Proceedings of the Subcommittee on
Transportation Safety
Issue 1 - Evidence for October 5, 2000
OTTAWA, Thursday, October 5, 2000
The Subcommittee on Transportation Safety of the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications met this day at 12:25 p.m. to examine the state of transportation safety and security in Canada and to complete a comparative review of technical issues and legal and regulatory structures with a view to ensuring that transportation safety and security in Canada are of such high quality as to meet the needs of Canada and Canadians in the 21st century.
Senator J. Michael Forrestall (Chairman) in the Chair.
[English]
The Chairman: Honourable senators, the purpose of our meeting is to inquire into the state of transportation safety and security in Canada. Our existence dates back to the concerns of Senator Keith Davey about highway safety. The nature of provincial and federal responsibilities led us to broaden our horizons to embrace all modes of transportation. We have conducted a very fruitful examination of transportation generally, with a more in-depth study of air transportation. We are now moving on to study truck transportation.
We are fortunate to have with us today, from Transport Canada, Mr. Derek Sweet, the director of Road Safety Programs.
Mr. Derek Sweet, Director, Road Safety Programs, Transport Canada: Thank you, senator. It is a pleasure to be with you here today. I will open with some remarks about road safety in general and then turn to commercial vehicle safety, which I believe is of particular interest to you today. I will then be pleased to try to respond to any questions.
As I am sure you are all aware, the motor vehicle is a pervasive fact of life in Canada. It represents 90 per cent of all personal travel. Eighty per cent of our freight moves by truck. There are 20 million drivers and 17 million registered vehicles in a country with a population of about 30 million, and all of those travel on about 900,000 kilometres of road.
In Canada, we can claim steady progress in road safety. Currently, we are pleased to note, road fatalities are at record low levels, this in spite of a doubling in the number of vehicles and drivers over the past two decades.
[Translation]
Notwithstanding, road collisions still kill nearly 3,000 Canadians every year, and injure over 200,000. The cost is staggering -- over $10 billion per year.
[English]
A huge cost results from traffic collisions in Canada.
Mr. Chairman, road safety in Canada is very much a cooperative endeavour. You alluded to the federal-provincial arrangements in your opening remarks. Our history of steady road safety progress attests to the high level of commitment and cooperation among our many partners. The combined efforts of the academic community, vehicle manufacturers, regulators, provincial and municipal police forces, public safety organizations, and individual Canadians, have markedly contributed to reducing serious injuries and fatalities on our roads.
Our progress toward safer roads has been born of cooperation, and this is one of the hallmarks of an initiative called Road Safety Vision 2001, a nation-wide effort with the goal of making Canada's roads the safest in the world. You will agree that that is an ambitious goal, but quite appropriate. The program was adopted by the federal and provincial ministers of transport in 1996.
[Translation]
Road Safety Vision 2001 has the following overall objectives: improving collaboration amongst road safety agencies; increasing public awareness; toughening enforcement; and improving national road safety data.
[English]
The program has been a success. Fatalities are down 5 per cent over the period and are at their lowest level in more than 40 years. To continue the momentum that has been generated, at their annual meeting in Edmonton today, transport ministers will be considering a successor initiative to this program to encompass an even wider range of road safety targets.
Road safety in Canada is very much a shared responsibility. The federal government has responsibility for regulating the safety standards of new vehicles and for the safety of extra-provincial motor carriers -- those being trucks and buses that move between provinces or countries. This latter responsibility has historically been largely delegated to provinces by virtue of their responsibility for licensing and highway enforcement.
All of this requires coordination. That is accomplished mainly through an organization called the Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators, CCMTA for short. This administrative body comprises road safety officials, such as myself, from every province and territory as well as the federal government. It includes several hundred associate members from industry, associations and the like. The CCMTA reports to the council of deputy ministers of transport, who met in Edmonton yesterday.
[Translation]
The mission of the CCMTA is to provide a forum that contributes to safe and efficient road transportation. Most road safety matters in Canada are handled through three CCMTA committees that deal with issues related to commercial carriers, drivers and vehicles, and research.
