Proceedings of the Subcommittee on
Transportation Safety
Standing Senate Committee on
Transport and Communications
Issue 7 - Evidence for February 18, 1997 (Afternoon Sitting)
MONTREAL, Tuesday, February 18, 1997
The Subcommittee on Transportation Safety of the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications met this day at 2:03 p.m. to study the state of transportation safety and security in Canada.
Senator J. Michael Forrestall (Chairman) in the Chair.
[English]
The Chair: We are pleased to have with us this afternoon witnesses from the Railway Association of Canada.
Please proceed, Mr. Ballantyne, on behalf of your organization.
Mr. Robert Ballantyne, President, Railway Association of Canada: A copy of our written submission has been filed with the committee. In order to allow as much time as possible for discussion, we will review the main elements of our submission, rather than read the full text of our brief. You heard from Canadian National this morning, and it is my understanding that you have also heard from Canadian Pacific on their individual operations within the Canadian railway industry.
Our association works behalf of or jointly with our member companies to promote public policy and regulation that provides equitable treatment between modes. It is also the role of the RAC to provide factual information on railways to the public, to government, to industry and to industry associations, as well as to provide the opinions of the railways on public policy issues.
I should point out that all 38 common carrier railways that operate in Canada are members of the RAC. This ranges from CN and CP, among the big railways, right down to the small terminal switching railways, such as the one at Essex Terminal. It includes all the new short line railways that have been created since the changes in the law have facilitated the growth of short lines.
My colleague Mr. Cameron will make the presentation, and then the two of us will be glad to answer any questions that the committee may have.
Mr. Roger Cameron, General Manager, Public Communications, Railway Association of Canada: Canada is a trading nation, and Canada's railways help Canada work. Nearly two thirds of our railways' workload involves international trade. Exports represent more than one quarter of Canada's gross domestic product. The value of foreign freight handled by Canada's East and West Coast ports, which by extension are largely rail movements, have surpassed $85 billion annually.
Western Canada, in particular, is highly dependent on export trade. The exports of grain that built the modern western economy have been supplemented today with potash, coal, chemicals, fertilizers, forest products, special crops, oil seeds and new container traffic. Export dependence is highest in Saskatchewan, accounting for a full 66 per cent of that province's total output. The job of nearly one person in three in Western Canada depends on the railway system.
The economic multiplier effect is such that two and a half million people in Western Canada alone are dependent on efficient, cost-effective rail transportation. The railways serve more than 25,000 Canadian shippers in every sector of the Canadian economy. They originate more than three and a half million carloads of freight every year, and transport hundreds of thousands of import/export containers annually.
There are three types of railway operating in Canada. Transcontinental lines include CN, CP, VIA Rail, and the five U.S. railways which operate into Canada. Regional and resource railways include B.C. Rail, Ontario Northland, Algoma Central, Quebec North Shore and Labrador, and the Cartier Railway.
There has been exceptional growth in short lines, which are the source and destination of much main line freight traffic. For example, one Canadian short line was created in all of the 1980s. Six were created between 1990 and 1995; and with passage of the Canadian Transportation Act, mid-year last year, four short lines were created and two more announced in just the last six months of 1996.
The Canada Transportation Act itself greatly simplified and shortened the process of line sales. The new process is proving to be crucial for both Canadian Pacific and Canadian National as they evolve into high-density core systems, served by efficient feeder lines.
The new short line carriers provide the flexibility and the personal touch needed for operating and marketing success on low-volume, service-intensive routes. They have decentralized management and lower-cost operations. Multitask employees have incentives to grow revenues as well as to reduce costs, but not at the expense of safe operations, because all Canada's railways share a commitment to safety.
Their safety standards are the same. Freight car and locomotive safety inspection and maintenance procedures are equivalent for all interchange partners, big or small.
Canada's main line carriers, as you have heard, are among the safest railways in North America. For example, more than one million regulated movements of dangerous goods go by rail each year, including loaded cars, cars with residue, and containers and trailers carrying dangerous commodities. Of that total, more than 99 per cent arrive at their destination safely.
If there is an incident involving dangerous goods, there is an immediate pre-planned response to ensure the situation is dealt with quickly, safely and effectively. Computer-based information and advanced communication systems are used to help identify the location of an incident and to notify everyone involved in handling the emergency safely and professional.
Dangerous goods personnel are also active in their communities and in community-related safety activities, such as the TransCare program, which was developed by the Canadian Chemical Producers Association. This programs ensures the involvement of local emergency response teams -- police, fire departments, and ambulance crews, who are familiar with the appropriate safety measures.
Among other safety training initiatives, the industry has created a safety train, using a tank car especially equipped with the different types of top and bottom fittings common to most cars used to move chemical products. The unit is used to train chemical industry workers in the safe loading and unloading of tank cars and to familiarize emergency responders with the safety features of this railway equipment. As well, a mobile training unit has been developed by converting box cars and highway trailers into mobile classrooms. They contain different types of tank car domes and valves in working order, charts, equipment and training videos.
Canada's railways are also participating in the establishment of a Canadian test site for Operation Respond. This is a not-for-profit institute's computerized database of hazardous materials that will improve safety for firefighters, police, and other first responders in an emergency. The Canadian test site in Burnaby, B.C. will provide immediate information on any dangerous goods contents of rail cars handled by CN, CP, B.C. Rail, Burlington Northern and Southern Railway of B.C., which may be involved in an incident.
The system provides hazardous materials response information in easy-to-use format, as well as passenger train schematics. Since the program began in 1992 in the United States, its software has been established in 40 locations, with access to the records of two trucking companies and 16 railroads. Major operating and capital investments in technology, training and innovation all help make safety happen. Canada's railways invest more than $75 million annually on safety-related training, and some 150,000 hours of employee involvement. If Canada's railways cannot operate safely, they do not operate, because safe and profitable railroading go hand in hand.
New technologies also account for the safe performance of the railways. Continuous welded rail, concrete ties, and roller bearings on freight car axles all require less maintenance. Better metallurgy results in longer rail life. Also, centralized traffic control and electronic safety monitoring devices help make railways safer. Track-side heat detectors scan the axles of passing trains for overheated bearings that can cause derailments, and special inspection cars, which you have heard about, use modern sensing technology to monitor track conditions.
Some people may believe that safety is an add-on, something to be done if there is enough money left over and if they have no choice. However, Canada's railways believe that safety operations are not an option -- safety does come first.
This mindset influences the way decisions are made in this industry, the way work is planned and carried out; it influences both capital and operating expense planning, and the training and performance of employees in new and better ways of working safely.
One additional element for improved safety stems from the active role that railway professionals and others play in promoting it. And example of this is the Railway Association of Canada and Transport Canada sponsor Operation Lifesaver, a national public safety program that has an excellent track record of reducing fatalities and injuries from level crossing accidents and trespassing incidents.
The program works in cooperation with the Canada Safety Council, provincial safety councils and leagues, police and public service groups. It has helped reduce rail-highway grade crossing accidents by 60 per cent over the past 15 years.
The industry is not resting on its laurels though, because such accidents are preventable, and we want to help reduce crossing accidents by half again over the next decade. We would like to see the habit of approaching crossings with extreme caution become as much a part of driver safety as the habit of putting on your seat belt. The race to beat the train is a deadly sport. Trains cannot stop quickly; they require the length of 14 football fields to do so. They cannot swerve to avoid a collision.
To a large degree, it is in the hands of drivers to save their own lives, and those of their friends, because familiarity does breed complacency. It is a factor in the majority of level crossing accidents which take place within 40 kilometres of drivers' homes. People who cross the same tracks every day are lulled into the belief that they know precisely when trains arrive at a crossing. However, trains can be late or early, and a special extra or rescheduled train can be rolling down the track at any time. There were 112 people killed and 113 injured in level crossing and trespassing accidents on all railway property in Canada in 1996.
