of what should be a corporate cost of doing business becoming externalized and becoming a cost borne by the public.
Since the Mississauga derailment, hot box detectors and roller bearings have become standard equipment. Companies like to say that improved equipment and technological advancements have made trains much safer after Mississauga. To some extent, this is true, but there have been numerous changes in rail transport which make regular inspections as crucial today as they were 17 years ago.
Trains operate at higher speeds, are much longer, and carry considerably more tonnage. The technological advances in rail operations increase the demand for train carmen to conduct the inspections. Technology alone is not a guarantee of safety. In October, 1989, 25 train cars derailed near Elma, Manitoba, when a defective journal passed a hot box detector.
The problem is that with the increased weight and speed of trains, a roller bearing will burn off quickly. A roller bearing may be fine passing one hot box detector but burn off before reaching the next detector. Although the record on derailments is better in Canada than in the U.S., there have nevertheless been numerous indents. Over the 1985-89 period, 198 equipment-related derailments and another 191 derailments attributable to loading defects occurred on main tracks. Furthermore, 79 derailments were reported in the yards, spurs or sidings. We cannot allow ourselves to be lured into a false sense of security that technology alone will take care of safety.
Because of deregulation, U.S. trains have ever more access to the Canadian railway system. These American trains pose an additional risk to rail safety in Canada, both because of increased traffic and because of the lack of enforcement of U.S. rail safety regulations.
A 1988 report by the U.S. Federal Railroad Administration stated:
Conrail's --
which is the main railway running into Canada at Fort Erie, Ontario --
basic operational testing program has degenerated into a numbers-generating exercise in which the tests conducted are as meaningless as the records maintained.
More trains coming into Canada from the U.S. pose an additional risk to rail safety in Canada. There are currently approximately 1.5 million rail cars operating through the interchange system in North America. The incident in Sarnia in 1989 is a telling example. Twice, CN carmen put a "Bad Order" card on a Grand Trunk Western Railway Company car coming into Canada from Port Huron, Michigan. Each time, the car re-entered Canada carrying a dangerous commodity, hydrofluorsilcic acid. In spite of the Sarnia incident, CN eliminated inspections of U.S. trains at Fort Erie in the same year.
CN's rationale was that inspections were done in the U.S. -- not a comforting thought. In a report dated July 31, 1990, put out by the U.S. General Accounting Office, the inadequacy of the U.S. Federal Railway Administration and enforcement activities was outlined. The report also indicated that U.S. railway companies seem to lack interest in public safety.
Later that year, in the fall, a 44-year-old Conrail freight train came into Ontario destined for Niagara Falls. The train had defective breaks and stopped at the Niagara Falls station by bumping into the rear end after stationary passenger train. Two passengers were injured. Later it was learned that 38 cars contained chlorine, and four cars contained caustic soda. The potential for a disaster was great.
A 1986-88 federal task force studied the issue of hazardous commodities in the Toronto area. The task force recommended that maximum attention be given to rail safety. The task force also recommended a joint Canada-U.S. commission to establish and enforce sound safety practices. The federal government has not acted on these recommendations.
As the interchange between U.S. and Canadian rail increases, it is essential that rail cars be inspected at the border. We cannot let rail safety be allowed to be the sole purview of the railway companies. It is a classic example of the fox guarding the hen-house. Nor can we rely on Transport Canada to protect the public interest, since they so often have shown that they simply defended railway companies' unsafe practices.
The following description is taken from a 1993 report by former Member of Parliament Iain Angus, "Rail Safety: An Accident Waiting to Happen".
In February, 1990, two CN trains collided and derailed near Brampton, Ontario. Both trains carried dangerous goods, in this case chlorine, propane and butane, a combination similar to the one in the notorious Mississauga wreck of 1980. The collision/derailment was caused when a car from the train on the eastbound Sarnia to Montreal run impacted with cars from the Westbound train bound from MacMillan to Sarnia.
The derailment occurred 365 meters from a row of houses. Initially it was thought that the chlorine being carried would not pose a threat because CN considered the cars empty or containing only residue. However, CN's and Transport Canada's definition of empty was at odds with the Transportation Safety Board's definition. According to the TSB, empty meant less than 2 per cent of a full load, while the CN definition of empty is "less than full".
As a result, the chlorine car that emergency crews regarded as empty and not therefore a safety risk was in fact carrying 8,190 kilograms of chlorine and was in fact a serious safety risk. As a result, the chlorine car that emergency crews regarded as empty and not therefore a safety risk was in fact carrying 8,190 kilograms of chlorine and was in fact a serious safety risk.
The National Transportation Agency undertook an inquiry to investigate the cause of the accident. In their record, the NTA investigators determined that the derailment was "...attributable to the centre sill failure of the CN gondola car 156262 and that significant cracking was evident in the centre prior to the Extra 9404 East department Sarnia." Furthermore "It is concluded that current rail car inspection practices allowed the widespread cracking of series 156 gondola cars to go unnoticed.
Gondola car no. 156262 was not an isolated case. In April of 1990, it was reported in The Toronto Star that CN pulled 348 of the 156 series gondola cars out of service after inspectors found structural cracks in 78 of them, a failure similar to the one that caused the Brampton derailment.
About one year after the inspection practices of the Sarnia and MacMillan yards were called into question and investigated, a derailment occurred that can be directly linked to those same inspection practices. In the words of Toronto Star reporter Peter Howell, it was "fortunate" that none of the chlorine leaked out. Unfortunately, good "fortune" is hardly an adequate substitute for thorough and efficient maintenance practices.
The government's promise that safety would not be compromised in a deregulated environment rings hollow. The National Transportation Agency of Canada received the 1990 report on the inquiry into dangerous commodity tank cars in the Sarnia-Montreal corridor. The inquiry was a follow-up to a near disaster in the Sarnia area. The report on the Sarnia incident pointed out that even though CN rail had been a party to writing the Minimum Standards -- C.T.S.-R.T.C. Orders -- the company did not seem capable of properly interpreting these standards.
The 1990 report goes on to say that the company openly violated provisions in the orders. Supervisors continually overruled carmen's decisions on "bad order" carded cars and put the cars back into operation. In the National Transportation Agency report, the investigators concluded, with respect to Montreal's Taschereau Yard:
Supervisors are clearly releasing into service freight cars that have defects contrary to the Minimum Safety Standards and in fact have incorporated an entire system to control the defects to which they do not want to take exception. It became apparent that in some cases the supervisors did not even perform a visual inspection of the located defect; they merely returned the car into service without even removing the "Bad Order" card.