[English]
I should like to move from the general to the more specific motor carrier sector -- in particular, commercial trucking. Put quite simply, commercial trucking is a critical industry sector. I am sure you are all aware of that. The value of trucking in Canada, as measured by freight revenue, is over $40 billion per year. Trucking accounts for 80 per cent of all surface freight revenues, as I indicated earlier.
As you know, the industry is diverse. We estimate that there are over 700,000 heavy vehicles in Canada. A heavy vehicle is one that is over 4,500 kilograms. There are nearly 250,000 fleet operators.
Over the last decade, trucking activity has grown at more than twice the rate of the economy as a whole. It is an increasingly important transportation sector. Between 1991 and 1997, domestic freight kilometres increased by over 50 per cent in Canada. Canada-U.S. cross border kilometres were over two and a half times their 1991 levels. We are seeing a great increase in north-south trade -- most of it by truck.
In spite of this high level of activity, the safety record of the industry has improved over the decade. Even considering much greater exposure, the number of collisions involving commercial vehicles has remained constant.
Despite this stability, there are still more than 54,000 accidents a year that involve commercial vehicles. While commercial vehicles are involved in only about 8 per cent of all collisions, those same collisions account for about 20 per cent of all fatalities. We all understand that. These are heavier vehicles, and when you come in contact with a heavier vehicle, the consequences are usually more severe.
I mentioned earlier that the federal government also has responsibility to regulate the safe operations of extra-provincial motor carriers. I noted that that responsibility is largely delegated to the provinces, and we do that through the MVTA, the Motor Vehicle Transport Act. As you know, amendments to the act are proposed in Bill C-28, which was read for the first time in the House last March.
The framework for commercial vehicle safety in Canada is founded on a very important instrument called the National Safety Code, the NSC. That code has 15 standards that cover all aspects of heavy vehicle safety including the driver, the vehicle, and the carrier -- the company.
[Translation]
The Code is not law, but the standards are to be used as templates for enacting federal and provincial regulations. The Code was developed, and is kept current, through the CCMTA process. The intent of the Code is to provide a nationally-consistent regulatory regime for motor carriers.
[English]
Two of the more important standards of the NSC concern commercial driver hours of service. I think that you have a specific interest in the hours of service and in carrier safety ratings.
Federal and provincial driver hours of service regulations are patterned after the National Safety Code standards. There is a specific standard, No. 9, that deals with commercial driver hours of service. That standard is outdated and complex. In order to reflect recent research on fatigue done by us and by the United States, the standard is being revised by a CCMTA committee that includes representatives of all governments, the carrier industry and other stakeholders.
The focus of the revised regime is to reduce opportunities for fatigue. For example, it is being proposed that driver rest time be increased by 25 per cent, from 8 hours to 10 hours per day. Consultations will be undertaken this fall, and the final standard will require CCMTA approval. After that is secured, governments will consider regulatory changes.
The safety rating standard, which is the second very important standard, will require that a rating be given to every truck and bus carrier in Canada. That rating will be assigned by the province in which the carrier is registered and will be based on that carrier's safety performance, wherever it operates. The standard is currently being implemented.
The amendments to the Motor Vehicle Transport Act that are contained in Bill C-28, which I mentioned earlier, will focus on carrier safety and will be based upon the National Safety Code and the safety rating standard in particular.
[Translation]
International harmony is also important. About 75 per cent of Canada's nearly $500 billion trade with the United States is carried by truck. Mexico is a much smaller, but growing market.
[English]
Clearly, it is important that trucks be able to work smoothly and safely in all three countries. To make this a reality, NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, established a committee to harmonize commercial vehicle standards. Transport Canada leads the Canadian delegation in regular meetings with our American and Mexican counterparts.
Mr. Chair, my comments have been brief, but I hope they are of some use in setting the scene. I would be pleased to respond to any questions you may have. I should add that a couple of the issues that you may be interested in are not entirely within my shop, but I will certainly do my best to respond to all of your questions. If I come up short in some regard, we will make sure that we get the more detailed answers to you.
The Chairman: Thank you very much. You have provided some statistics that are very interesting. I find it quite commendable that a near goal would be to maintain the level of incidents, notwithstanding the blossoming increase in traffic. Nevertheless, the number of deaths on the highways is not acceptable. Obviously there are things we can do to help maintain that level. If we could get zero growth in the number of accidents, that would be wonderful. There are several ways to go about doing that.