In virtually every case, the accident was caused by drivers or pedestrians who put themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. That is a fraction of the 3,450 killed and 245,000 injured in highway accidents in Canada each year, but it was one hundred percent of those victims' lives.
Level crossing collisions are at least as much a highway safety issue as a railway one because their prevention depends so much on safer habits and practices. Even so, 100 per cent of crossing fatalities and injuries are assigned to the rail mode and none to the highways. The majority of such accidents occur at crossings equipped with warning devices, and in about one third of them it is the vehicle that strikes the side of the train.
Many side-on collisions occur at night and involve cars moving faster than their lights can illuminate the road -- known as "overdriving their headlights." In general, however, 75 per cent of crossing accidents take place in broad daylight with good visibility.
Operation Lifesaver's active educational program includes the production and distribution of educational material in schools, for driver education, media relations and public presentations across the country. More than 150 volunteer presenters, from all walks of life, help tell Operation Lifesaver's story.Virtually all of them have had experience with crossing accidents, such as police officers, railroaders who have known the horror of fatal crashes, and people who have been badly injured in crossing accidents.
Operation Lifesaver has been particularly successful with its Officer On The Train and Near Miss programs. The first involves having an officer from a local police department observe level crossings from the cab of a locomotive making its usual run. The officer is in touch by radio with colleagues and police cruisers, who track down the violators observed from the train, and issue either cautions or tickets, as warranted.
The Near Miss program involves railway employees who radio to dispatchers the licence numbers and descriptions of vehicles being driven dangerously at level crossings. The information is forwarded by railway police to local police so offenders can be tracked down and appropriate action can be taken.
The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and its members are particularly active in this program. They recognize careless drivers as a hazard to railway employees; as such, they encourage their members to go on local radio and T.V. programs and to speak to public groups, to make the public aware of the problem.
The industry is proactive on other fronts, too. CN, CP, VIA Rail and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers co-funded a groundbreaking six-month study in late 1995, to determine the causes of locomotive engineer fatigue and to develop specific counter-fatigue measures. The results were released in May of last year which, among other things, offered concrete ways in which everyone could work together to combat the effects of fatigue.
The study was an important contribution to the pool of knowledge on this important subject which affects people in all kinds of industries, not just transportation, and the safety of their performance. The railways recognize the need, as well, for harmonization of activities with human physiology in a cost-effective way, knowing that the buy-in is long-term. It was an extensive and complex study, as was the development of countermeasures, which include work scheduling, napping strategy, rest facilities improvements, locomotive cab amenities, and lifestyle training for both participating employees and their spouses or partners. The recommendations are being implemented by the railways involved. Coordinators are being appointed to work with the districts.
The communications package will fully explain the program to everyone. The segment for engineers is being fast-tracked. Other fatigue countermeasures will be introduced elsewhere, as required. Research initiatives apply to equipment within the railway industry, as well as people. Terminal efficiency and employee safety is enhanced through modern technological advances. The beltpack remote control unit for locomotives, which Jack McBain referred to this morning, was developed in Canada. It is only a little bigger than a lunch box and is highly portable. The system lets ground-based yard employees operate driverless locomotives through audio contact with a micro-computer on board the locomotive.
Through signals from the beltpack, the on-board computer adjusts throttle and brake settings based on the ground operators control box speed selection. In this way, yard engines can shunt whole trains in much the same way as one flies radio-controlled aircraft.
A demonstration of this technology and other operations last fall in Toronto for members of the Transportation Safety Board, the Canadian Transportation Agency, and Transport Canada provided an opportunity for them to see and to try out the technology. As one of the employees showed, it is possible for control of a train to move from one employee to another safely. If you have not seen it, it is really quite interesting; it was developed in CN's research lab. The technology has since been sold to Canadian Pacific.
It has other applications throughout the North American industry. It is productive and highly safe. The safety features, for example, which have been incorporated in the design of the beltpack are impressive. The computer automatically overrides any unsafe commands. If the mobile unit is tilted too much, indicating the operator might be incapacitated or has fallen, a warning buzzer sounds. If it is not responded to, the unit will shut down the locomotive safely.
Winter conditions, as well, in Canada sometimes cause steel wheels to lose their contour through chipping and shelling. Poor wheel surface can cause service disruption, track damage and train derailment. The steering committee of the Railway Association of Canada is overseeing further testing in CN and CP revenue service for heavy-volume coal, grain and potash movements this winter. There is some testing of custom-profile rail on CN.
The industry association also recently appointed a new manager of radio spectrum for the industry in Canada. His name is Jacques Darrah, formerly with Canadian Pacific's engineering signals and communications group. He is responsible for the project and will manage the industry's access to frequencies allocated by Canadian and U.S. agencies at lower cost. Today's modern railroads run as much on information as steel wheels and rails.
Simply put, railway safety also depends on radio communications. These communications form a very important part of the information flow through both mobile units and fixed-site installations. U.S. and Canadian railroads are allocated some 94 frequencies which are used for train control yards, maintenance of way, police, automatic equipment identification, end of train units, hot box detectors, and in-train power units used on unit coal trains.
Demand for mobile radio services has increased dramatically because of new services such as wireless data, cellular phones and new applications for existing functions. This is a solution that was reached between the railway industry and Industry Canada. It is good for safety because it reduces the risk of interference and fragmented use of the frequencies.
Much has been achieved; more needs to be done. However, there has been, and continues to be, several examples of modal inequity, which frustrate our industry's progress and Canada's potential. These include incompatibilities and inconsistencies, and how interprovincial and transborder commercial vehicle competition is treated.
The Transportation Safety Board requires railways to report both accidents and incidents. Accidents are classified so that problems can be identified. These include main track collisions, crossing accidents and main track derailments. Statistics on train miles and tonne kilometres are available so that accidents per tonne kilometre can be calculated. All crossing accidents are reportable, even if there is no serious property damage or personal injury. A risk of collision or seven other factors trigger reporting of an incident. The TSB can supply current preliminary accident and incident data on the Canadian railway industry up to December 1996.
On the other hand, Transport Canada's last published commercial motor vehicle accident statistics are for 1993. They expect to publish data for 1994 and 1995 within the next two or three months, but even then there are inconsistencies in definitions and classification among the provinces.
Data from Quebec, for example, is excluded from several statistical tables in Transport Canada reports on commercial vehicle safety. There are no reliable national indicators of vehicle kilometres driven, making it difficult to calculate accident rates such as accidents per vehicle kilometre. And Statistics Canada data on truck net tonne kilometres exclude some private trucking fleets. Because competitors do not pay their full costs and are subject to different regulatory standards, they are able to under-price their services, drain traffic away from the railways, and significantly impact modal equity long term.
Regulations applied to railways are stricter than those imposed on other competing modes of transport. The importance of compatibility and harmonization of fiscal policy, legislation, regulations and processes within Canada and on a continental scale is clear. The reality is less so, not just between Canadian and American railways, but also between Canadian modal competitors.
Several independent studies have concluded that the tax treatment of Canadian railways by federal, provincial and municipal governments is also not competitive with comparative U.S. jurisdictions or with our competition. Canada's stated transportation policy is to diminish government intervention and embrace the concept of user pay. Yet Transport Canada's own estimates are that road users in Canada were subsidized by $5.5 million in 1993. Other examples of modal inequity exist. Fuel taxes paid by tractor trailers cover only 42 per cent of the public road costs they cause. Although trucks make up some 9 per cent of highway traffic, they are responsible for 25 per cent of total road costs.
The impact on the railway industry of progressively higher truck sizes and weights and an inequitable road costing has been very clear, unfortunately, in Eastern Canada, where freight traffic has shifted steadily from rail lines to congested battered roads. There are viable alternatives, but they require sensitive, supportive and common sense public policies.