In addition, in some rail yards, the carmen had heavy workloads and were unable to do a proper inspection of every car. Needless to say, this is a disturbing set of circumstances. Perhaps more disturbing is that the study concluded that "the Railway Freight Car Minimum Inspection Safety Standards are not likely complied with throughout Canada."
Deregulation and the divestment of the large national carriers to shortline operations poses a serious safety risk. Undercapitalization compromises safety. Short lines are often leveraged buyouts where the equipment is collateral for the loan and the debt-to-equity ratio creates high interest payments. Operating margins are tight, and there is little investment in upgrading equipment. The operator is ill-prepared for the cost of a major accident or natural disasters.
In Canada, most short lines are under provincial jurisdiction, so the federal Railway Safety Act does not apply to them. The provinces, at best, have outdated rail safety legislation and are poorly prepared to oversee rail operations. To add to the problem, shortline operators take pride in having employees who can repair tracks one day and file purchase orders the next. The safety implications are dire. At a minimum, short lines should remain under the federal jurisdiction so that consistent safety standards are followed.
I would like to introduce Denis Cross, who is president of Local 101, CP Rail, and Bob Bourrier, who is national health and safety coordinator for Local 100 at VIA and CN Rail, and ask them to make some additional comments about rail safety.
Mr. Bob Bourrier, CN Rail, VIA Local 100, Canadian Automobile Workers: My name is Bob Bourrier, and I am the system health and safety legislative representative for CAW Local 100. I specifically represent VIA and CN Rail. I would like to speak to a couple more recent issues in regard to rail safety.
Generally speaking, under the Railway Safety Act, the railways are encouraged to submit safety rule changes on rolling stock and railway equipment. The railways have become masters at eliminating the old, specific standards that held them to an absolute in terms of a go or no go with respect to equipment mechanical maintenance. They have replaced them with broad, sweeping guidelines that allow themselves the right to reduce the number of safety inspections and eliminate certified safety inspection locations. To date, Transport Canada, specifically the railway safety directorate, has allowed and even supported this position, obviously caught up in the deregulation wave.
The motive here is profit. Paul Tellier, president of CN Rail, has enunciated on I do not know how many occasions that profit is the primary motive of CN Rail. The recently announced $550 million profit was made in large part on cutting rail, locomotive and car maintenance programs, and this continues on and on. The envelope is literally being pushed further and further. We belief the railways are profiting on borrowed time.
The railways have eliminated thousands of rail car and locomotive maintenance jobs over the past 10 years. We have seen the numbers cut basically in half. That is a conservative estimate.
CN had at one time three main overhaul shops: Moncton, Pointe Saint-Charles in Montreal, and Transcona in Winnipeg. Only Transcona remains, and its future is in doubt.
Running repair shop close-downs over the last two years include the Moncton Gordon yard running repair shops, the Montreal Taschereau yard, and the Thunder Bay shops. Particularly at the Taschereau yard in Montreal, we have seen CN close a relatively modern railway car repair facility which has quite a large capability. They moved the workforce outside, working basically in the elements and in the snow. You are looking at a late middle-aged workforce. The message being sent is quite clear. You are to do your repairs, and you are to do your repairs at a very minimum. The message has never been spoken yet, but it is always clearly understood.
There are many other locations where we have seen point closures with CN, and I will mention just a few. In St. John's, Newfoundland, Terra Transport is closed. Dauphin, Manitoba has closed. Saint John, New Brunswick, will soon be closed out.
Some repair facilities, particularly with CN, are reduced to a handful of rolling stock mechanics for inspections, repair and emergency work. Locations such as Jasper, Calgary, The Pas, Brandon, Hornpayne, Senneterre, Garneau, Campbellton, Edmundston and Halifax are all overwhelmed and taxed to the limit due to a lack of tools, a lack of capital influx for repair, and the general overall will and commitment of a long range-maintenance program.
On September 1, 1996, CN eliminated nine certified car safety inspection points. What that means is that the majority of trains at these locations are not inspected by qualified mechanics.
On August 29 and September 13, I wrote the Minister of Transport expressing our shock and basically urged him to rescind these closures because they are a threat to public safety. These locations were St. John's, Newfoundland; Campbellton, New Brunswick; Rockingham and Dartmouth, Nova Scotia; Senneterre, Quebec; Hornepayne, Capreol, Oshawa and Hamilton, in Ontario. Numerous other certified car safety inspection points have been whittled away over the last two or three years. This, of course, has had an adverse effect. Again, I cannot emphasize enough that the envelope is being pushed.
CN at one time had an audit group stationed out of headquarters in Montreal. They were assigned to go across the country and ensure that internal maintenance regulations were adhered to, which for the most part at that time far exceeded the minimum requirements laid out by general and board orders with Transport Canada. This audit team no longer exists. They would also audit maintenance regulations on the mode of power, the locomotives and the American Association of Railway Standards on the car end.
CN, in particular, had the reputation in the early 1970s of being the North American standard. Most railways in North America looked to CN as the innovative, proactive model of safe, reliable and up-to-date rail rolling stock fleets. That reputation has long since gone and it has gone in favour of profit.
The railways through the Railway Association of Canada have proposed new rules for locomotives and passenger cars. Quite frankly, some of them are scary. The railways have proposed that rail and passenger road locomotive rim thicknesses be reduced. In the case of road locomotives, we are talking about reducing the minimum rim thickness from one inch to three-quarters of an inch. That is substantial.
At first glance, you would think the rim thickness is a quarter of an inch. However, we have one-half of an inch on the diameter of a wheel on a locomotive.
The benchmark for the railway industry has been the United States of America. In the U.S.A., the department of transport federal railway administration has a minimum standard of one-inch rim thickness for locomotives, and they have maintained that standard. I find this particularly disturbing. Although the rules have not yet been approved by Transport Canada, they have basically rubber-stamped whatever the railways have put forward, at least to this point.