Senator Adams: Since our committee began, about 3,000 people a year have died in traffic accidents. You are saying that that number has gone down by about 5 per cent in 40 years.
Mr. Sweet: I will provide a point of clarification on that bit of data. Our road safety vision program came into effect in 1996. Since that time, traffic fatalities have gone down about 5 per cent. Over the last 20 years or 25 years, the number of road fatalities has been cut in half. If we look back to the mid-1970s, for example, approximately 6,000 people a year were killed on Canada's highways. Over the last 20 or 25 years we have cut fatalities in half, but at the same time the number of vehicles and drivers has doubled. One curve is certainly going the right way; the other two are increasing quite dramatically. We are certainly making steady progress, but as the chairman has pointed out, 3,000 deaths a year on the roads -- representing more than 90 per cent of all transportation-related fatalities -- is still far too many.
Senator Adams: Are the figures similar in the United States? Do you have a comparison between Canada and the United States with regard to accident figures? They have 200 million people and we have 30 million.
Mr. Sweet: Our objective is to have the safest roads in the world. We do attempt to measure our performance compared with other countries around the world, including the United States. This will likely not be the first time you will hear me say this today, but getting good road safety data is always a challenge. Making international comparisons is a challenge as well because it is difficult to find numbers that we can compare with other countries. Having said all of that, Canada at the moment rates ninth in the world, if you compare the ratio of deaths per registered vehicle. Using that same measure, the United States would rank 12th.
Senator Adams: Since many of the short runs on the railways were cut out, are there a lot more trucks on the roads?
Mr. Sweet: To my knowledge, we have not even attempted to make any correlation between highway accidents and activity on the railways. We can say with certainty that we have seen encouraging, almost annual decreases in road fatalities over that period of 20 or so years. Only in very few instances have there been any increases over that period. Certainly I am safe to say there have been very few years where there has been a significant increase from one year to the next. That is an encouraging trend, but certainly there is much more work to do.
Senator Adams: Regarding the weather and the safety of the roads, will you be able to reduce the figure of 3,000 highway fatalities per year with greater road safety, such as sanding or salting?
Mr. Sweet: I was not trying to avoid your point about weather. Road safety is a very complex bit of business. It involves drivers and behaviour. It involves vehicles. It involves road design and, you are quire right, it involves the environment. Road conditions are certainly a factor in road safety.
We do keep data on the contribution of the environment -- of weather -- to road accidents. It is safe to say that it is not one of the more important factors. It is a factor, for sure, but there is no doubt that driver behaviour is the most important factor when it comes to road collisions. However, you are quite right that weather is a factor. We do have data. When police report on an accident, they are required to assess the weather conditions, whether the pavement was dry and so on. We do have national data we could provide to you, if you are interested, on weather conditions at the time of road collisions.
Senator Adams: I live about 75 kilometres outside Ottawa. I also live in the Arctic. Sometimes I meet big transport trucks on the highway. A transport truck can hold its own, even with four or five inches of snow on the highway, and a car cannot. It would seem that a transport truck can travel 80 or 90 kilometres an hour on the highway and the car can travel maybe 30 or 40 kilometres an hour. If a car on a highway meets a transport truck and the truck is going 80 or 90 kilometres an hour, all of a sudden the windshield will be splashed with snow or mud. Is the provincial government looking at the issue of devices to keep snow flying from the big transport trucks?
Mr. Sweet: There are devices called splash and spray devices. You may have seen them on some transport trucks. They are like a broom or fabric hanging down.
Senator Adams: They used to be made of rubber.
Mr. Sweet: That is right. Vehicle safety standards are the responsibility of the federal government, under the Motor Vehicle Safety Act. Our researchers have taken a look at the performance of those devices, and they do not feel that the effectiveness of those devices really warrants mandating their installation, at least not at the current time. At Transport Canada we have not required the installation of those devices. You do see them from time to time. I suppose some firms feel they might be useful, so you do see them on the odd truck. Generally speaking, you will not find those splash and spray devices on many trucks in Canada.
The Chairman: I have in the back of my mind a sustainable objective of zero growth. Do you have any idea when we might achieve that objective, not a relative lowering, but an absolute? First, is it a reasonable assumption for this committee to make, that there are things that can been done? It is reasonable to assume that we can attach a negative factor to this?
