TRGO Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 1st SESSION

Standing Committee on Transport and Government Operations

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Thursday, February 28, 2002

Á

1110

The Chair (Mr. Ovid Jackson (Bruce--Grey--Owen Sound, Lib.))

Mr. Ron Heslegrave (Individual Presentation)

Á

1115

Á

1120

The Chair

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

The Chair

Mr. Mario Laframboise (Argenteuil--Papineau--Mirabel, BQ)

Á

1125

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mr. Laframboise

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

M. Mario Laframboise

Á

1130

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

M. Mario Laframboise

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mr. Paul Szabo (Mississauga South, Lib.)

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Á

1135

Mr. Paul Szabo

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mr. Paul Szabo

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mr. Paul Szabo

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Á

1140

Mr. Paul Szabo

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mr. Paul Szabo

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

The Chair

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais (Churchill, NDP)

Á

1145

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mrs. Desjarlais

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Á

1150

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Á

1155

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

The Chair

Mr. Marcel Proulx (Hull--Aylmer, Lib.)

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mr. Marcel Proulx

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mr. Marcel Proulx

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mr. Marcel Proulx

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mr. Marcel Proulx

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mr. Marcel Proulx

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mr. Marcel Proulx

Â

1200

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mr. Marcel Proulx

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mr. Marcel Proulx

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mr. Marcel Proulx

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mr. Marcel Proulx

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mr. Marcel Proulx

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

The Chair

Mr. André Harvey (Chicoutimi--Le Fjord, Lib.)

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Â

1205

Mr. André Harvey

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

M. André Harvey

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

M. Mario Laframboise

Â

1210

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

M. Mario Laframboise

Â

1215

The Chair

Mr. Alex Shepherd (Durham, Lib.)

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mr. Alex Shepherd

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mr. Shepherd

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mr. Alex Shepherd

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Â

1220

Mr. Alex Shepherd

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mr. Alex Shepherd

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

The Chair

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Â

1225

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mrs. Desjarlais

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mrs. Desjarlais

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mrs. Desjarlais

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

Mrs. Desjarlais

The Chair

Â

1230

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

The Chair

Mr. Ron Heslegrave

The Chair

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CANADA

Standing Committee on Transport and Government Operations

---

NUMBER 053

l

1st SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

---

EVIDENCE

Thursday, February 28, 2002

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Á  (1110)  

[English]

    The Chair (Mr. Ovid Jackson (Bruce--Grey--Owen Sound, Lib.)): I would like to start the proceedings, members. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we are here to study trucking operations, etc.

    With us today is Dr. Ron Heslegrave from the University Health Network. The doctor is going to give us his dissertation over a number of minutes, and then we will open it up for questioning.

    Thank you very much, Doctor, and welcome.

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave (Individual Presentation): Thank you very much for inviting me to speak here today. It's a great opportunity for me to share with this committee some of my views on fatigue and fatigue management.

    What I thought I would do over the next 10 minutes or so is give you a brief presentation, first outlining some of the issues and then moving on. I would like to read you an executive summary of an opinion I prepared on this some time ago. I think it covers in a bit more detail some of the issues you want to address in this committee.

    I thought I would begin by sharing with you a quote from the British Medical Journal, a highly prestigious journal in medical science. As it says in this journal, the subject of sleeplessness or fatigue is once more under public discussion, which is partly why we're here. It says:

    

The hurry and excitement of modern life is quite correctly held to be responsible for much of the insomnia of which we hear: and most of the articles and letters are full of good advice to live more quietly and of platitudes concerning the harmfulness of rush and worry. The pity of it is that so many people are unable to follow this good advice...

    As I'm also a professor, I thought I would start with a test. What year was that British Medical Journal quote from? It was '94, but 1894, which means we've been struggling with the issue of fatigue for a long time. We've been studying the issues of fatigue, sleep, and sleep loss for a long time, but we have a long way to go.

    The trucking proposal for hours of service that's before you is I think a balanced approach. Clearly, working fewer hours would reduce the potential for fatigue in workers, and this would be workers in any occupation. On the other hand, one needs to balance societal and economic demands that require the ability to work extended hours, and in fact sometimes the choice of workers to work extended hours, working irregular hours, and working nights.

    In this regard, and I think this is an important point, commercial driving is no different from other types of occupations. Emergency service workers--fire, police, and search and rescue--work extended or irregular hours or work nights as part of their regular duty. We are operating in a 24-hour society from both an industry and service sector point of view, so we need to have and to create a balanced approach in how we deal with hours of service.

    The proposal before you I think is a balanced approach in that it recognizes the need to address fatigue in the trucking industry. This proposal is intended to in fact address the levels of fatigue present in the industry for truckers. Again, I would point out that the trucking industry is in fact no different from any other industries, a lot of which we have studied in Canada.

    It proposes alternatives that reduce the working hours, that increase the off-duty times, and that make available the potential for greater sleep in a 24-hour period. Perhaps more importantly, it introduces flexibility with regard to the environmental considerations and individual differences so that there is more choice in terms of when you take recuperative sleep when it's offered. It proposes a balance with regard to mitigating fatigue and yet keeping economic and societal interests viable.

    It is also a pragmatic approach, I think, in that it recognizes the need for voluntary compliance. This hours of service regulation is something that needs to be supported by all the stakeholders. Otherwise, people won't buy into it, and neither will they follow it. It structures some of the changes around normal life experience, such as operating on a 24-hour day. It mandates the need for recovery sleep. As I said a moment ago, it introduces flexibility with regard to working conditions and individual differences.

    It also, I think for the first time, introduces the potential for recuperative napping as part of your strategy for managing fatigue. It is practical and simple. It's endorsed, it appears, by most of the major stakeholders. I believe it can be implemented, and it seems to be acceptable to the industry and drivers. It's consistent with what we know from the scientific literature. It's moving in the right direction.

Á  (1115)  

    What is the ideal schedule for drivers? This is probably the answer you want. How should we be regulating drivers? What is the ideal schedule for drivers, or in fact for any shift workers?

    There is apparently, from my understanding of the literature, only one ideal schedule and that's it. It's called retirement.

    There are trade-offs to be made in any schedule. There are advantages and disadvantages to any working schedule that you care to come up with, and what one needs to do is create a balance between the risks associated with fatigue and the ability to implement fatigue countermeasures to deal with some of those risks.

    As a friend of mine in the U.S. often states--and this is from the U.S. army research group at Walter Reed--we need to think of fatigue as an issue of logistic resupply. When you're depleted, you need to look towards mechanisms and countermeasures that will promote recovery from that fatigue state--and the ideal countermeasure is sleep; we've come to realize that.

    What's missing? Well, I think there needs to be a concerted effort launched with regard to fatigue management programs. There's a beginning now in Alberta, sponsored by both Transport Canada and the Alberta Workers Compensation Board and infrastructure. We're starting to take a look at fatigue management programs for long-haul truckers, and this education will help us better manage fatigue.