One of the other things that is particularly upsetting regarding locomotives is that the newer locomotives of today compared to the locomotives of 10 or 20 years ago have a much higher engine horsepower rating, are heavier in total weight, and have much more efficient traction systems that create more force and stress on the wheels and axles. The most safety-critical location on a locomotive is on the driving axles. If there is an axle failure resulting in complete separation or fracture, that means the locomotives will derail if they are at track speed, being the heaviest part of the train. The cars will literally pile up in behind like cord wood. That is the situation we had at Oakville, Manitoba, in December of 1992. Oakville is a small community located about 40 miles west of Winnipeg. That was the cause of that accident.
Without getting into the specifics of that, I was involved at that time as a company officer and as a district safety officer. With respect to that accident, one of the internal CN recommendations to prevent locomotive axle failure was a change from the suspension-bearing WIC system.
Without getting into any further technical description of what that is, basically it is a preventive maintenance measure. We made the recommendation that that should be done annually. The railway did not act on it; the mechanical department did not act on it. This is the devastating result of what can happen when you have a lack of maintenance.
One of the other things I want to speak out against is the general downgrading of locomotive maintenance over the last 15 or 20 years. At one time, a locomotive was brought into a shop and inspected every 30 days. That soon moved to 45, to 60 and to 90 days. Presently, it is a 180-day cycle going into the shop for a good safety inspection.
This has proven disastrous as locomotive accounts have risen tremendously. The railways are now adjusting because many of these locomotive defects are not necessarily safety defects; they are mechanical defects, which puts the locomotive out of service and it cannot pull the payload.
Again, this shows the determination of the railway companies to continue to bring down the standards and cut too deep and then readjust. This is what they have done with locomotive maintenance.
I would like to now turn my sights to the VIA Rail situation. VIA Rail has also set out a standard of one-inch rim thickness on wheels. They want to go down to eleven-sixteenths. Overall on diameter, that would reduce the rim thickness of a wheel by five-eighths of an inch. We firmly believe this is dangerous. We are hoping Transport Canada will have a look at that.
Since late 1990, transcontinental passenger trains have not had a complete safety inspection on the train from Vancouver through to Toronto. Winnipeg was eliminated in 1990.
Having said that, we will try to bring everyone up to speed on some of the specific issues truly concerning us in the area of rail safety.
Mr. Denis Cross, Local 101, CP Rail, Canadian Automobile Workers: I am also interested in what the other railway unions have to say about this.
I come from Western Canada. There is a crisis right now in the grain movement industry in Western Canada. The reason is that there is a crisis in the railway industry. The reason for that is that CP and CN have been allowed to pull back on their equipment maintenance for the last three or four years. This is no surprise to the 4,000 people I represent because they are the trades people who inspect and maintain freight cars and locomotives. Our people are working around the clock, seven days a week right now, with workloads more than twice the norm. Generally, a crisis situation at our Vancouver shop is when they have 150 cars to be repaired at any particular time for safety defects. Right now they are well over 400. That is indicative of shops across Canada.
Our union will be meeting later this evening in Calgary with the Minister of Agriculture. From our perspective, it is the Minister of Transport, Mr. Anderson, who needs to get himself involved and undo what Mr. Young did when he was transport minister two years ago and deregulated rail safety in Canada, with the encouragement of Transport Canada and Mr. Churcher.
There have been a lot of jokes in the media in the United States in the last few years about Newt Gingrich and the Senate Republicans allowing industry to come up with their own regulations. That has been going on in the railway industry for more than five years. This is the effect of that.
We have provided you with a chart which tracks derailments. If the chart had gone further back, it would have shown the levelling off and then the decrease of derailments after 1984 and 1986 when the Grange recommendations were incorporated into two sets of regulations, one on inspecting freight cars and the other on train brakes. However, starting in 1993 and 1994, Mr. Young deregulated again. The chart shows the increased derailments and equipment-related derailments at that time.
Something must be done by the federal government because it is the federal government that caused this crisis for which the farmers in Western Canada are paying right now with demurrage costs of millions of dollars.
Mr. Timothy S. Secord, Canadian Legislative Counsel, United Transportation Union: The brief I submitted to the clerk is a matter of public record so I will not go through it, except for the summary.
We do not merely wish to criticize what is going on in the rail industry currently; rather, we want to offer some suggestions on how to address those concerns with a view to ensuring the integrity and safety of the railway infrastructure. In order to accomplish that, we have taken the liberty of categorizing those concerns into four main groups, those being regulations and regulators, political influence, Transportation Safety Board and, last but not least, railways.
Under the category of regulations and regulators, reliance on performance standards in order to achieve self-regulation must be abandoned. The use of performance standards in self-regulation cannot provide the level of railway safety which is in the public interest.
The gutting of the Railway Freight Car Minimum Inspection and Safety Standards must be reversed in order to ensure that railway equipment is properly and thoroughly tested and inspected by persons certified to do so. The railway transport committee, in the reasons set out in RTC Order R-37228 stated:
Whereas the Committee has decided that promulgation of the interim safety measures contained in the attached Schedule is necessary to provide for the protection, safety, accommodation and comfort of the public and of railway employees in the running and operating of trains.
In our view, nothing has changed in the railway industry that would allow for such drastic changes as Transport Canada allowed respecting the aforementioned standards. The equipment is the same and the work process is the same. The only things that have changed are the people and the economic attitude of the regulator.
Compliance with the legislative requirements must be done with a view to prevention. Enforcement of those same legislative requirements must be unrelenting and departmental credibility in this respect can be partially achieved through zero tolerance when it comes to prosecutions.
Transport Canada must stop its habit of serving the interests of only one client -- the railways. The regulations and the Railway Safety Act are there for the protection of the railways, the employees and the public. They are not there to protect the economic outlook of the railways.
The hiring practices of Transport Canada must be altered to draw expertise from all aspects of the railway industry, not just the managerial positions. One must remember that those managers that Transport Canada is so quick to hire are the same managers that caused the difficulties in compliance with the regulations while they were in their former employ.
Transport Canada must be more vigilant in reviewing the minutes of safety committees to ensure that the tragic events of last August do not recur. They have the power to step in and promote the integrity of safe railway operations. All they need do is use it. Furthermore, Transport Canada must go beyond serious consideration of the TSB findings and recommendations -- they must act on them.
The Minister's Advisory Council on the Transportation of Dangerous Goods must better reflect the parties which are affected by its decisions. Labour must not be held to merely token positions on the council while the suppliers and Transport Canada drive the agenda.