One of the railway associations new members, for example, the 1,100-mile Iron Road network, which includes operations in Quebec and Nova Scotia, handled nearly 100,000 carloads of rail business last year. This is a company that did not exist three years ago. They kept approximately 275,000 truckloads of freight off federal, provincial, state and municipal highways and generated, very conservatively, net savings of some $120 million annually in highway costs.
Any government programs that further undermine the competitiveness of Canadian railways and ports will encourage the flow of exports to the U.S. rather than Canadian ports and will reduce the overall economic benefits to Canada. There is agreement that there is a problem; there has not been agreement on how to resolve it.
It is clear to us that some issues of regional and provincial significance must be dealt with by higher levels of government that can and will recognize the national role that railways play in developing Canada's economic union and providing access across many jurisdictions to national and export markets.
If you have any questions, we will be pleased to answer them.
Senator Bacon: We are hearing different things from each side -- from the union side and the transportation people. There must be some grey areas. Perhaps you can help to clear up a few areas, because I am at a loss in some cases.
In the UTU brief, they state that railways in Canada seem to have taken on the idea that it is cheaper to hedge their bets by waiting until something happens instead of spending the money beforehand in order to prevent something from happening. Why would they say this to us?
Mr. Ballantyne: I think they obviously have a point of view, a perspective, and clearly a lot of it relates to protection of jobs. Certainly one of the things that we have seen happen in the railway industry, and a lot of other industries, is the replacement of labour by technology, and that is something that has been going on for quite some time and will continue to go on. Hence, my perspective on that is that it is more concerned about the protection of jobs than it is about enhancing safety, which can be done really through new technology. I mean, this is the way that business and society is generally going. It certainly attempts to improve safety, but largely to do it by new technology, which, in fact, is more consistent.
Senator Bacon: Not with more people.
Mr. Ballantyne: That is right -- where there is clearly a place for some number of people who are well trained and properly trained and properly supervised with the right kind of instructions. And as Roger pointed out in the presentation, our industry spends substantial amounts of money on training related to safety for our employees.
Senator Bacon: On page 9, item 40 of their submission, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, who appeared before us this morning, said:
In a recent case, the Goderich and Exeter Railway, a short line railway in southwestern Ontario, part of the US conglomerate RAILTEX, had a derailment of 14 cars which were not inspected after they were re-railed and before they were inter-changed with the Canadian National. The Goderich and Exeter Railway did not notify any of the regulatory bodies of the accident nor did they notify Canadian National of the accident. This instant case was only brought to the light when the Brotherhood approached Transport Canada about the accident and the details and the results thereof. One can only imagine the catastrophic events that were possible had these cars been allowed to continue in railway operations. The Goderich and Exeter Railway was more concerned with the bottom line than safety. Clearly this is an example of where the lack of inspections and regulatory involvement have deteriorated within the industry.
How did this happen?
Mr. Ballantyne: I am not aware of the specifics of that particular accident. How long ago did that one take place?
Senator Bacon: I do not have any dates here, unfortunately.
The Chairman: Within a couple of months. How can an accident like that happen in Canada and not be known to Canadian National and The Railway Association, only to the unions? How can that happen? Senator Bacon has a good point. There has to be some kind of an answer. Who is trying to befoul who? What is going on?
Mr. Cameron: Has Goderich and Exeter been asked that question? I would be pleased to get in touch with them to --
Senator Bacon: And give us the answer?
Mr. Cameron: Yes, absolutely.
Senator Bacon: I would like you to furnish us with the proper information. It cannot be all black; and it cannot be all white. There must be some grey areas in here.
The Chairman: It would be nice to find out what is going on.
Senator Bacon: It is difficult for us sometimes to understand what we hear here.
Mr. Ballantyne: I will respond to that your question, Senator Bacon, as well as to the chairman's.
That kind of an accident clearly should be reported, in several directions probably. In that instance, it should have been reported to Canadian National; the union said it was not. Now, I do not know whether Canadian National has confirmed that they were not notified of it. I would hope that the Goderich and Exeter crew would have notified Canadian National.
Senator Bacon: We met with the union after we met with CN, so we cannot know.
Mr. Ballantyne: In any event, as Roger said, we will find out the details. However, there are a couple of other things to consider, in terms of what normally happens in these cases. First of all, railways that are under federal regulation must report all such accidents to the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, without exception. Railways like the Goderich and Exeter are provincially regulated. They fall under the new Short Line Railway Act of the Province of Ontario. Under that act, there is not the same rigorous requirement to report. The Transportation Safety Board does not have jurisdiction to look into railway accidents on provincially regulated railways.
Our industry is trying to do many things. Through the RAC, we work with all railways in Canada, whether provincially or federally regulated, to make sure that everybody knows the laws and the safety rules and that they buy into the safety rules through our committee structure at the RAC.
The industry, in effect, supports and develops certain safety procedures, and we expect all our members to conform to these procedures. While we cannot force our members to adhere to the safety procedures, there is strong encouragement for them to do so. It is clearly in the interest of the whole industry that we operate safely. If there is a bad accident on a short line railway, the entire industry suffers from that. Hence, our industry is motivated to make sure that everybody, whether provincially or federally regulated, runs safely. In this regard, we make sure that the information is widely dispersed.
We have also been encouraging the federal agencies that are involved in railway regulation, in any way, shape or form, or the investigation of accidents to enter into contracts with the provincial governments to carry out the same service for them. There is real interest on the part of the federal agencies to do that. Transport Canada, whose role it is to inspect railways and ensure that they are running safely under the Railway Safety Act, have entered into formal memorandums of understanding with Ontario and, I think, Nova Scotia, and they are likely to do the same with a number of other provinces. To this end they will be inspecting provincially regulated railways based on the federal safety regime, which is enshrined in the Railway Safety Act, which incidentally is extremely good legislation.
We are encouraging the Transportation Safety Board, whose job it is to investigate accidents and incidents, as an independent agency, to enter into agreements with the provinces to investigate railway accidents and provincially regulated railways, like the Goderich and Exeter, as well.
So it is an issue that is of great concern and interest to the industry. It is an issue that we work on all the time.
The reality is that railways, like every other human endeavour, are run by people; once in a while things fall through the cracks, and all we can to is keep working on it to minimize that happening.
Senator Bacon: Are short lines regulated enough? Or do we need more regulations for short lines?
Mr. Ballantyne: No, we do not need more regulation for short lines. Canada has good legislation in this regard. In the kind of world that we are living in now, it really is world-class, leading regulation, especially on the safety side. The fact that we do have agencies, independent agencies like the Transportation Safety Board, to investigate accidents in most modes is additional overlay that should ensure that the public is well served with a safe transportation agency; that it is not left to the carriers, but that the independent agencies serve a function. And that is important. It is important to us in the business that not only are we operating safely, but also that we be seen to be operating safely, and that that can verified by independent agencies like the TSB.
Mr. Cameron: Let me add more comment. The short lines have made it clear to the Transportation Safety Board, and others, that their preference is to be judged at the highest level of safety standard; in that way, there is no question of one province's standards being better than the next. This allows a common standard across the board. They have made it very clear that they want to be judged equally and fairly.
[Translation]
Senator Rivest: I would like to ask you a question that is more or less along the same lines as Senator Bacon's. It is difficult for a committee to know exactly what labour organizations or management are responsible for.
For example, take improvements to technology and safety; you are telling us that technology enhances safety. But employees appear before the committee and tell us that technology, which has its merits, eliminates jobs. So employees who are working and relating the incidents, whether they are right or wrong -- I am not talking about any incident in particular -- tell us that if things are not as safe or if there are safety problems, it is because there are fewer people, and fatigue, et cetera. It is very difficult for the committee and regulatory bodies to gauge.