    Effort must be mustered to educate everyone in the system--drivers and executives. If it's not followed from the top down, it won't be followed at the bottom. Managers, dispatchers, shippers, but importantly, families and the public, need to be involved in the efforts that are being made with regard to a fatigue management program in order to change the culture in the industry.

    Such programs and education need to be delivered at a personal level, and those are some of the areas that can be discussed. I have brought along a lot of material that makes this educational program a lot easier. They need to be delivered at the family level, and certainly at the company level, and some of the larger companies in trucking are on board with fatigue management programs.

    I would suggest that this committee think about it from a government perspective, that education and fatigue management programs ought to play a significant role when you're trying to conquer fatigue as an issue in the workplace.

    Also I think what's missing is that there's a need for more and better research. We simply don't have enough good field studies on this. We know something, but we certainly don't know it all. These are very difficult and very expensive studies to do, but we need to get a much better handle on the level of fatigue that's out there, how we manage it, and if we are successful at managing it.

    If you are looking for things that are missing, I think those are the two key elements: a need for education and implementation of fatigue management programs; and continued work in the area of research and evaluation, focusing on the most relevant questions, providing a valid determination of the impact of fatigue, where are we now, and evaluate the efficacy of fatigue countermeasures. We can throw fatigue countermeasures out at you, and we have proposed solutions in terms of fatigue countermeasures, but the evidence certainly isn't in that these are all effective and that they will work. We need to do this testing in a field setting so that we understand the complexity of the field setting.

    I will skip to the last bullet. I think what we need to do is keep a balance in mind here as to what can be implemented, what is practical, and whether that will in fact mitigate fatigue in the way we want it to.

    To summarize, then, the committee needs to put in place effective mechanisms to educate the industry and the public with regard to fatigue management programs. How you do that is your business. You also need to put in place a research agenda to provide us with answers to questions regarding fatigue so that 50 years from now we're not still looking for answers to these fundamental questions and the regulations haven't been changed in over 50 years.

Á  (1120)  

    I was going to read an executive summary of my opinion, but I am sure I have taken my ten minutes.

    The Chair: No, go ahead and read it. I'm sure the committee would give you a few more minutes. Or would you prefer the questions?

    Mr. Paul Szabo (Mississauga South, Lib.): The best stuff comes from the questioning.

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: I think that is it for the presentation then. I'd be happy to forward this presentation to the committee if you'd like, and I could forward the executive summary as well. Thank you for your attention.

    The Chair: Since you are the only witness, we are being quite informal. Usually we have ten-minute rounds on the first round to make sure everybody gets a chance, and then five-minute rounds thereafter. But I think we might extend that.

    We'll start with Mario, the first opposition person here today.

[Translation]

    Mr. Mario Laframboise (Argenteuil--Papineau--Mirabel, BQ): First of all, you started with a question about the year 1894, when you unveiled your opening statement. I am also going to ask you a question about 1894. What was automobile traffic like in 1894?

Á  (1125)  

[English]

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: The state of road traffic in fact in 1894 depends on where you were. But of course it was obviously a lot lighter. I can add to that, however, that in the 15th century, road traffic was so great in Rome that that is when a lot of the early shift work started. That is when we began night deliveries in order to free up daytime congestion on the roads in ancient Rome.

[Translation]

    Mr. Mario Laframboise: I just want to make you understand that the trucking industry is in a crisis situation. I can never repeat that often enough. There is no relief and young people are not interested in being truckers. The working hours are impossible and, during a shortage, employees are over-worked. The employees do so willingly because there are some monetary rewards but they also do it to allow their company to survive. That's pretty well it.

    I understand the agreements that the independents are trying to negotiate with the truckers and all that, except that this will not make the industry more attractive. In my opinion, we will always have to live with a problem that is linked to hours of work. When we add that to trucker fatigue which occasionally causes accidents, this indicates that reform is needed. I agree with you but it is on the extent of reform where we don't understand each other.

    You seem to be telling us in your paper that working 14 hours a day does not cause any problems. We could go as high as 18 hours a day without any problems. However, Ms Smiley, who is a researcher like you, tells us that when a person drives a vehicle for more than eight hours, that is equivalent to a blood alcohol level of 0.08.

    I can understand that you are telling us that we need more research. When the blues are ready, we will highlight them for the Member from Chicoutimi and we will be able to extract what the officials from the Department of Transport told us about this. We seem to be being told that there is no research that has been done while Professor Smiley tells us there is. You, on the other hand, tell us there is not enough research.

    There is after all a reality somewhere. There are accidents. We analyze the accidents and we conclude that truckers are driving too far. Often, two of the causes of these accidents are fatigue and the long hours of driving. So, we have a problem there. I say there is even an unhealthiness to the the problem. On the one hand, there is not enough research. On the other hand, your research is not the same as Dr. Smiley's.

    I recognize that is the situation, but there are still people dying on our roads. I think, the number of hours trucks are used... Don't tell me that the records, the infamous log books, are properly kept. We know that everybody in the industry, everyone fiddles with the log books and people finagle it so it works and the industry can keep operating.

    Therefore, I have great difficulty with your recommendations. I have a big problem with the fact that you are telling me that 18 hours of work does not create problems, that a trucker can drive well for 18 hours. Even if he only did that once a week, there would still be an unhealthy problem.

[English]

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: While I would agree with much of what you've said, I would not agree that the document says that 18 hours of driving can take place without consequence. What I have said is that there are experimental studies that demonstrate there can be situations of no decline in cognitive performance as a result of working 18 hours, and that really is primarily to highlight the point that we need to be paying very close attention as to when those hours are worked.

    In the alcohol study you referred to--this was done by Drew Dawson and his colleagues in Australia--they tried to equate, in terms of rough performance impairment, the relationship between sleep deprivation and alcohol consumption. In those studies, they talk about people's performance going below what would be a 0.1 alcohol level after 18 to 20 hours.

    But really, what 18 to 20 hours means is that this is the middle of the night. It is sometimes difficult, I think, to separate hours of driving from time of day of driving. I think everyone in the scientific community would go along with the idea that circadian rhythms play a primary factor here, and if you're driving overnight, then you have more to worry about, and you have to manage that fatigue better, than if you're driving during the day.

    Now the 18 hours in the Drew Dawson study is about three to four o'clock in the morning. So we're not talking about 18 hours as much as we are talking about time of day. In the studies we did on people's cognitive performance, we started them at six o'clock in the morning, and they had stable performance until after midnight. They weren't driving. This was not a driving test. On the other hand, it was a very well-controlled environment.

    So they can do this. It is possible. You can't do it on a repeated basis. You can't do it day after day. But I still believe what we need to do is put in place mechanisms by which we manage fatigue better, rather than simply trying to control it through hours of service.