Although not previously spoken to in the context of my brief, the implementation of Operation Respond on a Canada-wide basis to complement the existing CANUTEC system would be beneficial and would embellish the efforts of the Minister's Advisory Council. Operation Respond can play a vital role in instances of hazardous materials occurrences and provides an extra measure of safety for the first responder, the employees and the public.
The difficulties in jurisdiction created by the memorandum of understanding between Labour Canada and Transport Canada must be resolved. In our view, there is no logical reason why a Canada safety officer from HRDC Labour cannot effect compliance and enforcement issues respecting matters relating to occupational safety and health, other than the fact that the MOU exists in the first place.
The position taken by Transport Canada respecting the allowance of one-person trains to operate in Canadian jurisdiction must be reversed. Without revisiting the arguments put forth to the Minister of Transport respecting this matter, to suggest that this type of operation will maintain the same level of safety as that of an operation with two persons is, quite frankly, asinine.
Canadian railways must be governed by a statute which deals with hours of service, not unlike that which is found in the U.S., in order to ensure equitable application, enforcement and consistency of safety for the employees and the public at large.
The influence of government fiscal policy is directly related to the safe operations of trains in this country. While government strives to reduce the deficit, its domestic economic policies lend to downward pressure on the government departments and the regulatory requirements currently in place to ensure public safety. When these regulations and departments are adversely affected or changed, the end result is a decrease in public safety. The Government of Canada must abandon policies, economic or otherwise, which have the sum effect of adversely impacting public safety.
The government must implement a national transportation policy which is all encompassing and considers all modes of transportation. The effective, safe and complementary use of these modes will ensure the integrity of the transportation infrastructure in Canada for years to come. It is the very same infrastructure that is currently being dismantled by the economic policies, deregulation and free-market mentality of the government.
The Transportation Safety Board must be completely detached from the arm of government that is responsible for railway regulation of any type. They must be autonomous and have the power to implement their recommendations in spite of Transport Canada. Otherwise, the TSB is nothing more than a lame duck and will continue to be ignored by the likes of Transport Canada. The TSB must be allowed to be the watchdog of the Canadian public for matters concerning transportation safety and must be empowered to act.
Canadian railways must place a higher priority on safety than they have historically done. No longer can they merely pay lip service to the issue of safety by tying the hands of their very own safety functions. The railways should ensure that these same safety functions should be the overriding corporate authority on matters of safety within the company's corporate structure. No longer should the safety function be overruled or disregarded on matters of safety by another function within that company.
In addition to those comments, Mr. Chairman, I should like to go on record as supporting those issues raised by the CAW earlier with respect to maintenance, inspection and testing, and the difficulties with car inspectors and car inspection locations.
Mr. Gary Housch, Vice-President, Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees: I will be brief. I know time is running by very quickly. I had sincerely hoped to enjoy this round table discussion because it is something that I have not experienced before in a forum like this. I was looking forward to that.
It is certainly a pleasure to be here and to put across the position of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way. We are an international railway union representing primarily people who build and maintain tracks. There are not many being built anymore, but we are responsible for maintaining them.
A big economic pressure has been placed on everyone because of just-in-time deliveries. In the trucking industry especially, there is a real push for delivering on time at all costs, whereas the penalties for safety infractions are not quite as severe. Most carriers, both trucking and railway, have penalties for being late with their deliveries. The tendency is to push for on-time delivery at all costs.
The trucking industry certainly is experiencing that, and the railway industry is starting to experience that as well. However, the trucking industry is in a situation where what they do impacts quickly on the railway industry. They can continue to undercut their costs. Bypassing safety regulations allows them to do that even more.
With government downsizing at all levels, both provincial and federal, it becomes very difficult for regulators to oversee the standards that are there today. Whether those standards are acceptable or not is another question.
In the last ten years, much like the CAW, the BMW membership has been decimated by lay-offs and downsizing. Approximately 50 per cent of our members have lost their jobs in the last ten years. In that same time frame, traffic has increased exponentially. Revenues have dropped per car. Capital expenditures for infrastructure have dropped. That, combined with the number of employees dropping, leads to a recipe of safety problems and perhaps disaster down the road.
Statistics can generally be read by people in different ways. My concern is that generally, overall, 40 to 50 per cent of main track derailments are caused by railway track infrastructure failures. In 1996, we have seen a large, overall increase of derailments compared to 1995. There was a 23-per-cent increase in main track derailments. Main track derailments involving dangerous goods were up 43 per cent, and accidents with release of dangerous goods increased 180 per cent.
That is just a one-year blip in time. Arguments could be made that it really does not mean anything, and that is legitimate. I will give you that. By the same token, it is a pretty substantial increase in derailments.
The other concern we have is with the provincial regulation of railways. In the 1920s we saw the creation of CN, which brought 90 per cent of railways under federal jurisdiction. Current trends are a direct reversal of that. We question whether provinces are ready to regulate railways. Some provinces have voluntarily adopted federal standards, but those standards change almost daily, the way the Railway Association of Canada is changing its rules. We need only consider the trucking industry as an example where, for nine years, they have been unable to agree on a national safety code for trucks. I tend to think the same thing will occur here.
Senator Forrestall: Are you saying the provinces among themselves have been unable to agree, let alone with the federal government?
Mr. Housch: The federal government is included, absolutely. In the United States, unlike Canada, virtually every shoreline and every railway is under federal legislation and federal regulation. In the Interstate Commerce Act, anything that connects to a railway that goes into another state is federally regulated. In Canada, the test has become substantially different.
We see trends in trucking safety that are of great concern to us as well. I point out that there is room for all modes of transportation, but, historically and even today, railways have a much better safety record overall than trucks in regards to fatalities per billion tonne kilometres hauled. A graph on page 9 shows the comparison of truck to train.
Railways are substantially safer in regards to public safety. However, having said that, there is a large possibility, based on the numbers and the amounts of dangerous commodities hauled by railways, that one disaster could be a major disaster as compared to a one-truck accident.
In regards to deregulation, I agree with everything that I heard from the CAW and from Mr. Secord and the UTU.
Senators may recall that a few years ago we had an inquiry into the sale of the Truro-Sydney line. The BMW had a Dr. Dempsey come from the United States to give testimony at that point. In his analogy, he compared the idea of regulation to sports. At that time, the Super Bowl was about to happen. He said one of the reasons that football is so good is because it is properly regulated. If it were not properly regulated, the biggest team and the biggest club would come out and win the game. They regulate the thing properly. Poorer teams have better draft picks. They level the playing field to create good competition.