I think that railway companies and employees are equally aware of the importance of safety for the public and of the importance of safety for people working in these corporations. Everyone is acting in good faith. There are many aspects of the regulations that come from central bodies that are quite far from what is happening in the field, on a railway line.
Why isn't safety specifically part of collective bargaining? And if it isn't possible, because it is management's right -- I imagine that is what you are going to tell me -- what initiatives do railway companies have in common with their employees?
For example, we were told earlier that CN had an ombudsman to protect workers, for workers' safety. And the workers told us that they were not even aware that there was an ombudsman who was appointed by the company. I imagine that they were not informed. In policy making, with the good intentions corporations and employees have to enhance safety, there seems to be a lack of communication and organization or coordination of efforts and willingness to enhance safety. Is that not your impression?
Why don't you negotiate these aspects, not all aspects, but the aspects that are essential to enhancing the safety of workers and the public in the collective agreement? In other words, workers would have a real say in setting safety standards and practices.
If this is not possible, because these are management's rights, I imagine, what initiatives do you as railway companies use to involve workers in setting and implementing safety standards?
[English]
Mr. Cameron: First of all, with regard to negotiating safety in the collective bargaining agreement, I think the position of the managers, or the management of railways is that safety is an inherent part of managing the business. It is an inherent part of managing the business, just like deciding on what capital spending will be done. The unions are not consulted when the company decides how many new locomotives to build. Safety is part of an inherent part of learning the business, and therefore it is clearly, in my view, and clearly not in the view of the unions, a management prerogative.
There is every interest in working with the employees, both organized labour and those employees that are not covered by any labour agreements, toward improved safety. There are a number of initiatives.
I am not directly an employee of Canadian National, as an employee of the Railway Association of Canada, but we get a copy of the CN's employee publication. It was announced in the CN publication, which goes to every Canadian National employee, that the ombudsman had been appointed.
The Chairman: Who appoints the ombudsman?
Mr. Ballantyne: The ombudsman is appointed by the company.
The other thing is that the Parliament of Canada, in its wisdom, has passed other laws that protect all workers in Canada. It is either Part II of Part III of the Canada Labour Code that governs the occupational safety and health issues, and these apply to railway workers as they apply to any other workers in Canada. So there are those overlays, as well.
In addition, the railways, in collaboration with the unions, do have safety committees, and there are safety committees in various locations across Canada, at least on the two big railways, CN and CP, and on a number of the smaller railways, as well.
And finally, I would reiterate what Roger mentioned in the presentation, and that is $3 million study that was done over the last few years on employee fatigue for running trades employees. That study was sponsored and funded jointly by CN, CP, VIA and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. I should point out that the UTU was invited to participate in that study but declined, either financially or in any other way.
Senator Rivest: Because you believe that that is a management prerogative.
Mr. Ballantyne: Yes, it is. It is a management prerogative and the management invited the employees to participate in that one, which they declined to do.
Mr. Cameron: The benefits for the company, its employees, and their families in that process are widespread.
Just coming for a minute to the ombudsman. The individual, in particular, has very good communication skills and is very well respected by both employees and management, which played a significant role in his selection.
Senator Adams: How many different unions do you have at CN railway?
Mr. Cameron: I am not sure of the exact number at CN. The number of unions has also declined as time has gone on. We were at a meeting last week with one of the short line operators, with 55 employees, and they have seven unions and six agreements for those fifty-five employees, so the number of unions is in that order. It is about seven or eight unions. The operating unions are essentially the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and the United Transportation Union; another union represents train dispatchers; the Canadian Auto Workers represent what used to be a more clerical union; another union represents track maintenance employees; and still another one represents signal maintainers.
There used to be a union for firemen and boilermakers. As the industry changes, so too does the union structure, to a significant degree.
Senator Adams: In reference to Senator Bacon's earlier question about a railway accident, what is the procedure to be followed when a railway accident occurs? Who is to be notified first? What happened in the accident earlier referred to?
Mr. Cameron: Obviously, someone knows when something like that happens, there is no question about that. What we do not know is where the information went, what was done as a result, and we have undertaken to get an answer to.
Union have varied interests. For example, when the beltpack technology was being developed, the union representing the locomotive engineers was given the opportunity to use it, and they declined. The United Transportation Union, which is another operating union, took it on as an activity that would be carried out by their members.
The Chairman: I trust you will appreciate that we have a bit of a dilemma. This is the mid-1990s. I thought we had come into the twentieth century, not to mention that the millennium is around the corner.
Our committee is not on any kind of a witch hunt; we have no axe to grind. We are a group of lay individuals. We have been stonewalled by the railways, and I do not know what you would call it from the unions, if they are not telling us the truth -- and we could only assume that they are. We can only assume that you are.
What are we supposed to do? I ask this rhetorically; I am not inviting you to respond to it. I am just telling you what concerns me deeply; that is, that we wonder what we are doing here in Montreal, on a Tuesday afternoon, listening to conflicting evidence, which I can only hope is the result of a momentum that has been building since the turn of this current century, something we have not been able to get rid of yet, and that is the adversarial momentum.
I plead with you to put it somewhere in the background or you will render the work of an organization such as this, who mean only to further safety, not only useless, but also impossible to achieve.
I appreciate the role of the railway associations. I had two or three questions to ask, related to some of the conflicts here, but I am not going to ask them. I am going to wait until we have had some resolution of what I find reprehensible. For a major derailment not to have been reported is very difficult to believe; that nobody knew about it in the industry, unless you were all off on vacation, I find incredibly hard to understand. I am sure there is an explanation for it, but I find it very difficult to understand.
I have no further questions. I hope you can get the answer I am waiting for. Maybe it was reported, in which event somebody has been lying to us -- and I do not take kindly to that; or perhaps they did not know themselves, perhaps they were misinformed.
Let us hope that all of this can be corrected, and corrected fairly shortly because you fellows are responsible. It is not a game; it is a very difficult task. The Canadian public want to travel, want to avail themselves of the convenience of public transit without fear. If the players cannot be believed, how can confidence in the system be maintained?
In Nova Scotia, we only have VIA anyway, so we are not -- the rail is pretty much out of our lives.
When an opportunity was given to the railways, for example, to do a useful piece of safety work, they would not touch it with a ten-foot pole. I am talking about moving the garbage of 400,000 people 140 or 150 miles, whatever it is, from Halifax to Amherst by rail and then trucking it to a disposal site, rather than putting it in "death valley," Wentworth Valley of Nova Scotia -- not to mention the additional number of trucks that it requires daily to do that.
Frank Barber and I went through there a week or ten days ago and counted eight to ten trucks, and five minutes behind us was a tractor trailer motor vehicle collision that tied up the highway for three and a half to four hours. I am not saying that it was a truck hauling garbage. However, an additional 20 or 30 trucks on a very deadly piece of highway --
Railways were not interested in participating in that because it was a one-of-a-kind situation; profit was their motivation.
Any further questions, colleagues?
Mr. Ballantyne: Senator, would it be possible for me to make a few more comments based on some of the --
The Chairman: We would welcome them.
Mr. Ballantyne: Just a couple of things. To go back to Senator Rivest's questions again about union and management's discussion of safety issues, the other thing I forgot to mention is that under the Railway Safety Act, which is the main legislative base for the operation of railways under federal regulation, there is a requirement, under sections 19 and 20 of that particular act, that when management promulgates or expects to introduce new safety rules, they must give organized labour a chance to consult on the safety aspects of those rules.
Those rules, after the consultation takes place, are then submitted to the Minister of Transport, who must approve those rules before they go into effect. I have taken part directly in the consultation exercises on a number of these safety rules myself, a process that has been, for the most part, very effective. There is good will in the room.
To take the chairman's point about the adversarial approach, clearly collective bargaining, almost by definition, is adversarial, and one of the things that we have been able to do in the consultation process, under the Railway Safety Act, is to remove, to some extent, the adversarial nature of that consultation.