[Translation]

    M. Mario Laframboise: I'm getting back to your report, Mr. Heslegrave. In it, you express your opinion about the standards regulating the hours of service for commercial truckers. Indeed you ask the question on page 10 of the French version: “Is working 14 hours a day unsafe?” You manage to say: “Working for 14 hours is not necessarily unsafe”. You then add: “The studies on sleep loss carried out under controlled conditions [...] show us that individuals can maintain a very high level of performance for 18 hours...”.

    It's almost like you're telling us that a person could even drive for 18 hours. You have established no correlation with a 14-hour period spent behind the wheel of a truck. You didn't speak of the difference between the two. In your report, to the question “Is working 14 hours unsafe?”, you say: “Working 14 hours is not necessarily unsafe”. That's what you say in your report. You make no distinction between the two. You seem to be doing it now, but someone reading your document might conclude that it is possible, in fact, to work up to 18 hours without it causing any problems. This is what you are saying.

Á  (1130)  

[English]

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: No, I'm sorry, that is not what I'm saying. What I am saying is that the question that was put to me was whether it was necessarily unsafe. And it is not necessarily unsafe. People can work long periods, and we have evidence for that.

    Can it be unsafe? Certainly it can be unsafe. But is it necessarily unsafe? Not necessarily so. You have to look at the various circumstances around that work, and it depends on what you are doing. If you're on a long search-and-rescue operation in high seas, for instance, you may be looking at six or eight hours. If you are a control-room operator, you may very well be able to do 12 or 14 hours. It's not unusual for many of our industries to actually work longer shifts on occasion--16 or 18 hours. Double shifts in many industries, for instance, are not uncommon.

[Translation]

    M. Mario Laframboise: My question relates to what you are saying. You are telling us that working 14 hours behind the wheel of an automobile, a truck which can become a weapon when we are really tired, isn't unsafe.

    I don't want to know what happens in other industries or among the rest of the population of Canada or the whole world. I want to know what is happening with the truckers. Today, you are telling us that being behind the wheel of a vehicle for a period of time which can range from 14 to 18 hours, is not unsafe. Is that what you are telling us, Professor?

[English]

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: What I'm saying is that it is not necessarily unsafe, and that is the way the question was put. If you have taken appropriate fatigue management strategies in your workplace, taken appropriate rest, had an appropriate amount of sleep prior to working that 14 hours, and we know that people do that now--we don't have very good data on it, but we do know that people work and drive for long periods--that can be done safely. But it can't be done safely on a regular basis, and it can't be done safely without paying attention to other parts of that working environment.

    The Chair: Mr. Szabo.

    Mr. Paul Szabo (Mississauga South, Lib.): There has not been very much said about the sensitivity of hours of work and the reset time that's required. We had someone come to us suggesting that the reset time would be better at 48 hours versus 36, given that the recommendation is to move the continuous hours of the day down to 13.

    Do you have any evidence or any knowledge of what the curve looks like in terms of reset requirements, as you move from an eight-hour day to a nine-hour day, and also the sensitivity of day versus night? I understand they have different impacts because of our physiology. What about this reset factor? Is there a threshold or a critical point at which 36 makes more sense than 48, or vice versa?

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: I think the critical point here is that one have sufficient amount of time to get the sleep required in order to promote recovery of function. We did a number of studies in total sleep deprivation, for instance--people working continuously for 60 to 70 hours. We found about a 90% recovery of function after one night's sleep, which begs the question, under those kinds of extreme conditions you probably need more than one night's sleep in order to promote full recovery. However, we're by and large talking about partial sleep loss in most of the situations. We know people are getting sleep, and if they are getting sufficient sleep, then I think it's really not clear whether you need 48 hours in order to promote extra periods for sleep or 36. The 36 hours gives you opportunities for more than one sleep period should you choose to take them.

    You also run the risk with 48 hours of phase-shifting people, moving them from a day shift to a night shift, etc. We know from people who work continuously, say a series of nightshifts, that they get poorer sleep and lose sleep on a regular basis. If you are driving night after night after night, you probably need more recovery time. That recovery time probably needs to be more of a nighttime sleep rather than a daytime sleep. We found with the air traffic control community in Canada, where they were working continuous midnights, that they were losing sleep on a regular basis.

Á  (1135)  

    Mr. Paul Szabo: In terms of highway traffic versus urban traffic, as it were, how much fatigue differential is there by the difference in the kind of driving?

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: That's a very good question. I really don't think that we actually know the answer to that question very well.

    Certainly the difficulty of driving in an urban situation in heavy traffic causes some stress. Driving in a rural environment or in a highway environment on divided highways is a rather monotonous situation that also promotes fatigue. So they promote fatigue in different ways.

    What we don't know is how much fatigue there is on a lot of these schedules. That's what we don't know. If we don't know how much fatigue there is, it's very difficult to say how much recovery time you need to recover from it. More and more, the scientific community is convinced that it's the monotonous environment that promotes greater fatigue than the rapidly changing kind of environment. So one would think that the long-haul situation would be more susceptible to fatigue than the urban situation. You might think that the urban situation is more of a stressful situation--stop and go and problems with traffic, etc. However, you are changing your attention on a regular basis. Where people have gotten into trouble a lot in the past is in the monotonous environment, and they're failing to pick up the cues in the environment because of fatigue.

    Mr. Paul Szabo: In your presentation you caught my attention by suggesting there is no one model that is perfect, other than retirement.

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: That includes day shifts, by the way.

    Mr. Paul Szabo: If that's the case, and if we have variables such as whether you're doing the monotonous versus the stressful, night versus day, three days and a reset time of 36, or five days and a reset time of 48, it sounds as if there are a lot of circumstances to be addressed. Does it make sense for the trucking industry to have one pigeonhole for all?

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: I don't think it makes sense for any industry.

    What one has to do is identify the fatiguing factors that occur in the industry based on various schedules, work conditions, hours, driving nights, driving days, etc., and start to propose a set of guidelines and a series of recommendations that will allow you to say this is what's going on with this driver and this is what's going on with that driver.

    I would turn your attention, as you raised it, to a document that was just recently signed off. This is from a tripartite steering committee looking at fatigue in the air traffic control world, which is of great importance here in Canada and in the U.S. They have come up with a document saying that in the air traffic control world these are the various factors that contribute to fatigue, here's how important we think those factors are, and here are some options you can use if you find yourself in the situation, for instance, of extended working periods because of an emergency or working consecutive nights. Nav Canada, Transport Canada as the regulator, and the CAW, which is the union for the air traffic controllers, have all signed off on this document saying that we need to do something about fatigue.

    I think a similar guiding document would be appropriate for the trucking industry, and that gets at the multifactorial aspect too.