That is the exact opposite of what most people would say in regards to deregulation. They would say deregulation will kill competition. Dr. Dempsey was very astute when he made that analogy.
Mr. Secord made some comments about the safety board. We have some great concerns over the length of time it is taking for the safety board to make its reports public. It seems almost ridiculous to wait a year and a half for a report on an incident.
In regards to freight car standards, I agree wholeheartedly with the CAW. Just before they were instituted, the BMW was involved with minimum track safety standards. Around 1992, in fact, there was no regulation of track safety standards in Canada. Both CN and CP had voluntary standards which they maintained very well. When they were asked by the government at the time to create standards, they basically went to the United States and used the FRA standards, which were far below the standards they had voluntarily maintained for 30 or 40 years prior to that.
We see the same thing happening in regards to standards and industry regulation. It must be carefully examined as to whether the government should address that through legislation. That is a sincere difficulty.
The Chairman: Something you said rang a serious bell. I have often wondered because the quality of steel in the rail itself is very important. The absence of standards is important. Does it have as much to do with the contracting and tendering of steel as with any technical measuring up to an acceptable standard? Was it a myth that used to drift around in the industry that standards for rail were high and expensive and that because we could not afford such high standards they should be lowered?
Mr. Housch: That is something we have seen.
The Chairman: It was said that the standard would be set at "x" dollars per mile for rail, and whatever standard the steel companies gave would automatically set the standard.
Mr. Housch: I do not know if the railways have ever committed to the minister as to what their standards are for rail wear. We know that they continually change. Actually, they continue to allow even more wear on the rail.
The Chairman: Are you raising this matter again? I thought it had been debunked.
Mr. Housch: The concern is that the railways can make their own standards. I do not know that that is a good situation.
Ms Walker: I should like to go on record in support of the comments of Mr. Secord and Mr. Housch.
Senator Bacon: In your text, the Mississauga derailment seems to be a turning point in terms of safety. If I remember correctly, the Mississauga derailment happened before deregulation and not after. If I am wrong, you can tell me. I do not believe we can point to that as a cause of accidents because they happened before.
Do you think other factors can also be at the root of incidents or accidents, such as the maintenance of rails, cars and tracks or, perhaps, weather or the abuse of substances?
Mr. Cross: What happened with Mississauga, and which was identified in the Grange inquiry, was the realization that there was no regulation in the railway industry. There were no regulations for track; there were no regulations for car inspections; there were no regulations for train brakes. They developed after that. In the case of cars and air brakes, it was in 1984 and 1986. It was not until the 1990s that there were standards for tracks.
Since then, there has been another go at deregulating them. The creation of the regulation came after Mississauga. Since then, even though it was a good experience and all indications show that railways became safer, there was a round of deregulation under Minister Young.
Senator Bacon: What about the maintenance of rail cars and tracks? Weather can be an influence as well. Substance abuse has also been the cause of incidents.
Mr. Cross: I do not think that has been identified in Canada as the cause of anything. I have never read a TSB report wherein substance abuse or human failure was the cause of any major type of derailment. There are many, including Mississauga, which involved equipment failure.
Senator Bacon: It has been said that the railway safety legislation does not apply to short lines. If what we have heard is correct, short lines must link up with the main lines more often than not. When they do, they must comply to the same safety standards, do they not?
Mr. Housch: They would have to live up to the same standards for the interchange of cars. The cars would have to be up to the standards of the main railway. I do not know if they would be inspected at that point. However, they would have no obligation to maintain their infrastructure to any standard other than what the province would set out.
In regard to your other questions, you were very astute. The weather in Canada has a very severe impact on the ability to maintain track. The problem is that Canadian railway companies continuously benchmark their productivity against U.S. railways which do not experience the same problems. They always say that they are not as productive as U.S. railways. Of course they are not as productive as the UP, for example, in the southern United States. It is virtually impossible to be that productive when you have to deal with snow and -40 degree temperatures. Rails break. They are made out of steel.
Senator Bacon: I think one of you said that unionized railway companies are safer than non-unionized companies. Do you have numbers to back that up? I would like to know how safety is increased by belonging to an union.
Ms Walker: That is something we planned to cover later in our presentation. I could turn to that now, if you would like, and also address the issue of drug and alcohol testing, which is a related issue.
Senator Bacon: Show me where it is in your brief.
Ms Walker: It begins at page 14 of our brief where we deal with union health and safety expertise. The issue of drug and alcohol testing is dealt with at page 12.
Senator Bacon: What is the attitude of the unions toward drug testing programs? Would you enforce it through spot checks or should it be mandatory? My colleagues know that that is my pet question.
Ms Walker: We are opposed to it because drug and alcohol testing only measure consumption. That is of no interest to us. As a fellow worker or a passenger on a train, I have no interest in knowing if someone consumed marijuana a few weeks ago in his spare time. That matters not at all to me because that does not determine whether he might be impaired today. As a member of the public and, perhaps, as a fellow worker, I am interested if someone is impaired. There are many other causes of impairment, however. The point we make immediately after the issue of drug and alcohol testing in our brief is that the major source of impairment in the transportation industry, in particular in trucking, is fatigue. It is a much bigger issue. We would like that issue addressed in a regulatory fashion.
Random alcohol and drug testing is a matter which clearly impinges on human rights. It does nothing to improve health and safety, either of workers or of the general public.
Mr. Secord: In terms of substance abuse, in the United States last year, less than 1 per cent of all those tests came back positive.
Senator Bacon: What about Canadian results?
Mr. Secord: We do not have a federal statute that provides for that.
Mr. Housch: That was in terms of random sampling.
Mr. Secord: If we look at the United States, whose industry is virtually 10 times the size of ours, if they were picking up less than 1 per cent, then that tells you what the need is here in Canada for the same kind of testing. As Ms Walker mentioned, that is not the issue.
Senator Bacon: It is more fatigue, is it?
Mr. Secord: That is the larger issue, yes.
The Chairman: Surely, usage must suggest the possibility of abuse. If you use it once, what difference does it make? If you caught me using it today, maybe I am using it. Perhaps I will use it tomorrow as well. Maybe I will be using it three or four times the day after. All that means is you will not catch me in the next three days. Is not the habitual user of an intoxicating substance of potential risk and danger?