Mr. Sweet: It is reasonable at least to strive for negative growth. Road Safety Vision 2001 officially comes to an end next year. As I indicated, we are now considering a successor program and we are targeting different areas. We are looking for specific reductions in fatalities, for example, in young drivers, on rural roads, for commercial vehicle instances, and so on. We have seven, eight, perhaps ten specific areas in which we would like to see absolute reductions in fatalities. If we added this all together, we could certainly come up with a targeted reduction for fatalities for Canada over the next nine or ten years. Mr. Chairman, I would suggest that an objective of a specific reduction in fatalities is certainly within the realm of possibility.
Senator Spivak: Mr. Sweet, you state in your brief that the focus of the revised regime is to reduce opportunities for fatigue. That is not the information that was given at the recent CRASH conference -- the conference in Toronto of Canadians for Responsible and Safe Highways -- particularly by people who are experts in fatigue. You have not accepted, as I understand it -- but perhaps I could be corrected -- the prohibition on driving from 2:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m., which is when drivers are most fatigued, according to the research. As I understand it, Canada does not have the black box that would absolutely record the hours driven. It is stated that this new regime will allow drivers to drive 84 hours to 90 hours at a stretch, and seven days with only one day of rest. People who are experts in fatigue say that it is absolutely necessary to have at least two days of rest for the body rhythm to adjust. I must regard your statement with some reserve.
You said that consultations will be held this fall. Who will hold those consultations? The federal government?
Mr. Sweet: You make a number of interesting points. If you wish me to start with consultations, I will stick with that for a moment.
Senator Spivak: You could comment on all of them.
Mr. Sweet: I assume we have time, Mr. Chair.
Senator Spivak: These are specific and detailed items. They are not pie in the sky, they are actual details.
Mr. Sweet: I understand. We are talking, of course, about the proposed revisions to the National Safety Code standard on commercial driver hours of service. It is a very complex matter, as I am sure senators can appreciate. There are many experts with many views on the issue.
Senator Spivak: These were the views presented in a report done for you.
Mr. Sweet: That is correct.
Senator Spivak: Those are the experts you have chosen.
Mr. Sweet: We engaged a panel of experts to provide us with some independent research advice, and that panel made many suggestions. We have accepted most of their recommendations. There are a couple of recommendations that were not accepted or were only partially accepted. The senator has pointed out one or two of those. It is fair to say that, in an area as complex as this, it perhaps is not surprising that given a cornucopia of expert advice, not 100 per cent of all advice would be taken. We did, however, accept the vast majority of the recommendations of our expert panel.
"Black box," by the way, is a term used for an electronic apparatus that would record, among other things, the number of hours that a driver works. During the course of our study over the last couple of years, we at Transport did engage a consultant to assess for us the issue of black boxes. We have a report, which is available to you. The report is inconclusive. There are few carriers in North America who use those devices. The cost benefit of black boxes was a big issue, particularly for small truckers. As you can appreciate, there are far more small truckers in Canada and the United States than there are large truckers.
You may be aware that these sorts of devices have been mandated in Europe for some time now, about 20 years. Our researcher failed to come up with any assessment of the utility of the devices in Europe. We found that quite astounding. Given the seeming lack of conclusive evidence that those devices might be warranted, the CCMTA committee revising that regulation chose at this point not to recommend that they be mandated. As you know, in the United States, which is also going through a similar exercise, the draft regulation does mandate those devices. However, as I am sure you also know, many aspects of the American proposal are drawing significant reaction. I would suggest that it is pure speculation at this point to try to divine what the final rule in the United States might comprise.
On the issue of 84 hours of driving at a stretch, I would make several comments, if I might. Currently, commercial drivers can drive up to 108 hours at a stretch, during a seven-day period. You are quite correct, senator, that a driver under the proposed regime could drive 84 hours. That is a very useful reduction from 108 hours.
We should bring a bit of precision to what we mean by "at a stretch." That 84 hours of driving time would be interspersed within that stretch with 36 consecutive hours of time off. That 36-hour rest period would provide for two significant sleep periods. The research is telling us that that is quite sufficient by way of rest time during that stretch to allow a driver to adequately recover.