Changes to some rules that have been drafted by management have come about as a result of the input of organized labour. That has happened in a number of cases. I would think that representatives of BLE and UTU, and probably the Canadian Auto Workers, who also represent the people who fix locomotives and freight cars, the maintenance workers, would comment on that as well.
The only other comment I would make -- the last comment I would like to make -- again based on your concern about being stonewalled and getting conflicting views, and to some extent that is understandable, is that there is an independent scorekeeper, and the independent score keeper is the Transportation Safety Board. The TSB do not keep statistics on provincially regulated railways, but they do keep them on federally regulated railways.
To this end and with respect to employee safety, the average number of employee fatalities from 1991 to 1995 was four; 1995, three; last year, a bad year, there were seven. That is seven, three and four people too many.
Our objective each year is no fatalities, and we have not quite reached that yet. There is a strong push on the part of railway managers, as well as the unions, to have a zero-fatality-rate year among our employees; as well, we clearly want to bring down the number of deaths at crossings and those that occur as a result of trespassing.
In terms of the role of the TSB, they investigate accidents in rail, aviation, marine, and pipeline. There are more people killed and injured in motor vehicle accidents in Canada than all other modes combined. The Transportation Safety Board has no role in investigating accidents in the highway mode. Our recommendation to the Parliament of Canada and to the senior bureaucrats in Transport Canada is that the Transportation Safety Board, should changes in legislation to the TSB come about, should have included within its mandate interprovincial commercial transport -- interprovincial buses and trucks. That would probably do as much or more to enhance the safety of the Canadian public than almost anything else than could be done.
The Chairman: You had a couple of good answers to our dilemma, which will get you two brownie points.
Thank you very much, gentlemen.
We now have Don Campbell, Brian James, and Georges Mokbel from the Rubber Association of Canada.
Please proceed, gentlemen.
Mr. Brian James, Ex-President, Rubber Association of Canada: I will make the general statement, and then we can go from there. My name is Brian James, as your chairman said. I retired at the end of December 1996 from the position of the President of the Rubber Association of Canada, which position I held for the last 12 years. Prior to that, I held a variety of positions with the Dunlop Rubber Company, including that of President of Dunlop Canada and Vice-President of the Americas, which is to say North and South. In all, in fact, I have spent 44 years in the tire manufacturing business. It is for this reason that I have been asked by the association to come back from my brief retirement, so far, and make this presentation to you.
My companions today are Don Campbell, my successor as President of the Rubber Association, who came to that position from Industry Canada. Nevertheless, he is very familiar with the tire manufacturing business because he was our contact at Industry Canada for a number of years, and we worked with him very closely. Also with me is Georges Mokbel from the Michelin Company, who is a member of our tire technical committee.
We are here, I think as you know, as volunteers, at our own expense, with a view to trying to help you with your enquiries and to bring you up to date on any matters concerning tire manufacture and tire quality that may interest you. I should explain at the outset that although I have a close familiarity with tire construction and performance in a general sense, I am not a tire technical expert, as such. I am prepared to talk about truck tire performance and truck tire safety from the manufacturer's standpoint, but the matter that seems to have attracted the most attention in the media, however, is that of truck wheels coming loose. To this end, I should explain that I have no experience with wheels or with wheel maintenance. Hence, my comments will be limited to tire maintenance and tire performance.
In reviewing the transcripts of the hearings to date, one notes indicate that there have been a number of comments about tire quality. There have been some suggestions that tires can blow up. I believe that there may be some serious misunderstandings and misconceptions here.
I should explain that tires are made to conform strictly with the quality standards laid down in the Motor Vehicle Safety Act. These Canadian standards are, in practice, international standards, since they are identical with the U.S. Department of Transport standards, which have been adopted by all the major industrial countries in the world. In practice, no new tire is allowed to be sold in North America unless manufactured according to these international quality standards, and each new tire must bear the Department of Transport number which shows the factory where it was made.
Each manufacturer is responsible for ensuring that his product meets or exceeds these minimum standards. Nonetheless, they may be tested at random by Transport Canada and by the U.S. authorities, or indeed by authorities in other countries. If sample tires so tested fail to pass the test, Transport Canada has the authority to demand that the manufacturers institute a recall of the entire production run in question.
However, to my knowledge, there has been only one recall of medium-heavy truck tires in Canada in the last 12 years. I mention 12 years only because that is the period of time that I was with the Rubber Association. In 1990, one manufacturer instituted a voluntary recall, which is to say it was not at the behest of any government authority, on a single line of truck tires which were manufactured in Spain. This was as a precautionary measure because of a suspected manufacturing defect. The majority of the line was successfully retrieved. Having checked with Transport Canada, I have been assured that at present they have absolutely no evidence that new truck tire quality is of any concern. In effect the quality of tires, period, is virtually a non-issue at Transport Canada.
Furthermore, I should tell you that the tire technical committee of the Rubber Association of Canada has been in the habit of meeting with Transport Canada officials twice a year, in May and November, to review matters concerning tire safety and tire quality. No incidents of truck tire safety were dealt with. My successor has likewise encountered no quality problems, despite almost 20 years exposure to the tire industry.
The record for truck tire safety, be they new tires or retreaded tires, is extraordinarily high. Most medium truck tires have a steel casing, which is very strong, and will, with proper care and maintenance, frequently take two retreads in addition to its first life. Average life expectancy for the original tread on a truck tire used on driving wheels can be as high as 500,000, and on trailing wheels can vary between 200,000 and 400,000 kilometres.
On the steering axle, the tread life is of course less, averaging between a 150,000 and 200,000 kilometres. I must emphasize that the biggest single problem with any tire, new or retreated, is lack of proper inflation. Essentially the vehicle rides on a pneumatic cushion of air, and the tires provide the envelope to hold that air. If there is insufficient pressure, then the side wall of the tire will flex excessively, causing a build up of a heat, which could result in a failure of the side wall plies and create a situation where the tire fails or disintegrates. Tires must be checked regularly for minimum inflation.
Serious overloading of the tire creates the same kind of condition with the same sort of results, that is, the possible destruction of the tire in service. Casing failure from manufacturing defects are rare. In fact, most new truck tire are factory X-rayed before being released to inventory. Casing breakdown from under-inflation or overloading is by far the most common cause of tire failure.
With the exception of the steering axles, most truck tires are fitted as duals, which means that if one tire deflates, the one that is carrying on will carry double the load. On the one hand, this means that the vehicle is able to continue its journey, but clearly the ongoing tire is liable to be damaged by the excess weight it is carrying. The driver may, of course, be unaware of the failure.
Unfortunately, some drivers, even those who are aware of the failure, decide to go on to the nearest truck stop where it is more convenient to handle the tire changeover. In certain cases it may, in fact, be safer to carry on to the truck stop than to change a tire on the side of the road.
In either case, what happens is that the damaged tire is dragged along and it is this action that causes pieces to break off and the tire to disintegrate. Despite this, I am not aware of any incident when a tire piece coming off actually caused an accident or caused any damage.
Clearly this is a possibility, and I do not pretend to be aware of any incident of tire failure. Nonetheless, no complaints of this particular kind have ever reached me. Certainly a tire failure problem does not compare with that which occurs when a wheel comes off. I should emphasize that passenger and truck tire quality have steadily improved over the past the past 30 years. The invention and the development of the tubeless steel-belted radial for passenger and tubeless steel casing and belted radial for truck tires has increased tire mileage by some 300 per cent; it has also substantially reduced tire failure. Tire blowouts, as such, were basically a product of a tube-type bias era. When a tube was under pressure and suddenly was deflated, it tended to blow out.
Think of it in terms of a balloon, the rubber is stretched, which is quite different from a inner liner within a tire. Ninety-three per cent of truck tires today are tubeless, and while they may deflate, either slowly or quickly, or disintegrate from being run flat, the fact is that they do not explode in the manner that some tube-type tires did in the past.