Ms Walker: It is a good question.
The Chairman: Ms Walker holds a very responsible position and she said, "I do not care about it." I wonder if you would address the potential for danger.
Ms Walker: Personally, as a teetotaller, I support prohibition, but I do not think that is an acceptable social position in Canada today. The biggest substance which is abused in our society is alcohol. It is legal, people can consume it the night before and go to work the next day. Really, that is irrelevant to the issue of whether that person is impaired at work.
The Chairman: That was my point.
Ms Walker: My issue is: Is that person impaired at work? We do not support people being impaired at work but I do not care about what people may be consuming in their spare time.
The Chairman: I must say I am alarmed at that.
Mr. Secord: Senator, in response to that, I certainly do not disagree with Ms Walker in that respect. I do have a concern about impairment at work. We support efforts to ensure that that does not happen, but we do not support mandatory drug testing. If you were to look at all of the issues that impact safety on the railway, and who made those decisions for those changes that have adversely impacted safety, I would almost suggest that it might be better to test the board of directors of the companies for drugs than the employees. Those are the dummies who made the decisions that are impacting our members every day and killing them. Someone should be testing the people who made those decisions, not our members.
The Chairman: That is hardly a rational response to the dilemma I was dealing with, which had to do with whether or not you consider it a potential danger or risk. I certainly do. I am not disagreeing with what you said. You may be right or you may be entirely wrong. That is an entirely different question.
Is there any statistical information you might have that would help us as to whether or not short line railroads are safer or have more accidents than class 1 systems, or is it too early for that kind of data?
Mr. Secord: It may be premature. I am sure Transport Canada would have some statistics, but Transport Canada could also provide the subcommittee with the experience in the U.S. industry. They should have those figures.
Mr. Housch: We monitor those figures very carefully down in the United States. I am sure we can get that data for you.
The Chairman: Would you make some available to the clerk?
Mr. Housch: Absolutely.
The Chairman: Thank you.
Senator Roberge: I understand from what you said earlier there are, within the corporations, safety and security committees which are composed of management and union employees, for which minutes are taken, of which "to do"s are "to do"s. Am I right in understanding these minutes go to the Ministry of Transport? Could you go through the process?
Mr. Bourrier: In some cases they do. We have a split here. I could make the division this way: We have rail operational safety on one side, and we have occupational, worker, industrial occupational health and safety on the other side. We of the CAW are probably the best example of that split. Many of our membership work in shop locations, and are subjected to similar types of risks and hazards as other workers in auto plants.
Those health and safety committees in our work locations are governed by Part II of the Canada Labour Code and the Canadian Occupational Health and Safety Regulations. They are policed, if you will, or regulated by what was formerly Labour Canada, now Human Resources Development Canada.
On the other side, the rail operational side, we have health and safety committees, again governed by Part II of the Canada Labour Code. However, the regulations that apply are the On-board Train Regulations. Their regulatory body is Transport Canada.
In answer to the general question, yes, we do have health and safety committees. We have, in my opinion, a pretty good structure. We get a lot of involvement in our health and safety committees, and a lot of identification of risks and hazards emanate from them. Our major complaint is the fact that some of these items and risks that we identify are not acted upon quickly enough and not taken seriously enough.
Senator Roberge: They are not acted upon by whom? The corporation?
Mr. Bourrier: The railway companies.
Mr. Ben Bachl, Local 2213, Air Ontario, Canadian Automobile Workers: If I may add something to that, the health and safety committees can only make recommendations. They are not binding upon the companies.
Senator Roberge: And the minutes do not go to Ministry of Transport for supervision?
Mr. Bachl: They are made available to them but are not necessarily sent to them.
Mr. Secord: The comments on the minutes were made in my summary. Those comments were in direct response to the difficulties we experienced with the collision in Edson, Alberta, in August of last year. The joint committee had made those recommendations to the employer. Transport Canada has an obligation to review those minutes. They are supposed to be regulating and overseeing the operation of the safety committees. Whether they saw those minutes or not or just disregarded them, when that recommendation came out of the joint committee in 1992 to tell CN to put the derail back on where they had removed it, no one did anything about it. CN did not put it back on; they did not listen to the joint committee. Transport Canada did not get involved, for whatever reason. The bigger question about Transport Canada not getting involved revolves around the fact that the TSB had previously made a recommendation to Transport Canada to ensure that those derails were in those places, and there was no action. We ended up with a few dead people as a result of that and, I am sure, some other circumstances. We will not know until the TSB releases their report.
The Chairman: When will that be ready?
Mr. Secord: As I understand it, the draft should be out this month. They are understaffed as well.
Senator Roberge: On another note, what about the inspection process? Could you go through the inspection process briefly?
Mr. Cross: In respect to rail?
Senator Roberge: Deficiencies in rail.
Mr. Housch: That would be my ball. Up until the minimum track standards came in, most track was inspected three times a week, voluntarily by the railway. That has now dropped to two times a week.
Senator Roberge: Was this done by the railway employees?
Mr. Housch: Yes. The foreman of the track used to do his own inspection. It is now done by supervisory personnel. In many circumstances, those supervisory personnel have responsibility for 100 or 150 miles of track inspection two or three times a week. That entails travelling over the track at a slow speed watching for anything that would be unsafe: a broken rail, broken angle bars, bolts missing, defective ties, missing spikes. We feel that these inspections are now being pushed through in a hurry by people who really do not have any position with the company to be able to stand up and say something needs to be done.
On very busy track, they run a track recorder car, track geometry car, over it twice a year, and the rail inspection car runs over it generally once a year. That is for very busy, high-volume, high-gross-tonne-mile tracks.
We have always voiced our concern with the ministers over the years that really the person who should do those inspections is the person who works on that track every day, knows it intimately, knows where the problem areas are, and is responsible for keeping that track in good condition.
What is happening now is that a supervisor is generally patrolling or inspecting three or four territories and then coming back and telling the foreman what work he wants done next. They have taken the whole planning of work out of the hands of the worker and put it into management. That is a policy decision. They saved a lot of money doing that. That was their policy decision, and they elected to do it. Overall, I think their safety will suffer over the long term as a result.