The circadian rhythm that you mentioned is quite correct. That is very important. The new regime proposes to put the driving schedule on a 24-hour clock. Currently, it is a 23-hour clock. Eventually, a driver phase shifts, as we call it. The driver gets completely out of sync. The scientific term is circadian rhythms. We think that an important change is to put a driver in sync with his natural rhythm.
Senator, you raised the issue of consultations. The deliberations that we have been undertaking -- I say "we" because my group is certainly part of this -- on behalf of the federal government have been very open, in my view. As well, as I mentioned earlier, the CCMTA committee contains representatives of all governments and many organizations. The CCMTA deliberations have been open at all times to any interested party. Certainly all governments have been participating, including the American government, by the way. Industry has been an active participant. We have had the unions involved. Teamsters have been involved in the exercise. CRASH has been involved, as you know. There have been others, as well. The process has been as open as we could make it.
The proposals are now being drafted. The standard has been drafted and is being put into legal language. Our lawyers at Transport Canada are doing that work. It has taken longer than we had anticipated, but perhaps we should not be surprised. That draft standard will be available in a couple of weeks. It will be sent to the provinces, which agreed last December to undertake consultations using that standard as a basis.
We believe it is appropriate for the provinces to consult for at least a couple of reasons. First, the provinces are responsible for enforcing the hours of service rules. Second, the provinces are closer to the ground, if you like. They are in close contact with their regional stakeholders. We thought, and they agreed, that it would be useful for them to undertake consultations. Each province will do that in the manner it deems appropriate.
I was in Edmonton yesterday, and officials from Alberta tell me that they have in fact concluded their consultations. They did not use the draft standard, but they did use the CCMTA policy document that is the basis for the standard. In their view, the consultations went quite well. Those meetings are to take place over the next few weeks.
Senator Spivak: Mr. Sweet, is it possible that different provinces could adopt different sections of the standard and that interprovincial trucking could be subject to different standards in different provinces?
Mr. Sweet: That is always possible, but we hope not. The National Safety Code standard No. 9 that we are revising is not law; it is only a template. The idea is that each province will take that template and build identical regulations so that there are not different rules.
Senator Spivak: Let me check what you have said about the hours of driving. You said that 84 hours is acceptable because it is a reduction from 108 hours. Do you agree that 84 to 90 hours is acceptable from the federal point of view? You said that there will be two nights off during those hours. How will that be enforced?
I will give you an additional piece of information, perhaps subsequent information. The research done by the very same experts that you asked to do your proposal shows that the majority of accidents relating to trucks take place during those evening and night time hours. Therefore, they felt that the 2:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m. prohibition was one of the most important recommendations, which you have chosen not to accept.
Mr. Sweet: From a federal standpoint, we are part of the committee that is revising these regulations -- the standard.
Senator Spivak: You are not the lead; is that what you are saying?
Mr. Sweet: I happen to chair the group, but I have no more influence than any other member of the committee, quite frankly. This is a very egalitarian exercise.
Senator Spivak: From your point of view, those hours are acceptable even though they are higher than the American hours will be. Yet you talk about standardization. The federal government must have a position, if it is part of that egalitarian exercise. Is it the policy at the federal level that 84 to 90 hours is acceptable?
Mr. Sweet: There is a federal regulation on hours of service. Our position will be to revise the federal regulation once the NSC standard for hours of service is finalized. That has not yet been finalized.
Senator Spivak: Are you in agreement with it?
Mr. Sweet: I have not said either way, because it is under development; it is a work in progress.
Senator Spivak: Mr. Chair, I am sorry for taking so much time.
The Chairman: You are doing well, particularly if you can get a commitment out of him.
Senator Spivak: We are here on a matter that I think is of great concern to Canadians who are worried about safety on the roads. We have a proposition that will affect everyone who drives on those roads. We have been told by these experts, "Do not go on the roads at night because the chances of an accident are fourfold or eightfold or more." We presume that our national government has responsibilities here, yet you will not tell me whether you think that 84 to 90 hours is acceptable. You also seem to indicate that it is acceptable to have different standards in various provinces so that no one knows what to expect. Also, you do not say how those standards are to be enforced. We are not in conformity with the Americans, who protest our hours, and who knows, maybe those trucks will be stopped at the American border because they do not conform to American standards. Is that the federal government's position, as I have outlined it?