Incidentally, in terms of the 93 per cent I mentioned, I do not have actual figures, but I believe that the 7 per cent would be speciality tires, the type used on off-road applications; very few would still be used on on-road applications. I believe that if you check these facts out with the Road Safety Directorate of Transport Canada or with the United States Department of Transport, you will appreciate that truck tire quality has really never been so high, and incidents of truck tire failure attributable to manufacturing defects have never been so low.
I should also point out that the Canadian rubber tire manufacturing industry has, since free trade, been rationalized with U.S. production and is now really part of a North American industry. There is only one manufacturer making medium truck tires here in Canada, the type of truck tires that we are talking about. About 80 per cent of tires manufactured in Canada are exported; about 80 per cent of the tires sold in Canada are made either in the United States or overseas. The tire manufacturing industry is nonetheless an export-orientated industry, and we still sell overseas more tires than we import. The reason for this rationalized exchange of product is that it leads to long runs of a small number of sizes in any one factory, and those are exchanged with other sizes made by the same manufacturers with factories in the United States or elsewhere.
In the tire manufacturing industry, it is a matter of record that long runs not only result in better cost, because of less down time with the machinery, but also result in better quality because of the consistency of production process. The tire manufacturing industry is, however, a global one. The three manufacturers who actually make tires in Canada are the three largest producers in the world. Although this is a highly competitive industry --
The Chairman: Who are those three?
Mr. James: The three are Michelin, Goodyear and Bridgestone Firestone.
Senator Rivest: Which is the best?
Mr. James: I cannot answer that question; however, without doubt they are the three biggest. They have factories all over the world, including North and South American, Europe, and Asia. Although it is a highly competitive industry, quality of product is of paramount importance.
There are a number of other considerations which influence the operation of trucks on Canadian highways, and hence safe tire and wheel practices. There is rapidly increasing truck traffic on the highways due to the cost and convenience of delivery, the ability to deliver door to door, and the flexible scheduling, et cetera, offered by trucks. The arrival of NAFTA, coinciding with a generally low Canadian dollar, has increased the volume of north-south traffic and with it an increased availability of dead-head capacity at cheap rates.
A empty load returning to Chicago from Montreal is always willing to drop a load in Toronto or Buffalo on the way. Deregulation of the trucking industry in both Canada and the United States has inspired brutal competition. I am aware of one shipper who is paying the same rates today, for large volume shipments between Canada and the States, as it did in 1984, despite a corresponding increase in the CPI exceeding 20 per cent.
Within the context of deregulation, a 1988 federal-provincial accord on the implementation of a common safety code for carriers has not proceeded as far or as effectively as it might have. In fact, it may be proving to be inadequate to deal with the trucks safety issue. As you no doubt know, at the federal level there is jurisdiction over new vehicle manufacturing standards, including tires; the provinces have jurisdiction over operational standards. Cut-backs at both levels of government, and apparent inconsistent adaptation on the part of affected bureaucracies, may also be adding to the problems.
Although yet unproved, there seems to be a correlation between lower temperatures and wheel axle failures. On the other hand, it may simply reflect an increasing incidence of potholes in low temperature situations. The growth of vehicular traffic in Canada has far outstripped the construction and maintenance of our highways. The TransCanada highway system is still a 1967 standard, two-lane thoroughfare through most of Northern Ontario and the Maritimes, despite significantly increased traffic density, particularly that of truck traffic.
The abandonment of many railway branch lines in Western Canada, and the entire CPR main line east of Sherbrooke, may also be seen as a contributing factor. Poor maintenance and inspections on the part of some truck operators are certainly a key to the problem of tire failure. On the other hand, there is obviously much more to the issue of road safety than simply truck tires.
I hope that that has been of help to you, and I would be very happy to answer any questions you may have.
[Translation]
Senator Rivest: You emphasized that the industry has improved the quality of its products considerably, but in your brief, you list a host of considerations on usage, like mileage, verifying how inflated tires are, etc. In the trucking industry -- I do not suppose that costs increased considerably as tire performance or resistance improved -- there is the inspection issue. Truckers have a logbook, as they call it, to log the time they put in. Is this logbook under provincial jurisdiction?
Mr. Campbell: I don't know.
Senator Rivest: Take Quebec for example. Mr. Brassard, the Minister of Transport, announced much stricter regulations for trucks, for mechanical and tire inspections. You, as producers, set the standards; you mentioned that, but who verifies them? Who informs companies so that they don't abuse or push them to the limit? There is no one who verifies that? Do provincial inspectors verify tire mileage?
Mr. Georges Mokbel, Manager, Product Engineering, Michelin Tires Canada Ltd.: Not the mileage, but mainly the speed. For mileage, there is a point where the tire wears -- especially in Canada because of the traction needed for the snow -- where we automatically remove the tires 30 per cent earlier than our American neighbours.
Senator Rivest: Is there an organization of some kind that forces the owner of a truck or a fleet of trucks to change the tires? I ask you that because you see an incredible amount of tires on Highway 20 between Quebec and Montreal, for example. It is not only dangerous for truckers, but also for other drivers.
We know that in transport, they do almost everything they can to get around the regulations, whether it be the logbooks or something else. I imagine that for tires, fleet owners put trucks on the road even if they know that the tires are more worn than what manufacturers' standards recommend, don't they?
Mr. Mokbel: I do not think so, because they are very aware that they must --
Senator Rivest: Does it cost more when the tires are bad, because gasoline costs go up?
Mr. Mokbel: Not only because of that; if there is a tire problem, the trucker must stop along the way and call his pickup; he has to call someone to change the tires, so he is delayed. With today's competition, they are even satellites monitoring each truck to know exactly where it is so that it can be contacted for another load. So vehicle maintenance is very tightly controlled.
Senator Rivest: Manufacturers' standards are obviously under federal jurisdiction, that is clear. It has been determined.
Mr. Mokbel: Yes, that is correct.
Senator Rivest: However, I assume that the provinces are responsible for tire verification standards. Since it is a provincial responsibility, it can vary from one province to another as it probably varies from one state to another for international transportation, in the same way law books and regulations vary.
Mr. Mokbel: I have seen fines that the police or Transport Canada inspectors have given when a disk is used on the speedometer.
Mr. Campbell: The tattletale.
Mr. Mokbel: Using this disk, they can see if the vehicle was driven at 120 kilometres an hour, then issue a fine.
Senator Rivest: I think that truckers call the inspectors "green"?
Mr. Mokbel: Transport inspectors?
Senator Rivest: Do they check the tires when they do the mechanical checks at the station?
Mr. Mokbel: Yes, they have to. There are a lot of problems in that area.
Senator Rivest: And it is under provincial regulations?
Mr. Campbell: Yes, under provincial regulations.
Senator Rivest: Which vary from one province to another?
Mr. Mokbel: There are wear indicators on the tires with different structures and grades.
Senator Rivest: You said or you seem to be saying at the end of your brief that an attempt was made in the provinces to standardize regulations to some extent or to verify tire conditions and that it was not very successful; each province does what it wants; it is a bit strange.
[English]
Mr. Don Campbell, President, Rubber Association of Canada: That, senator, is the problem. The federal level sets the standards, but the operation of motor vehicles is a provincial responsibility. The operation of truck traffic is a provincial right, or a state right if we are referring to the U.S. It varies from state to state and from province to province, of course, taking into account the standard of the roads, or whatever else that are there.
Senator Rivest: The weather.
Mr. Cameron: Taking into account the local conditions. It is often delegated to the Department of Transport, who may or may not have Department of Transport highway inspectors; most provinces do. It is often delegated to the local police or the provincial or state police. Hence, there is a wide difference in the operation of vehicles within different jurisdictions, a wide difference in the enforcement. Basically, the overall control falls in the cracks.