Á  (1140)  

    Mr. Paul Szabo: With regard to, say, impaired driving due to alcohol consumption, we have methods of measuring blood alcohol. Are there any ways in which we could facilitate a measurement of fatigue?

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: Fatigue, of course, as I just said, is multifactorial and there are lots of causes for it.

    But the output of fatigue is reduced performance. We would need to get into a discussion around fitness for duty in this regard. One way of potentially measuring this is to measure people's abilities. When those abilities fall below some threshold that has been set, then that becomes fatigue impairment. But you would have to have a record of people's abilities over time. You may not care whether it was fatigue. If that impairment is because of illness, for instance, you still may not want them driving if they're performing at 80% of their capacity.

    Mr. Paul Szabo: We don't have much control over what people do in their downtime, and that could be quite a fatiguing activity in itself. They may not be using it for a more desirable purpose. But people do have families and they do have a need for recreation and other things that may affect their sleeping.

    I'm not sure if you're familiar with the culture of the trucking business as a profit-oriented operation, but if you are, what is driving the trucking industry to get more out of its drivers and to push the envelope to the point we're talking about, which was referred to as the red line? It seems to me that the industry has not done a favour to the truckers themselves, and maybe to the safety of the Canadian public at large, by keeping the threshold at the point we're talking about.

    Is there not a strategy to say that as long as we're having these performance problems, there has to be a push to continue to move those thresholds, those reset periods, and anything else reasonable people would say, down to levels that show a measurable improvement and down to, I hesitate to say, an acceptable threshold of damage, something that is clearly not problematic? Accidents do happen. I understand that.

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: That's right. I think you raise a couple of very interesting points. I'm not an expert in the trucking industry per se, so I can't really comment very much on that, but I understand it's really economics that drives the industry. In order to make a profit with the margins that are given them, people have to work these long hours. However, you'd be better off asking somebody who is much more intimately familiar with the industry.

    To go back to your point about what people do in their off time, one of the biggest things we need to consider, as I mentioned in the presentation, is educating people that it is important they do the right things in their off time.

    We have had experience with a lot of shift workers who have gone to longer shifts of 12 and 14 hours without this kind of educational experience. We have found that without this education they haven't utilized their off time appropriately, until it has caught up with them.

    These compressed work weeks turn out to be not as beneficial as people expect because they spend their time recovering from the compressed work weeks. In fact, they get anxious about going back to another compressed work week. They lose their valuable off time. It is not as valuable to them as they once perceived it to be.

    We have a lot of work to do on the whole idea of educating both companies and workers on the appropriate way to manage levels of fatigue, so they have more productive off-duty time.

    The Chair: Thank you, Doctor.

    Bev Desjarlais.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais (Churchill, NDP): You commented on the compressed work weeks and that the time off does not end up being valuable because you're catching up on the time you need. Do you include in the utilizing of time off being able to fit in time for recreation and family life--things that are important to productivity?

    I don't mean sleep, because the body needs sleep, but we all recognize that other things need to be factored in. Would you agree that the other factors are equally important for productivity?

Á  (1145)  

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: I think so. A lot of industries are having trouble recruiting people because the quality of life isn't there. This is part of the recruitment problem with the trucking industry. Younger workers are not willing to tolerate what people who have been cultured in an industry are willing to tolerate.

    They see these factors as much more important than perhaps some of the older workers.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: My colleague from the Bloc mentioned it as well. It has come up before in our discussions that it is a very key factor in the whole matter of hours of service.

    I guess from my perspective, being on the transport committee and dealing with it, we want to take a look at the whole approach on what is beneficial for the industry and for Canadians as a whole.

    In your presentation you indicated that the proposal before us was endorsed by most of the major stakeholders. Who are those stakeholders?

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: In various interviews I've had with the trucking industry, their association, the truckers themselves, government regulators, and the teamsters--although I don't have first-hand knowledge from the teamsters--they all seem to be onboard.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: How many truckers do the teamsters represent?

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: My understanding is that they represent over 100,000 Canadian truckers.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: How many trucking businesses does the trucking alliance represent?

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: I believe that is somewhere in the order of 4,000.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: How many people are there in Canada?

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: It's a good question--30 some-odd million.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: So if I said that most of the major stakeholders only represented 120,000 people, would I say they represented most of the major stakeholders, who were the people on the roads in Canada? Would you see the people in Canada as major stakeholders in safety on the highways?

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: I certainly would.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: So to say most of the major stakeholders when you're really only representing 120,000--I'm even giving an extra amount--really isn't an accurate statement, if you acknowledge the fact that the people on the roads in Canada are major stakeholders.

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: But this company is soliciting information from all those people, is it not?

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Which company, this committee? I would hope that this committee will continue to do that because I do believe they are major stakeholders and I do want to hear the people of Canada have a say in it. I was a bit taken aback when you used the terminology “most of the major stakeholders” in your presentation.

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: No, but I believe that certainly we do have to get the public involved. It is a challenging task. They have tried to do this without a great deal of success in Australia, because one of the interesting things they have is they're trying to reduce the accidents on the road by the public associated with fatigue, but it is very difficult to get an organized response from the public. They are particularly concerned about what are essentially for them cottage country transits and the difficulties they have, for instance, in western Australia with that. They are trying to incorporate the public in that, but it has been a difficult challenge for them.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Further to that, in regard to your comment that one ideal schedule is retirement, for myself, knowing the number of people who have gone into retirement, not just in the trucking industry but in other industries, retirement does not end up being the ideal schedule because a lot of people who are out there working feel very much a valuable part of society when they are working but they also don't want to be killing themselves with the amount of work they put in in order to enjoy life. So I wouldn't agree with you, with the number of people I know who end up being unhappy in retirement.

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: You're probably right from a broader perspective. I had raised that point really from a fatigue perspective, in that you can control the ideal schedule and get maximum opportunities for sleep if you're not driven by external forces, as you may not be as much in retirement. It's a good point, though.

Á  (1150)  

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: On the other point you made on the trucking industry being no different from other industries--and I noted that it had up there fire, police, emergency workers, health services, and manufacturing; I think there is no question that all of those businesses often work on the 24-hour clock and shift scheduling. From my perspective, I was wondering if you have done fatigue studies in the areas of fire, police, emergency workers, and health care service workers to see what types of arrangements they have to maybe pick up on sleep while they are in those processes. Are those studies available?

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: There are some studies on those. Over the last five or six years fatigue has become an issue that people have seen as an important quality-of-life issue in the workplace. So there has been an opportunity to look at a number of different industries to see what levels of fatigue are in the industry and how they are related to different kinds of shift schedules and those sorts of things.

    But what I find interesting is that when we take a look at air traffic controllers as a population, and I take a look at nuclear power plant operators as a different kind of population, and we recently have been able to look at people in the underground mining situation in both day and night shifts and trying to extend their shifts to longer shift periods, we find a remarkable similarity in terms of what they perceive as fatigue and how it impacts on their schedules.