Mr. Cross: In respect to railway equipment, our people do the inspection and the air brakes on trains. The minimum freight car standards and air brake standards called for standing inspections where our trained, apprentice, car inspectors would walk the train and do a visual inspection at the originating station. Let us say that is Vancouver. If it is a transcontinental train, it would again get inspected in Winnipeg. However, when Doug Young deregulated in 1994, he eliminated that. We found that where Transport Canada was doing audits and getting a 6, 7 and 8 per cent defect rate, their audits are now over 20 per cent.
A coal train in Roberts Bank on the lower mainland of B.C. was inspected by Transport Canada February 6. Twenty-four out of the 112 cars were found safety defective. The benchmark they were using was 6 or 7 per cent formerly, the same with the train air brakes. We argue that the resulting increase in derailments is in direct relationship with deregulation.
I worked in a train yard for several years in Winnipeg at Canadian Pacific. There is a dynamic in those train yards that the trains must go at any cost. There is a lot of pressure on managers there. There was a lot of pressure on the workers to turn blind eyes. Once you start closing shops in major locations such as Montreal, which is a major centre -- Montreal is a major export port -- and you close the Saint-Luc shop for CP and the Taschereau shop for CN and require the repairs to be done outside where it might take five or ten times as long to do minor safety repairs, the pressure is on to leave the car on the train and let it get caught somewhere else. Now, if that train is going to Vancouver, it is travelling across the country with that safety defect and finding itself in a lot of ditches along the way. That is what has been going on.
We updated our tracking graphs in August. With respect to equipment-related derailments, the 1991-95 average compared to 1996 was almost a 90-per-cent increase. Some of that is reflected in changes to the regulations under the TSB act in 1992. It may not be right up to 90 per cent, but it is significant. Something must be done, whether they bring back Justice Grange, if he is still around, or something else. Someone must take a look at the entire situation.
This is affecting the economy now. If rail unions were on strike right now and causing the delays to shipping grain that are going on right now, we would have been legislated back to work five weeks ago; but, absolutely nothing has been done to the railways.
The Chairman: We were told by Canadian Pacific at hearings in Edmonton that rail bed inspections were carried out by computer-equipped cars giving a very accurate readout to the crew as to the condition of the track. I had a sense that that might not be true, the accuracy part of it. Does it not do a good job?
Mr. Housch: It does an excellent job if it is operating correctly at the time. The only difficulty we have seen is that a few times it apparently was set up incorrectly and there were problems with the readouts. Again, the track geometry car only goes over that track once or twice a year.
Senator Roberge: Why is that? Why is it not more often?
Mr. Housch: It is incredibly expensive to operate and buy. With respect to the track geometry car, I think both CN and CP own their own. It has to test track coast to coast. I am not even sure how many they have. There may be more. Do not quote me on that.
Rail testing is done by a U.S. company generally.
Senator Roberge: Is that because there are no Canadian companies?
Mr. Housch: Yes. I believe that no Canadian company does that work.
They also do not do that on tracks that do not have high volumes and tracks that do not have over a certain amount of gross-tonne miles every year. The cutting point for inspections is the number of gross-tonne miles hauled over the track. Generally over the main track, they will look at it very carefully a couple of times a year. In between that, these inspections are done by a supervisor.
Ms Walker: This next section on firefighters and emergency response crews speaks mostly to the issue of rail safety. Firefighters and other public emergency crews must have the right to know in detail about the hazards of dangerous goods which are transported, especially by rail, since that is where the volume-related risks occur. In the case of derailment, it is our members and firefighters, as well as the public, who are at risk.
A central registry should be set up, fully accessible by telephone and computer, so that everyone concerned can be fully knowledgeable of the hazards they must face. The placard required by the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act would be the trigger for those affected to contact the central registry to find out more information. There should be a requirement for immediate filing of vehicle contents information in the central database by the shipper or carrier. It would make sense to us to have this registry set up through the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety in Hamilton since they are the most advanced health and safety information system in the country, as well as having both a federal mandate and tripartite representation.
Transport Canada's CANUTEC presently fields about 25,000 calls a year, of which 1,000 they consider emergencies. They provide information about chemical properties and response information based on the questioner's knowledge obtained from placarding and shipping documents which list chemicals by category or number code. There is an urgent need for a better, more comprehensive system.
Compared with rail, trucks are subsidized by the taxpayers to a much greater degree through the publicly funded highway system. The trucking industry and the trucks they service do not pay for their impact on road repair -- one 35,000-kilogram truck has the same impact on a road as 99,600 cars; congestion -- just-in-time production has put a great deal of inventory into the "warehouses on wheels"; or pollution -- rail uses one-third to one-ninth of the fuel that trucks use. Huge pot holes on major transportation routes, such as the high-speed 400-series highways in Ontario, are threats to public safety.
Funding cutbacks to highway maintenance means that these truck-caused hazards endanger all those who use these major highways. Truck-caused congestion, especially on the 400-series highways, threatens public safety when their trucks are poorly maintained. The combined carbon monoxide emissions from so many vehicles on the roads, both trucks and automobiles, which are on the roads longer as a result of congestion, is a major contributor to climate change and global warming. Other emissions such as oxides of nitrogen and sulphur dioxide cause smog which increase rates of respiratory disease and environmental damage.
As a result of deregulation, there are far too many trucks on the road, which means excess capacity and cut-throat rates. These lead, in turn, to taking shortcuts with maintenance, which creates a threat to public safety. Warn brakes, shoddy steering and, most notoriously, wheels which fall off trucks on the 401 are major concerns. Many truck drivers, as well as the public, are concerned about the possibility of the dangerously large trucks being licensed in the U.S. as a result of their deregulated trucking industry spreading to Canada. Saskatchewan has allowed these three-trailer highway rigs for about a year. No other province should be allowed to permit such dangerous highway trains.
We support the 1993 recommendation of the National Transportation Agency Review Commission which said that federal and provincial transportation ministers should direct officials to investigate accidents involving straight trucks of more than five tonnes and to come up with corrective measures. We also support the NTARC recommendation that the federal transport minister should appoint a senior representative to head up a working group to resolve inconsistencies in regulation, interpretation and enforcement of extra-provincial trucking. As well, there should be a national database that can be updated and accessible to government officials and to the public.
Under NAFTA, a proposal exists to establish super transportation corridors for trucks to enter Canada from the United States and Mexico. We believe we have enough unsafe trucks on the road without adding American and Mexican vehicles or without having appropriate truck safety standards in place.