[Translation]
Senator Rivest: Let's say for example that a truck from New York or Pennsylvania arrives in Quebec, do Quebec regulations apply?
[English]
Mr. Campbell: Most certainly, it is on Quebec roads.
[Translation]
Senator Rivest: Then when it goes to Halifax, do that province's regulations apply?
Mr. James: That is right.
Senator Rivest: Payloads also vary; there is talk about tires, but what about the weight?
Mr. Mokbel: The standards are the same for tires.
Senator Rivest: For manufacturing?
Mr. Mokbel: Yes, they are the same for manufacturing. We all follow the T.R.A. and Transport Canada.
Senator Rivest: Yes, you said that in the United States it is standardized.
Mr. Mokbel: It is more or less standardized at the international level as well. Only the payloads change. The axle load changes from one province to another. That is why in Quebec there are more axles, to increase the load. There are air-lift axles. They are necessary for Washington and the other American States, because a trucker cannot have more than three axles. From the load point of view, the main criteria is really the condition of the road; it is based on what can damage the asphalt.
Senator Rivest: Quebec's roads must not be among the best?
Mr. Mokbel: I have no comment on that.
Senator Rivest: Fine.
[English]
Senator Bacon: On page 5 of your brief, you mention that although this is a highly competitive industry, the fact is that the quality of the product is of paramount importance. Do you have any idea how much money is spent? Are any large sums of money spent by the industry on research and technology, or do you make any recommendations as an association?
Mr. James: Yes, certainly; it is in the millions and millions of dollars. Without wanting to make Georges Mokbel blush, I should say that the big advance that took place was the development of the steel-belted radial, which of course had a very damaging effect on the industry because any time you take a product and give it three times the life it used to have, obviously you reduce the market. That has been one of the major things that has led to an extreme price cutting and competition within the industry.
How, I would say, yes, it is very much a research-and-development-orientated industry. I do not have a figure in my mind, but is certainly runs into the millions of dollars. The only thing, of course, is that here in Canada, we are not at the centre of things -- Bridgestone is Japanese, Michelin is French, and Goodyear of course is American -- and so the degree of research and development done in Canada is rather small. But certainly those three companies do spend large sums of money trying to out do one another and trying to improve the quality.
Senator Adams: You talked about tires lasting for many kilometres. I think that some time ago, in Ottawa, our committee had some information about the various regulations for truck drivers between the U.S. and Canada. If memory serves me, I think that in the U.S., they can drive ten hours a day, up to 80,000 pounds; in Canada, I believe the corresponding numbers are 13 hours a day, up to 130,000, pay load and transport trucks.
You mentioned tires that could last up to 500,000 kilometres and others that had a life of between 150,000 up to 200,000 kilometres. With regard to my car, after a year I notice that the front tires especially are usually worn out a little bit on one side.
Are there truck owners who believe that they should change their tires around, turn them, et cetera? Are there any regulations to that effect?
Mr. James: I am not aware of any regulation, although I think it is a general practise in the trucking industry. The industry advises passenger tire owners to rotate their tires to get a more even rate of wear.
Basically the mileage that I was quoting here were to give an indication of the kind of quality standards that have been adopted. However, there is no doubt that proper maintenance, including the changing of positions of tires, will improve the mileage. No question about that.
I suggest that if you find you have excess wear on one side you should rotate your tires; also, check your alignment. With the state of some of our roads, wheels do tend to get out of alignment relatively easily, so it is well worth checking that one out.
Mr. Mokbel: If I may add, proper maintenance suggests an alignment every 25,000 kilometres.
As we know, it is a very competitive industry. If a driver wore out his tires quickly, say, in 100,000 kilometres instead of 200,000, he is losing money because he will have to remove the tires and put them on the trailer. What they are doing instead is spending money on maintenance and alignment of the tires. They spend a lot of money in maintenance.
Senator Adams: Yes, I think that some of the tires that are coming off trucks do so because of non-alignment and worn out bearings, et cetera.
Mr. James: As far I know, we are not talking about tires coming off rims, although obviously they may be pulled off if the tire is deflated and the vehicle continues down the road for a long way, then it could start; but I think the biggest problem we seem to be faced with is actually wheels coming off the axles and that really is not the fault of the tire.
Senator Adams: Yes, I understand that. In the meantime, the chairman who has been driving the main highways between Nova Scotia and Ottawa, and he has seen a lot of tires blown out on the highway. What is your maximum for the ply for the tires?
Mr. James: I will let Georges give you the details, but first I will give you the generality. Years ago, before the days of steel, we used to think in terms of the number of plys and adding strength. However, with the advent of steel, thickness has come to be seen as the enemy rather than the friend, because the greater the thickness the more heat you generate with the movement of the tire. The advent of the radial with the steel casing and with the steel belts allows the manufacturers to reduce the number of plys but to increase the strength. With increased strength and less bulk, what you have is a much safer tire because it will roll cooler. Heat is the biggest enemy of tires.
If you think of under-inflation, the more the tire flexes, the deeper it flexes, the more likely it is to break down. If it is properly inflated, with the proper amount of load carrying capacity, then it could go on -- I will not say forever, but it will have a very long life. If you under-inflate a tire, then the number of plys is not really important. It was years ago. Thirty and 40 years ago, a six-ply tire was considered better than a four-ply tire. That is not so today.
Mr. Mokbel:We can have the density of steel per square inch to meet six-ply, 10-ply, 12-ply, 18-ply, 22-ply, but there is only one-ply steel.
The Chairman: Of the three major manufacturers, are any of them in the retread business?
Mr. James: I think actually all of them are.
The Chairman: In a big way?
Mr. James: Yes. I do not know what percentage they would have, but perhaps Georges could speak to that.
Mr. Mokbel: We advise our customers to retread as much as possible, for environment reasons as well. Retreading is part of recycling. So I think it is awareness of retreading those tires. We have a very strong casing that can do the first life, second life and a third life, and we do encourage everybody to use retreads.
Mr. James: I should just interject here that we are talking truck tires; our remarks are confined to truck tires. The construction of passenger tires is very different. However, in terms of truck tires, yes, the industry encourages retreading, and the casings are made to be retreaded.
Now, the number of retreads they may take largely depends on the care and maintenance of that tire; the retreader must examine the casing very carefully and decide whether or not it is suitable for retread.
The Chairman: What can you tell us about the use of "economical tires" in the trucking industry in Canada?
Mr. James: Are you referring to somebody's advertising suggestion?
The Chairman: Not at all. When you put cheap tires on a truck, they call them "economical tires." You do not put an economical tire on your drive wheel, nor do you put it on your steering frame; you put it somewhere in between, and they call them economical tires. You rarely see a front tire or a drive tire blow out on a truck; it is generally one of those economical tires in between. I do not give a damn what you see; I have seen them blow sideways.
Mr. James: All I can say is what I have already said -- I do not know of anybody making a tire under the guise of it being an economical tire. Any tire that is manufactured must meet the minimum standards set down; otherwise it is illegal to sell it. I do not know of any problems arising from these economical tires.
As a matter of fact, there is something of a shortage of truck tire casings in Canada, because people want them for retreading.
The Chairman: The tires that I have seen blown out between Halifax and Ottawa -- there is nothing left but bits and pieces.
Mr. Campbell: I think, senator, that that is more centrifugal force throwing them off.
Let me try something here; bear with me a second. Pretend this is a truck tire and it goes all the way around. It is just an envelope that holds the air. When that portion of the tire is on the bottom, it is squeezed down like this; when it is on the top of the tire, it is up like this. So each time the tire rotates once, it does this.