    Along with those sorts of groups we have also had a chance to look at prison guards in federal correctional institutions. But there is a remarkable similarity between what is fatiguing, how much of it is night, how much of it is day, and what if you extend the work periods, etc., without doing anything else about it.

    Usually following this there may be an opportunity for some sort of intervention to see how we can make that situation better.

    I have to admit to you, though, that in most of these environments the reason I have become involved in them is because they want to work longer hours and they want to know if working longer hours is still safe.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: I would relate that to the perception people have that when they have a compressed work week they are going to have more time off where they can do so much more; the reality is they end up finding out they don't have more time off because they spend that much more time catching up. I happened to have had the opportunity in my life to be off at a time when they were changing nursing schedules from the normal eight hours to twelve hours or extended periods of time. I happened to have been off on maternity leave and came back after they had changed the scheduling, and I was absolutely floored at how different nursing was--the nursing care, the attitude of nurses toward the end of the shift, how the other eight-hour shift personnel had to pick up because there was a whole change in approach.

    As well, I believe there have been some studies to indicate that toward the latter part of those shifts--and again the night factor comes into play--there is an increase in medication errors and there is an increase in some things not being charted. There is a change, I believe, in the type of care.

    So I have never been one to totally accept that just because workers want to go on longer hours it is necessarily what is beneficial to everybody else.

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: If I could just comment on that, we had an opportunity to do a study on a nuclear power plant. They wanted to work a compressed work week and have more time off, which is typically the reason for doing this. They also had another reason in that they weren't able to fulfill their training mandate, which was required for part of their licence. So they had multiple reasons for doing this.

    A year later, we went back and took a look at them again after they'd been working this schedule for an entire year. We did ask them in the beginning how much benefit they thought they would get from this in terms of working longer and having more time off. We had a few general questions about that. They consistently overestimated what they thought after a year. So this looked terrific before they did it, but they weren't convinced it was so great after they experienced it for a long period.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Actually, that's what appears to be the case with a number of nurses. At some point they will go back on eight hours and say, “Oh my God, I have a life again”. So it was a different approach.

Á  (1155)  

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: That's right. We did have some experience with nurses in Toronto as well. When they moved to 12 hours, they actually allowed them opportunities for napping in the middle of the night, which improves the situation.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: I guess it's okay if you have enough people around to look after the patients, but it makes it a little tough.

    I can wait and come back after, if that's convenient. Thank you.

    The Chair: Marcel Proulx from the Liberals is next.

    Mr. Marcel Proulx (Hull--Aylmer, Lib.): Thank you. I'll be able to share my time if you need it, Mr. Chair. I have a few quick questions.

    Doctor, have you ever been a passenger in one of these large trucks?

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: I have.

    Mr. Marcel Proulx: Have you ever driven one of these trucks?

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: I've never driven one, no. I don't have a licence for that.

    Mr. Marcel Proulx: Okay. Have you been a passenger on long hours, long shifts?

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: Not in trucking so much.

    Mr. Marcel Proulx: You've just been around the block?

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: Well, a bit more than that, but certainly not Atlantic to Pacific.

    Mr. Marcel Proulx: You've been around two blocks. Okay.

    Since the start of your presentation, you've been referring to air traffic controllers and others. Do you really feel we can compare the work of an air traffic controller with the work of a truck driver, fatigue-wise or sleep-wise? For you, fatigue is fatigue is fatigue, regardless of where it comes from or how it's.... I don't know if you can acquire fatigue, but you can drive up to that.

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: In some sense, I do believe fatigue is fatigue is fatigue, because I think the underlying sources of fatigue that we're concerned about here are biological and physiological factors--the need for sleep and circadian rhythms primarily.

    I don't equate all the occupations. Certainly there are different environmental factors that will have an impact on fatigue, but I believe the scientific community is really quite convinced that the two most important factors are circadian factors, which are time of day factors, and sleep factors. Do you get enough of it and do you get the right kind of sleep when you do get it? That speaks to issues around day sleeps and night sleeps.

    Certainly other kinds of environments and working conditions will have an impact, but I don't believe they're as large in terms of fatigue as the basic biological factors. I think that's also why we see some consistency across very different kinds of occupations. They all get fatigued in the middle of the night to about the same extent, regardless of the kind of work they're doing, whether it's sedentary as a correctional officer in a lockdown maximum facility, whether it's an air traffic controller with not much to do in the middle of the night, apart from Gander, or whether it's search and rescue operations where they're working in the middle of the night. They all have the same sorts of experience. So in that sense, I'd say fatigue is fatigue is fatigue because of the underlying causes of fatigue.

    That's not to say that each job occupation doesn't have its own characteristics that will contribute. We know about some of those important environmental characteristics. If you're tired and you're in a darkened situation, you're going to become more tired. If you're doing a monotonous task, that's going to impact on your level of fatigue. Some of these things are very critical for drivers, especially if they're driving in the middle of the night on a relatively unobstructed roadway and don't have to make decisions very much. Then it becomes more difficult for them to stay awake.

    These other environmental factors will certainly impact on the level of fatigue, and long-haul trucking drivers are likely to experience more of these factors than someone in a manufacturing situation where you're on a line on the midnight shift and things are happening all the time. That's going to keep you more alert, but again, they're always going to be secondary to sleep loss factors and circadian factors.

    Mr. Marcel Proulx: You will therefore agree with me that if it's five hours of air traffic controlling or five hours of truck driving or five hours of truck driving in the middle of the night, the factors are very different; therefore the impacts are very different. The fatigue would come much quicker in some cases than in others.

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: It will come quicker in some cases than in others, but it will be driven by the biology.

    Mr. Marcel Proulx: There's no doubt about what's driving it, except that it is going to happen sooner. In other words, as to the driver who has to work 14 hours in a day, if he starts his driving at 6 o'clock at night, at dayfall he is going to get fatigued much faster in his 14-hour shift than had he started his work at 6 o'clock in the morning and driven during daytime. That is one of the factors.

  (1200)  

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: And that is the circadian factor.

    Mr. Marcel Proulx: Okay, one of numerous potential factors.

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: Exactly.

    Mr. Marcel Proulx: We therefore cannot say that there's a standard rule or--how would I call it--a standard of working hours. We have to take into consideration all of these different factors.

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: That's right.

    Mr. Marcel Proulx: This is the same as you were saying, that working 14 hours is not necessarily dangerous, although it could very well be dangerous.

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: That is because when you look at it in isolation as a single factor--number of hours--it doesn't take into account the complexity of the situation. As I mentioned earlier, that's why the air traffic control world went this way. They asked what are our fatigue situations. Let's identify them, let's see how important they are, and let's see what we can do about them.