Mr. Sweet: We feel that the package of amendments to the proposed regulation is a significant improvement over what we have at the moment.
The Chairman: I believe that we forwarded to you a bullet-by-bullet outline of the areas of our concern. It is far too lengthy to examine at lunch hour today. However, perhaps you might give us your views on the very first item, mandatory random drug and alcohol testing for drivers.
Mr. Sweet: As you know, Mr. Chairman, the United States requires that any commercial driver operating in the United States must be able to show that he or she is part of a drug and alcohol testing regime. Therefore, any Canadian driver operating in the United States must be able to so evidence.
In Canada, since about 1996 or 1997, Canadian drivers have been required to evidence that they belong to such a program. There is no legislation in Canada that requires that; rather, we and the provinces have worked with industry to develop an industry-driven program that has been very successful. The United States is pleased with the way the Canadian program is performing. American officials would suggest that there have been few problems with Canadian drivers in this area. There is a good program in place and it is working well.
There have been court challenges and there are continuing court challenges with respect to the random testing nature of this program. However, the challenges are in the courts, and a number of them have been appealed. You know this better than I, but those do take some time. We are not sure what the outcome of the various challenges might be. In any event, we are following them. As I indicated, in the meantime the program seems to be working very well.
The Chairman: Have you any sense of how much longer it may take for the judicial process? I understand what we are trying to do, but how much longer do you think before it will be concluded?
Mr. Sweet: There is a case of particular interest at the moment that involves Imperial Oil and one of their employees. That situation has reached the Ontario Court of Appeal, which is a high court. I believe the next level up would be the Supreme Court, so we are watching that one quite closely.
The Chairman: Mr. Sweet, you have a number of recent studies touching on a variety of subject matters. Could you, at your department's discretion, make a report available to us that would reflect the concerns that we have expressed? Those concerns are hours of work, load limits on trucks, harmonization regulations, intelligent highways, funding for the twinning of the Trans-Canada Highway, and responsibility for road safety in Canada's national parks, especially Banff National Park.
What part does speed play in highway safety? What are the arrangements for road safety among Canada, United States and Mexico? How does the Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators operate? What is its jurisdiction and authority? What is the responsibility and jurisdiction of the RCMP vis-à-vis highway safety? Correspondingly, what is the responsibility of the Ontario Provincial Police and counterparts in Quebec?
There is the entire area of passenger vehicle safety and fatigue studies. For some time now Senator Spivak has been quite concerned with what is an alarming factor for Canadian travellers. I am one of those who drive quite regularly, and I can tell you, sir, that during my last trip, the little half-ton trucks that pick up the residue of tires had a day off. I believe we counted 156 bits of tire on one side of the road. My fear, of course, is that it is fate. Any one of those exploding tires could take a large toll of human life on any particular day.
We would appreciate having whatever studies you have. We will go out on the road and look at some trucks and go through some of the ritual followed by the police authorities in roadside examination. We would like to get a sense of it ourselves. We will get a better sense standing near the edge of the road. A 30-wheeler or 32-wheeler barrelling past you at 140 klicks is scary.
I want to thank you and to invite you to come back to us, maybe even from time to time over the next year, to give us a sense of direction. We have to look at smart highways. Think of the massive pile-ups that we continue to experience for apparent reasons, but that are also obviously apparently controllable. We would like to talk in some depth about that.
Having said that, could I ask Mr. Keith Miller and Mr. John Christopher, who will be our mentors in this study, whether they have any questions?
Mr. Keith Miller, Consultant: Mr. Sweet, I have two short questions. In response to a question from Senator Adams, you said that the driver, the vehicle and the highway design, among other things -- and these are my own words -- are a very large part of safety on the highways. Senator Adams, John Christopher and the chairman visited Australia and New Zealand. Also, last year the subcommittee attended a conference in Washington, where highway design audits were discussed at great length. Specifically, they were discussed as they relate to the system in the state of Pennsylvania. There was also a presentation on the system in Australia. Could you tell us what, if anything, is being done to inaugurate a system of highway design audits in Canada?