That tire may rotate at 5,000 rpm when it is going down the road. It is this flexing on the side walls that builds up the heat and causes the side walls to separate the tread and the belt from the casing of the tire. If the tire is properly inflated, and if it is decently maintained to begin with, it will take normal loads. However, if you run it so that it is always like this, it flexes more, it starts to come apart, and 5,000 rpm will wing that rubber pretty damn far. That is what you are seeing on the road. The road is bad down there; I understand the horror. As well, the potholes and other things do not help.
The Chairman: Mr. Barber is my witness, we have seen some horrors. So then what you are telling me is that the retread shop in the industrial park in Dartmouth -- they have small truck tire, not large ones -- must have everything that he recaps inspected; that it must meet the national standard?
Mr. James: No, that is a different situation. There are no performance standards for retreads. There are manufacturing guidelines only. Retreading is a provincial jurisdiction matter. The standard which are in place for new tires are performance standards, not manufacturing standards. Hence, Transport Canada can take a series of tires and test them and run them, in effect, to death to make sure that they pass the performance standards. However, it is difficult to do that with a retread because no two retread casings are identical. Once the tire has been out on the road and has been used -- it may have been used by somebody who is very careful, who maintains it well, and the casing is in good shape; the other one, run by my neighbour, may have been abused -- it becomes a matter for the retreader to very carefully examine that casing. Many of them do so with X-ray equipment, but they have to do it very carefully to make sure that the casing is capable of being retreaded.
I do not know whether you can add to that, Georges.
Mr. Mokbel: There is a complete industry for retreading and how to inspect the tires. Some of the X-ray equipment costs more than $1 million per machine, only to X-ray those casings before retreading. In the industry, there is a procedure where you put the casing inside of a chamber -- it is the same process that is used at NASA to check for any leakage or any separation between all the plys. It is exactly the same process. All the casings will go through this chamber and computer screen to check if there is any separation. If there is any separation, the casing will be for scrap automatically.
Every dealer who retreads tires has a machine -- for example, the Bandag rents at $25,000 a month. We have technicians to train those guys on a constant basis. At our training centre, École à Montréal, we train all of those technicians.
The Chairman: How many retreaders would there be in Canada?
The Chairman: Retreaders.
Mr. James: I do not know.
Mr. Mokbel: Almost every tire dealer who sells truck tires wants the end user to come back to his business for a retread, so almost every --
The Chairman: You are telling me that the retread business is lucrative enough that dealers will spend $1 million for equipment?
Mr. Mokbel: Yes. I am not talking about small dealers, like Mr. Muffler. We are talking about truck dealers.
The Chairman: Several hundred?
Mr. Mokbel: Yes, there would be several hundred.
The Chairman: Several hundred?
Mr. Mokbel: Probably, yes.
Mr. James: I think Harvey Brodsky is coming to see you tomorrow, and he probably has a better handle on that than we would.
The Chairman: What about aeroplane tires?
Mr. James: Well, that is a very special product. One must bear in mind that they have to go from zero to enormous speeds, as well as enormous heat build-up in a very short period of time, particularly when they are landing.
Mr. Campbell: Forty thousand feet at forty blow.
Mr. James: That is right. They undergo enormous changes in temperature and speed, et cetera.
Retreaders are very fond of saying that aircraft tires are retreaded, therefore they must be fine. But bear in mind that you cannot put a lot of thickness of rubber on an aircraft tire, because the thicker the rubber, the greater the heat build-up. Take the example of a 747 coming in for a landing. That plane will hits the ground at, I do not know what speed; suddenly those tires go from forty below to heaven knows what heat. Therefore, they make the tread on the aircraft tire thin, because it has to dissipate heat.
It does not have to go very far, in terms of distance, only along the runway, but nonetheless the tires have to be kept running as cool as possible; thus, the casings are retreaded several times, because they want to keep a thin area of the tread, so that the heat can be dissipated quickly.
Mr. Mokbel: There are two casings in an aircraft tire. Instead of using polyester, we use kevlar, which is expensive. As well, the rubber compound is different, because, as Brian mentioned, we have to run these tires as cool as possible. Also, they are regulated as to the number of takeoffs and landings. So whatever we do with the tire -- they have to remove the tire, for security reasons, let's say after 100 takeoffs. So that is why airplane tires are retreaded so many times.
Mr. Campbell: Another issue with respect to aircraft tires is that when you spin that tire up -- you have a big gyroscope there. If you have a heavy weight of rubber around the outside, you have a very large gyroscope there, and that is now tucked into the wings of the aeroplane. It affects stability and a lot of other things. They do not want a heavy tire for that reason.
The Chairman: Some of us are old enough to remember the old tires. Will there be another quantum breakthrough in tire construction? Is any research taking place right now in the sense of a breakthrough, where we will see something new, say, 25 years into the new millennium?
Mr. James: Well, if there is I certainly do not know anything about it, in terms of construction. I think where the changes are still taking place, the improvements are taking place, is more in compounds. Compounds are changing very substantially. There are certain environmental pressures for the industry to try to use a little bit more reclaim, which used to be successful in the days of the cross-ply tire. I think quite a lot of improvements are taking place. In fact, in the area of mileage especially, it is continuously improving.
One of the disadvantages is that the vehicle manufacturers take that advantage and make the vehicle more manoeuvrable, which counteracts the improvement you have achieved in tire wear. I am sure that if you can take today's tires and put them on a pre-war automobile, you would probably get four or five times the wear out of it, because the suspension systems were so different. I think there are improvements still coming in compounding.
I personally do not know of any improvement or major change in terms of a major breakthrough in construction.
Mr. Mokbel: We have started to replace the carbon black, which is a major factor in construction, with silica. Silica, as you know, is sand that can be found at the beach. Fuel efficiency is important, and trucks are going faster and faster; they are bigger, aerodynamic, and the tires have to conform to these changes. So in designing the tires, we want to have the lowest rolling resistance, and we use silica. We will not be replacing the carbon black totally; the percentage of silica is very, very small. This has just begun to take place over the past two or three years.
Mr. Campbell: Passenger car tires will get light in weight, too, because as the car designers try to improve fuel efficiency, the body of the car is getting lighter and therefore the unsprung mass, that is, the part carried on the axles, and the tires will have to get lighter, going into harmonics and other things. They will get lighter.
Mr. James: However, I think that it is safe to say that manufacturers are very conservative, because it is the kind of industry that if you make a mistake and something goes wrong, you can get a very bad reputation in a hurry. A few years ago, one passenger tire manufacturer did go slightly off the rails and in this regard I would say that they still may be suffering just a little bit in reputation.
Mr. Campbell: They lost the company; it is now owned by the Japanese.
Senator Adams: If, as you say, lighter cars are being manufactured now, what will happen if and when electric cars come out? Will they be heavier or lighter? Will special tires be required?
Mr. James: Well, some tires have been designed for use on electric cars and they are lighter. I do not know much about them. All I know is that they have been made experimentally. In many respects, I suspect that they will not need to be quite as tough as today's regular tires, but whether that is true or not, I do not know.
Mr. Mokbel: I am involved in a couple of projects with General Motors and Ford on electric cars. In fact, we will deliver, perhaps before the end of this week, some electric tires for that. I am working also with McGill University, Queen's University, Université de Montréal and Western University in regard to solar cars. So, yes, in 25 years, or so, we will have solar cars and electric vehicles.
Mr. Campbell: Bear in mind that of the 18 million vehicles assembled each year in North America, less than 20,000 are electric vehicles.
Mr. James: It is an interesting product and most people do not stop to realize that so far there is no alternative to the tire.
The Chairman: No, there is not, is there, but there has to be an alternative to an unsafe truck tire. Proper inflation, proper maintenance, an improvement in road bed and road surface are necessary for safe truck tires.
Mr. Campbell: Coordinating the federal and provincial legislation might help a little bit, also.
The Chairman: Gentleman, thank you very much indeed.
The committee adjourned.