    I think a similar comprehensive approach would be good for the trucking industry to let us identify urban versus rural, night versus day, to ask what the guidelines are that you might want to employ, and to have some sort of sanction if you don't employ those guidelines. What are the guidelines we ought to be employing in order to minimize fatigue? We know these are critical factors. And if we know they occur in these situations, what is it that we can do about those factors that will mitigate fatigue? I found it a very helpful approach when I worked with the air traffic world on that.

    Mr. Marcel Proulx: I assume that the blueprint of research will be available to us, Mr. Chair.

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: This is available through Transport Canada. It is readily available.

    Mr. Marcel Proulx: This is the last question, Mr. Chair.

    I have a lot of respect for all of your research and all of your work in the past, Doctor. In this particular case you've been retained by the Canadian Trucking Alliance. What exactly was your mandate when you were hired? In the sense that the CCMTA proposal was given to you, what was your mandate?

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: What happened was that CTA approached me and asked for my opinion on a number of questions. I said I would give them my opinion on questions, but they had to phrase them as questions to me. I would restrict myself to trying to address the questions they asked me. This was completely independent. They were free to not accept my opinion, if that's what they so chose. I was not reviewing this from the point of view of taking a look at the entire CCMTA proposal. The agreement with CTA is that they would ask me specific questions. I would give them my understanding of the specific issues. If this did not benefit them in some way, they were free to not accept that opinion. But I was also free to make that opinion on these issues available to whoever else might be interested in my opinion. So in that sense it was independent.

    The Chair: I have Mr. André Harvey before I come back to Mario.

[Translation]

    Mr. André Harvey (Chicoutimi--Le Fjord, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    We know that it is a very, very complex industry. What seems to be coming out of our intervention, especially after the questions from all my colleagues, is that it is so complex that you seem to have difficulty accepting an approach for this industrial sector. You seem to be saying, unless I misunderstood, that the concept of fatigue is very subjective and that it is not applicable in a very rational technical approach, with a maximum number of hours. Is that what you mean?

[English]

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: I think the CCMTA proposal and the proposal before you is in fact trying to draw a framework and develop some guidelines that will deal with the issue of fatigue. Perhaps I misunderstood your question. I believe this is a good framework, and that there ought to be a framework within which fatigue is dealt with. The fact that it is a complex is...one can make many fields complex.

    But certainly there are other factors involved, and I think it's well recognized by this committee that some of the other factors are night driving, the kind of driving, etc. I'm saying we don't have enough information on many of these factors to make rational decisions based on evidence. So a lot of it is subjective, based on extrapolations from other areas.

    There's been only one large major study in the last 15 years on long-haul trucking, and it did not clearly differentiate whether, for instance, the Canadian regulations of 13 hours of driving were any different from the American regulations of 10 hours of driving. It did differentiate night driving from day driving.

    So there isn't a lot of evidence that we can hang our hat on from the trucking industry. There is from some other industries that have been studied. Then, of course, once we get outside the North American jurisdictions, other rules apply, such as in Europe, where they have much more restricted hours of work in all industries.

    I'm not sure if I've addressed your question.

  (1205)  

[Translation]

    Mr. André Harvey: What is the weekly average for truckers in Europe? Is it 10 hours a day, 12 hours a day? What is the average for Europe?

[English]

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: I guess the average would be probably something around eight to ten hours. Some have it more restrictive. It really does vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

[Translation]

    M. André Harvey: To you think that eventually, at some point, we can manage, if we approach this very scientifically, to have electronic trackers to prevent truckers from working 70, 80 or 90 hours a week? It seems absolutely inhuman to me to make someone work 70 or 80 hours a week.

    Do you think that, some day, we will have to recommend that there be electronic monitoring of work weeks?

[English]

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: I think we should have an electronic means of controlling work hours, but I think even before that, if we had an electronic means of establishing what kinds of hours people are actually working, it would go a long way toward giving us a handle. We actually don't have good information that can be verifiable in a hard sense on how many hours people are driving.

    So I think from a research perspective, we would like to see that data to see what the case is right now. Then we could take a look at those varying kinds of driving schedules, look at what is more fatiguing and what is less fatiguing, and get a much better handle on how we might adjust fatigue countermeasures, adjust routes, adjust scheduling, or adjust nap opportunities--for instance, on those schedules that are more fatiguing. But we don't have a lot of that information, or at least I'm not aware of information that I would really consider valid. I think one of the ways of getting that is through electronic surveillance.

[Translation]

    M. Mario Laframboise: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    I said at the beginning that there was a difficulty, a problem and I'll say it again, considering the number of e-mails we received this week criticizing, as a matter of fact, the reports of our so-called experts.

    The problem is simple. Mr. Szabo, earlier you asked the right question. Why are things going so badly for the trucking industry? Its simple: since 1995, the cost of gas has gone up 60 percent and then there is the competition from the railways. That's the problem. There is at present competition from the railways. Another 15 to 20 cents a litre for diesel and forget it: the trucking industry is going to have big problems.

    In the meantime, employees are overloaded trying to compete with another industry and that is where we notice that industries, one after the other, are buying studies and researchers. I'm sorry, but as I said to Ms Smiley, I think it is unfortunate that researchers are becoming like lawyers; that is, they defend their clients and they try to do research that will please their clients. This worries me a lot because you say there is no evidence. There is evidence. There are coroners' reports for practically every fatal accident involving a trucker. There are coroners' reports.

    Why is Transport Canada not dealing with this? Because when one happens in the air and the cause is, among others, a controller, then it is Transport Canada that carries out the enquiry. But there are coroners who carry out enquiries and who tell us over and over again that when there are accidents, fatigue is a problem. Why do we not compile the coroners' recommendations, who are researchers in each of the accidents and who are telling us what really happened, who are often telling us that fatigue is the problem.

    If we started from that basis, that is, accidents that happen, we could get results from our research and it would be very simple for us to agree, but we will never solve the problem of the trucking industry by opposing rail transport. That's the economy. I'm sorry, but unless the federal government reduces its excise tax and removes the GST on gas, you will not succeed in making the trucking industry more competitive with rail.

    Remember, only 10 years ago, we were dismantling the railways all over Canada. Today, independent rail companies are making a mint. Why? Because the price of gas has gone up. It's as simple as that. It will go up again and we won't fix that.

    In the meantime, there are people dying on our roads. As far as I'm concerned, Professor, I don't understand when you tell me there are no... There are coroners' reports and there is surely research which could be carried out fairly quickly to show that fatigue is a factor, just as was done for alcohol in the past.

    Research has been carried out on the causes of accidents and, at some point, we managed to say "That's enough." and we set a standard. I don't think it is going to take four years of research to get to that point.