Trucks give the advantage of flexibility on shorter hauls, but there should be intermodal cooperation with rail for longer hauls. Nowhere are other drivers more at risk as is a truck driver from fatigue. We have a number of recommendations on this issue, which are found below in the section entitled "Fatigue".
I would like to introduce Edward Tory, one of our national representatives located in Ottawa. He is familiar with the trucking industry if there are any questions on that area.
If not, I will move on to airline safety.
Open skies have left the airline industry with less incentive to be concerned about airline safety. Deregulation made it easier for new carriers to come into the market. New entrants, however, lack safety expertise and are under intense pressure to compete against the larger, established carriers. They are tempted to cut safety measures in order to meet immediate demands. The cut-throat competition in the industry cannot help but compromise safety. Veteran carriers such as Air Canada and Canadian Airlines are under intense competition from new carriers with no established safety record who offer ever lower prices on the same routes. There is pressure to cut corners. With government regulators telling us "we are being told to get out of the government business," who will assure that safety requirement regulations are being enforced?
The crash of the Air Ontario flight at Dryden raised public awareness of airline safety. The commission of inquiry attributed unsafe practices to the competitive pressures of deregulation. Maintenance was contracted out to reduce costs and new aircraft were brought in without proper staff training. Yet, more than six years later, Dryden has seen cuts in the emergency response units at the airport. Other airports have faced similar cuts. The government is also in the process of commercializing the major airports across Canada, further reducing the government's responsibility for safety.
We should heed the words of Mr. Justice Virgil Moshansky. In his final report about the Dryden crash, the learned jurist said that:
After more than two years of intensive investigation and public hearings, I have concluded that this accident did not just happen by chance -- it was allowed to happen.
Flight attendants do more than serve coffee. Their real job is to keep passengers alive. If a plane crashes, will passengers get out before they are overcome by smoke or heat? That may depend on there being enough flight attendants for a safe evacuation. A safe number is one flight attendant for every 40 passengers. This has been the Canadian standard for over 20 years; however, the government bowed to pressure to lower the number of flight attendants on Canadian aircraft of one for every 50 seats.
Special exemptions for fewer flight attendants have already been given to Air Canada's Canadair, Regional Jet and some flights on Air BC, without regard for the CARAC -- Canadian Aviation Regulation Advisory Council -- process. The only purpose to lowering the number of flight attendants is to save the airlines money. We object to any lowering of this important safety standard.
We are concerned, as well, about the transportation of dangerous goods since the baggage handled by our members may contain hazardous substances. They are at the mercy of the honesty of the passenger.
I would like to introduce Mr. Ben Bachl from Local 2213. He is an engineer who maintains and inspects aircraft for Air Ontario and worked on the Dryden plane that unfortunately crashed.
Mr. Bachl: As was explained in the dossier, the Dryden crash was not something that was just an accident; it was a recipe. The aircraft was brought in. The management had gone on the training course; the workers had not been. The aircraft was released by management personnel, and obvious defects had been overlooked for the sake of cost-saving and company prestige.
The other point I should like to bring out is that if that aircraft had been a Canadair jet or a Dash-8 300 series, there would have only been one flight attendant on that aircraft when it went down. Only one crew member survived the crash and helped many of the passengers who survived out of that aircraft.
I found it very difficult when this government lowered our standard to the standards of the U.S. and other countries. Other countries had looked at Canada's aviation safety, and we, by far, have had the safest aviation record and been the pinnacle for the world. Yet, we lower our standards instead of having them bring their standards up to ours. That is a great concern.
Another concern is the reduction of firefighting at the airports. If there is a crash at an airport and if it is not attended to within five minutes and there is a fire, there will be nothing left of the aircraft. Aluminium burns rather quickly. If you have seen the footage from crashes in the United States -- and there are very good firefighting facilities there -- there is not much left even when the firefighting is available. Yet, we will reduce ours. There will not be anything but bodies and burnt grass. I have a major concern over that as well.
The Chairman: No one has ordered me to do what I am about to do now, but we must return to the chamber for two o'clock. I will ask members of the committee if we could append, as read, the balance of your brief to today's committee proceedings.
Senators, perhaps we could spend the next few minutes asking questions of our witnesses.
Senator Adams: When the committee met in the west before Christmas, we heard witnesses from chemical companies that transport their goods across Canada. They told us that when they move dangerous goods, they alert local fire fighters and police along the way. I do not think CN has any policy like that for transporting dangerous goods on the railway. Perhaps you are more familiar with that. Does Transport Canada have such a policy?
Mr. Bourrier: We have what is referred to in the industry as "go teams". They are dangerous commodity emergency teams. I mentioned earlier that at small points we have only a token handful for inspection and emergency purposes, and that is what I meant by the emergency purposes. The go teams attend to dangerous commodities accidents and particularly releases. They are trained in self-contained breathing apparatus and in procedures with the cars. However, the number of locations where these teams are, and the number of people on these teams, has been reduced. At Thunder Bay, moral was so bad due to the reductions that they could not get anyone to join the team, and the supervisors had to man the team.
If you want a good, solid, operational team, you have to have fairly high morale. Like anything else where there is immediate threat to your life, you have to pull together. It is not a good situation. The supervisors already have many miles to cover under the management regimes within the railway, and they really cannot become experts in that field.
That is the situation the railways are in, but they do have these go teams. They have such large territories to cover that their effectiveness is hindered by the time it would take them to get there in order to effect a repair or control a situation.
Of course, they rely on the municipal fire departments and whatever exists provincially to aid them. Sometimes, in the case of derailment, the derailed cars may be off the railway right-of-way and on private, municipal or provincially owned land.
Senator Adams: The chemical companies have aircraft. Perhaps they could use them to assist in dealing with a spill to contain contamination. Does CN not communicate with the chemical companies when something happens on the railway?
Mr. Bourrier: That will happen. The company which produces a particular chemical or substance has the true expertise in that area and, depending on the situation, they very well may be called in immediately.
The Chairman: We would like very much to have each of you back, perhaps in March. Now that we have your briefs, we could start immediately with questions. You have raised many questions in our minds.
Would that be possible, Ms Walker?
Ms Walker: We would be pleased to do that.
The Chairman: Thank you very much. Your presentation was very enlightening.
The committee adjourned.