Mr. Sweet: Yes, I can. I did not mention the Transportation Association of Canada in my introductory remarks, but perhaps I should have. That organization is almost the twin to the CCMTA, but TAC, as it is called, deals most specifically with highway design infrastructure issues. The Transportation Association of Canada is also an amalgam of governments and other stakeholders.
TAC has under active consideration the development of a national standard for road safety audits. It is the same concept. As a matter of fact, one of my staff chairs the committee looking at this. There was meeting in Edmonton this week. This is one of the items they are promoting. I can assure you that it is under active consideration. Hopefully in Canada we will see, sooner rather than later, a national standard on road safety audits.
Road safety audits are being done by some jurisdictions. Again, the provinces have the primary responsibility for road design and construction, so they are most interested. I know that New Brunswick and Ontario are very active in this area. The idea is to take their experience, along with that of other countries, certainly including Australia, and develop a national approach to road safety audits.
Mr. Miller: Thank you. Is it possible to make available to the subcommittee your committee's deliberations on the subject?
Mr. Sweet: Absolutely.
Mr. Miller: My second question relates to a question asked by Senator Spivak. She was concerned about how you police the regulations that are in effect -- for example, truck driver hours. I believe that is the specific area that she was mentioning. Would the federal government's acceptance of these black boxes, which are mandatory in Europe, help in the policing of driver hours, which seem to be of such concern to Senator Spivak and to this subcommittee?
Mr. Sweet: We are not sure. I indicated earlier that we have done a review of the situation, and we can certainly make that available to the committee.
One issue is enforcement. How exactly would the roadside officers who now stop a vehicle and check the driver's logbook, which is a manually recorded system of record keeping, deal with a black box? That is one of the significant issues attached to that particular technology.
At the moment we are left with the situation as has existed for some time. A driver is required by law to fill in a logbook accurately. We know that the proposed regime will help here because it is simpler. The objective in revising the hours of service regime is not only to incorporate the science as we understand it to date, but also to make it simpler. It is a horrifically complicated business at the moment. There are three different cycles, for example, among which a driver can switch. It is difficult to follow all of this on the logbook. We are simplifying the regime by taking out some of the options that the drivers have. For example, we are eliminating one of the cycles and we are eliminating some of the options that the drivers have for juggling the number of hours that they drive in a day. We are hoping that this simplification will help the policing, if you like, or the enforcement of the hours of service regime.
Mr. Miller: Senator Adams showed some concern, and indeed several members of this subcommittee have shown concern on other occasions, about the so-called splash-and-spray problem. Do you know of any jurisdictions that make it mandatory to install equipment on motor vehicles to prevent this problem?
Mr. Sweet: I am not aware of any North American jurisdiction that does. As I indicated, our vehicle standards experts are on top of this and are aware of what is happening in other jurisdictions. We could readily provide to the committee a list of those countries that do require that.
I am not sure whether it is required in Europe. It may well be. I too was in Australia several years ago, on heavy vehicle issues, and I believe I saw splash-and-spray devices in Australia. Perhaps they have that down there, but we could certainly provide to you information on what is happening in other countries.
Mr. Miller: We would appreciate receiving that material.
The Chairman: I can tell you that there is one corporation in the United States whose trucks I have personally had the chance to meet on the highway quite accidentally, over a period of a couple of years, during very adverse conditions. Their trucks did, in fact, have skirts. I was very pleased, on both occasions, to have that little lapse as I went past that vehicle. The corporation involved was a coffin-making company.
With that message, I admire their effort to reduce their business, or at least not to be blamed for attracting business. I would suggest that if you do a large amount of driving on the highway and trucks are passing you, as they do many people, you would welcome the use of those skirts.
Mr. Miller raised some areas in which we would like to have yours and the department's current thinking. We would like to know how much money is collected in revenue; how much does the federal government have; whether, if you were to look at it, you might suggest that the first four cents be dedicated to highway upgrading, because it is so important. We would like to have some studies on tire safety, not simply because of the recent experience with Ford, but because this has come to our attention on a number of occasions. We would be very grateful for your including, in the material you send us, anything you feel the committee might be interested in. Thank you, Mr. Sweet.
Mr. Sweet: We will do our best to send this material to you. It is an impressive list you have here and we will attempt to cull this out and give you what seems to be most relevant.
The committee adjourned.