  (1210)  

[English]

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: Let me comment on that. Not being inside the trucking industry, I can't really comment on exactly what has gone on with industry since 1995, and I'm not sure it's my place to do that anyway, but in terms of the evidence from particular incidents, of course, there's evidence, such as coroners' reports.

    We do know--and this is what has brought this to our attention--that fatigue has been a factor in numerous accidents and incidents, not only in the trucking industry, but there's some very good data that was put out about eight or nine years ago on several jurisdictions, showing the circadian effects of single-vehicle off-the-road driving accidents. So we do know that this occurs in the public as well.

    When we take a look at incidents, certainly there's evidence, and I think that has led us to establish that fatigue is an important factor that we have to pay attention to. But let me also say that doesn't provide us with the only estimate of fatigue as an issue. It's really the tip of the iceberg.

    We have recently, in several jurisdictions, talked to and surveyed shift workers about their driving issues commuting to and from work. What we found with that study--studies in three different populations--was that about 3% or 4% were involved in an accident during the commute to and from work over the period of a year.

    However, we also found in those studies that 40% of them admitted to falling asleep behind the wheel at least once in the last year while commuting. I think that's our fatigue problem. The fact that it didn't result in an accident was only luck. If you're asleep behind the wheel, that's an accident waiting to happen. With the fact that only 4% had accidents and 40% fell asleep behind the wheel, I think the 40% is our fatigue problem and that's where we need better evidence.

    We certainly have evidence and reports on the 4% who got involved in accidents. That's why people are starting to pay a lot more close attention, for instance, with air accidents. They're looking at loss of separation between aircraft--which means there's an impairment there--what caused that, and fatigue is an issue there as well.

    So we need to back up on what we're thinking about as fatigue. I would submit that there is a big difference. If we have 40% of the population falling asleep behind the wheel during their commute if they're a shift worker, that's a big issue to deal with and a bigger issue than the 4% who in fact ended up in an accident as a result of that.

[Translation]

    M. Mario Laframboise: I will end by say that they were not all driving vehicles that were unsafe for the public because they were fully loaded...

    Thank you, Mr. Chair.

  (1215)  

[English]

    The Chair: Okay. We'll go to Mr. Shepherd.

    Alex.

    Mr. Alex Shepherd (Durham, Lib.): I'm just concerned about some of the language in your report. You talk about whether working 14 hours is necessarily unsafe, and then you go on to describe why it's not necessarily unsafe. They all seem to be ideal conditions, where the driver is knowledgeable about sleep impairment, and so forth. Clearly, people who are in a position of regulating an industry have to try to accept some kinds of norms. So I guess I would reword the question: is working 14 hours likely unsafe?

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: I think working 14 hours can be considered unsafe. There's no question about that.

    Will it necessarily result in an accident? Will there necessarily be performance impairment? Probably.

    As to the degree to which that becomes an issue on which you make regulatory decisions, I'm still convinced that we need some better evidence on that. But certainly--

    Mr. Alex Shepherd: Having said that, I don't know if this is rocket science, but if you get in a truck and you go from St. John's, Newfoundland, to Vancouver, it seems to me there are a lot of norms in there. There's a lot of commonality. There must be a lot of common knowledge about what the average trucker does--

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: That's right.

    Mr. Alex Shepherd: --and therefore somebody has to make an assumption somewhere along the line saying, based on what he normally does--he stops, he sleeps in the back, in the bunk, and he gets back out and drives some more--if he's driving 14 hours consistently, the likelihood is he has sleep impairment.

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: I would agree with that, yes.

    Mr. Alex Shepherd: Okay. You also talk about the 36-hour reset. Again, you say it's not necessary to have more, because there are two nights of sleep in there, and therefore he could be totally rejuvenated. But looking at the functions of a truck driver, the question is, I guess, whether he is likely to utilize that time in the most efficient way. There are other things he can do within that small period of time--i.e., go out with his family or go out to a movie. I mean, these people have a life other than just trucking.

    Getting back to that question, then, is it likely that the 36-hour reset period is insufficient?

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: I don't think we really know the relationship with regard to 36 hours versus 48. Those data are not here. We don't have them.

    Certainly it is a principle that the more opportunity you have for sleep the less likely you're going to be fatigued. Again, we have the issue of whether they're going to use it for sleep. That's why one of the points I made in my opening presentation was that we need to develop, and I think this committee needs to consider, fatigue management and education programs. They need to be made widely available so that the consequences of not following good sleep practices and sleep hygiene practices are clearer to drivers, their families, and the companies, and so that they can take appropriate countermeasures and know what to do.

    If you're planning a 14-hour driving day, and you have had a fatigue management program, and you have a set of guidelines, and at seven hours you say “I need a one-hour break for a sleep”, you can probably take that hour break and go for another seven hours. I think the proposal is for a 13-hour driving day. At any rate, you can go.

    We have lots of evidence now suggesting that short nap periods are very beneficial as well. That's why I think this proposal increases the flexibility for drivers to take short periods. A number of studies that are out now talk about 40-minute periods. The airline industry was allowing pilots to sleep for 40 minutes, or 40 minutes out, during which they got about 28 minutes of sleep, and it was rejuvenating.

    We have a number of driving studies out of the U.K. suggesting that 30-minute naps are very beneficial in terms of maintaining your performance. So it's not necessarily a 13-hour driving day. It could be a managed 13-hour driving day that has fatigue countermeasures built into it where you're taking naps and rests, for instance.

    But I do agree with you; we have to convince them that this is what they ought to be doing in terms of managing fatigue and in terms of their time off.

  (1220)  

    Mr. Alex Shepherd: Just to put it another way, let's say you were in the position of regulating the industry, and the debate was between 36-hour and 48-hour reset. If you thought the downside of this was that possibly there were people who, while they had the 36-hour reset, were still not fully rejuvenated and on the road, causing possible damage not only to themselves but also to the general public, would you err on the side of the 48 hours?

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: I would always err on the conservative side--I think one has to do that--but I'm not sure that there isn't evidence from partial... What we know is that from partial sleep loss situations the amount of recovery needed is of course less. A 36-hour reset presupposes some sort of fatigue state before that.

    If that fatigue state is low, then a 36-hour reset is fine. If it is high, maybe 48 hours isn't enough. But I think the goal, and certainly the way I think things ought to go, is to not put that person in that fatigue situation in the first place. That means better managing of how he does the driving. It is not a driver's responsibility solely. It is an industry and company responsibility as well. We need to remove those pressures so that one can manage their fatigue level better.

    My goal here would be to put in place an environment where you can educate people about what they ought to be doing and follow that through to make sure this is what people are doing. That way we never get to a state where they're extremely fatigued.

    I think that's a better approach than just saying let's assume they are going to be very tired and then deciding how long they need to recover. I would prefer to not get them in that state in the first place.

    Mr. Alex Shepherd: Well, what's implicit in that approach, though, is that the individual has control over the hours, which may or may not be true.

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: But the industry, the companies, and the shipping community, amongst them all, have some sort of control over the driver's hours, and he has to have some flexibility in order to manage his fatigue while on the job.

    The Chair: Thanks, Alex.

    I go to Bev Desjarlais.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: That study you mentioned with shift workers and the 3% or 4% who had been involved in accidents and the 40% who had indicated they had fallen asleep, was there any indication of the commute times that were involved there? Were they ten-minute commutes or hour commutes? Was that built into the study?

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: In several of those studies, they were quite short commutes--15 to 30 minutes. In one of those studies, it was longer. It was probably 45 minutes or longer. It depends on what centre it was in as well. One of them was an air traffic control study. If you're in Toronto centre, your commute is going to be long. If you are in Gander, you could probably walk.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Would it be safe to say then that if we're talking about fairly short commute times that ended up with a number of accidents--or potential accidents--if we then take a truck driver who's driving the entire length of his shift, we can times that by the number of that percentage and put the risk on the highway as being equated to that, based on the number of hours driving?

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: No, I don't think you can do that, especially in light of the evidence from the trucking study carried out by Canada and the U.S. jointly, where there were only a very few instances of drivers working long hours and working at night--

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Previously you indicated, as far as you knew, there was only one study on long-haul driving that you were aware of.

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: No.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: I thought I picked it up that you had indicated--

  (1225)  

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: No. I said there has been one major study in the last ten years in North America that was a scientifically based study on long-haul truckers, and that's the study published by Mitler and his colleagues in The New England Journal of Medicine.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Okay. So are you saying now that there are studies that say there isn't a problem with the drivers' hours and fatigue?

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: No. What I'm saying is the evidence from that study is that they didn't demonstrate very much fatigue in those drivers working common schedules that were within the regulations of the jurisdiction. They did demonstrate that there were a few instances with drivers falling asleep behind the wheel. That again is an accident waiting to happen. But it didn't happen.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: I guess I'm--

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: Maybe I'm not answering the question--

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Well, at one point in your presentation, or actually at numerous points, you said there are not enough studies for us to make a decision. Then you mentioned the shift workers--3% or 4% being in accidents and 40% of them indicating they'd fallen asleep. You'd indicated there was only one of these studies. But now you're saying we have enough evidence to indicate it's not a problem with truck drivers. I'm going to go back and read through the minutes in case I've missed something here, but it seems a bit contradictory.

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: What we have, I think, if I can try to explain it, and this was in part based on some of the questions that were posed, is one major scientific study in North America. There are shorter-term studies, which are not applicable, from Europe, where they have different jurisdictions. The shift work studies I talked about were not in the trucking industry at all.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: They were basing it on physiological evidence--

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: They were people working shifts and--

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: --in the shift industry where you've indicated the same type of fatigue problems happen. It's not the same industry, but it's the same type of fatigue problems.

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: That's right. But I think the question I was asked was, is this applicable to the trucking industry? And I said, no, we don't have a lot of good studies from the trucking industry.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: But because it was shift work fatigue in which you had indicated previously the same type of things happen, would it not be fair to suggest that the same thing would happen to truck drivers?

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: That they would fall asleep?

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Yes.

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: It's always a potential, of course.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: I'll try to do this with one other question.

    Is there a risk of drivers or shift workers developing different health problems as a result of changing shifts?

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: I don't know if you're referring to the recent case in Nova Scotia, where a Workers' Compensation Board actually granted a disability on the basis of shift work maladaptation syndrome, which I believe is the first case in Canada, although there was a similar case a couple of years ago in Pennsylvania.

    Now that was the first level, the Workers' Compensation Board level. But it's important because it said that there was a disability associated with changing rotations on shift work. But I believe last week, Michelin, which was the employer, has appealed that.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: In your view, from a scientific perspective, is there any indication you can develop health problems as a result of the different shift schedules, and if so, what types of health problems?

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: That's right. The medical literature in this area talks about several sorts of major problems that are more prominent in shift workers, especially those who are rotating and those who include nights as part of their rotation. Those are largely around sleep problems and circadian disturbances, or gastrointestinal problems. There's some evidence for heart problems in nurses on rotating shifts.

    In a number of small studies there are a number of areas where shift workers predominate or have a higher incidence of a number of things. That includes some psychological difficulties such as depression.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Okay. Thank you.

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: So there are some health consequences to working shifts, but we're having difficulty sorting out how much of it is shift work and how much of it is all of those other things that go along with shift work. For instance, the GI problems might be related to the fact that in most shift work situations there's very poor nutrition available when you're working those odd shifts. That might be a cause of the GI problems. Sorting out the contributing factors is a difficult thing, but that's what scientists and researchers do.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Okay. Thank you.

    The Chair: Are there any further questions for our guest?

    Before you leave, Doctor, I have just a couple for the researchers, coming at this from a different angle.

    You mentioned research. I noticed truckers, for instance, have incentive programs where they get certificates for driving long hauls without accidents. There probably are rest stops. There is a sleeper on the truck. Maybe you get truckers back home after a certain period if you could do it. Are those all conditions...

    I went from Las Vegas to Los Angeles recently on a Greyhound bus. I was talking to the chap who drove the bus. He is a professional and is very cautious about his down time and how he drives his bus. He said the two significant things were that night driving is always a problem because of the circadian problem, and the other was the younger drivers got pressured to take some of those shifts when maybe they hadn't had enough time off.

    In this particular area I think you said a lot of work has to be done, and that probably is where a lot of work has to be done. It's not necessarily the fact that you're driving the vehicle; it's in these cycles and how you manage them.

    Could you expand a little bit on that?

  (1230)  

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: I think one of the interesting points is we tend to not talk about busing very much at all in this conversation, and yet buses have our most valuable cargo--that is, passengers. Certainly, as was mentioned, the circadian effects are going to be an issue. It's good that there's a professional approach to it and that they're using their down time appropriately.

    I'm sorry; what was the last part of your question?

    The Chair: You talked about the education and the research. How would that improve?

    Mr. Ron Heslegrave: This would provide a number of other options to drivers on how they would deal with their off time and when in fact they needed it.

    The other point you mentioned, though, was the issue of age. The preliminary data we have show that aging is an issue for fatigue and that those older workers who are still working in that same kind of environment are reporting more subjective complaints, more health problems, etc. Certainly my view, and I have published on it, is that what we think of as an older worker is a lot younger than what we used to think of as an older worker. Ten years ago we used to think of an older shift worker as being 55-plus. The data we have show that there seems to be a dramatic change around 40. You start to feel the impact of shift work, long night driving, etc., a lot more after 40 than before 40. So in fact our aging shift-working population is getting younger as we collect data, which is not encouraging for the industry, I don't think.

    The Chair: Thank you very much.

    We're adjourned until Tuesday, March 12, I think it is.