:
Absolutely. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would like to again just outline this breach of privilege question in a clear and concise manner, if I can.
The meeting on Thursday, March 25, of this committee was an in camera meeting. Although the member for Parkdale—High Park is not a regular member of our committee, the member decided to attend our meeting on that day and put forward a motion on behalf of the regular member, who was present at the committee at that time.
On Tuesday, March 30, Mr. Kennedy sent an e-mail to all members of the Liberal caucus stating that our committee would “review the government's stated deadline of March 31, 2011 and its impact on municipalities, as proposed by Sukh Dhaliwal and myself”. They expected “the committee to schedule meetings for mid-April”.
He attached a template letter and a questionnaire and asked Liberal members to “send to your municipal contacts in your riding”. The attached letter stated that “Gerard Kennedy's motion” had passed on March 25, and received “all party support”.
The public minutes did not mention these transient facts that were contained within the letter, which I think everybody has received a copy of. They did not mention whose motion it was, nor that it received all-party support, a fact that could be seen as misleading without the context of the debate that occurred on March 25.
I might remind all colleagues that, indeed, Mr. Kennedy proposed a motion that would take the meeting from an in camera meeting to a public meeting, and the committee said no. I would suggest that is in fact an aggravating circumstance. The public meetings also did not mention when the committee would be hearing testimony or the statements that they expected committee to schedule meetings for mid-April. That could also be seen as intentionally misleading, taken out of context of the debate that occurred on March 25.
Mr. Chair, this is clearly a breach of privilege on the facts and pursuant to the rules of the House. It is a breach of privilege on the behalf of the member for Parkdale—High Park, and I believe the committee should report this matter to the House immediately as a result.
As you are aware, we cannot find a breach of privilege; only the Speaker can do that. But we are under obligation to report it to the House if we believe that it may have taken place.
To be clear, what use is an in camera meeting if we can't trust other members of Parliament to keep the information confidential? This House operates on the basis of rules and trust. In this case, I would submit that both of these have been breached by Mr. Kennedy.
I also have drafted a report that was utilized by the environment committee in relation to a similar breach that took place with , and I would like to submit that for distribution.
That is my submission.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the member opposite for raising this point.
First off, I'd like to apologize to the committee. There was an error on my part. I had inquired, very specifically to respect the committee, whether or not the motion had been brought forward to the open committee and then passed. I was given the information, and I accept responsibility for the way I inquired and the way I received information, which indeed had been done. What I should have done was availed myself of minutes to see expressly whether anything was different from what I understood. Let me offer that to the committee. There was no intent on my part whatsoever to divulge anything from an in camera committee meeting.
Let me further explain that to the big city mayors caucus, to municipal officials individually, and to members of the Liberal caucus, I had stated publicly, in different contexts, my intention to raise a motion of this intent. Properly worded, this should have said, “a similar motion”. It should not have attributed authorship, because when I read the minutes, that was not expressly clear. I would say, though, that the existence of the motion itself had previously been made public in many other forums to people who would be concerned with this particular resolution.
Further, I do note that the motion, without authorship, was passed in the public minutes. That constitutes support of the committee, and that's all I ascribe to it. I did not, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, ascribe any opinions. I did not divulge any arguments. I did not divulge any aspects of what members of this committee said in camera. I would further say that while it's my hope--and again I will not divulge the content of the in camera meeting publicly--that the meetings would take place as quickly as possible, there have been 47 sessions of the committee without consideration of infrastructure. This is a decision the committee made, I think, and there is a particular inherent timeliness to municipalities learning whether or not there would be any flexibility, whether or not our considerations would be listened to by others, and so forth.
There was a reference to timing. There was nothing in the discussion that I recall--and I would happily be corrected by members of the committee--that actually spoke to timing. I don't think it's divulging anything to say that the schedule and so on were actually outside of the actual committee deliberations and were in the hands of the chair in that respect, in terms of timing and schedules. So it would be as though any other member of committee were speculating.
So again, to go to the express points, the idea of my bringing forward a motion or a similar one was already public. Second, the actual motion was agreed to by the committee. There were no objections. There was no request for a vote. There was no deliberation. Therefore, I think it's fair to say there was all-party support. All members who were here agreed to the motion as it came forward.
Third, the speculation around date was certainly in no way meant to undermine the privileges of the committee as a whole or of members to set their date. I was simply expressing my opinion and motivating people who I think are interested in this. Ultimately, it is a public subject, and I think it was intended to be, and the motion does read as an invitation to people to come forward. The motion following also asked people to submit the names of people who they thought would be useful witnesses. In effect, I was seeking useful witnesses for the purposes of furthering the committee business.
Again, I apologize for the error of not confirming the exact wording of the minutes, which did not include an attribution of this motion. That is my fault, and I apologize without reservation to the committee for that. I did not, though, knowingly or willingly undermine any of the.... I agree with the foundation Mr. Jean brings forward, which is that there needs to be privilege for members' comments made in camera. There is nothing, I think, in my remarks, in the documents brought forward, or in any others that takes what any member of this committee said and characterizes it to anyone outside of those deliberations. I was careful to preserve that confidence. And I hope the committee will understand that I had to give my seat back to the regular committee member, that I followed up, and that it was my mistake of not knowing that the motion was brought forward without its authorship into the public forum.
That is the explanation I give. I'm not going to embellish it, and I hope the members can see that there was no intent and no effort made to go against the in camera nature of the discussion.
Merci.
:
Mr. Chairman, first of all, I understood what Mr. Kennedy just said. It is a serious matter when a motion constituting a breach of privilege is introduced in committee. The only explanation that must be given by a member and the only conclusion a member must reach is that an error was made. That member must also apologize.
The more I hear Mr. Kennedy's explanation, the less I'm satisfied he understood the error he made, which is dangerous. I remember very clearly what Mr. Kennedy wanted to do, he wanted that motion to be made public, whereas we had previously discussed the motions of other colleagues in camera. It is not that we had anything against Mr. Kennedy's motion; it's that we were at a stage in the meeting where we were sitting in camera.
Mr. Kennedy should have had a debate at the start of the discussion on all members' motions. In that way, we could have had a debate. The committee is master of its own agenda. The meeting was held in camera and we decided to continue sitting in camera. This is not a matter of infrastructure or subject; it was an in camera discussion.
You made a mistake, Mr. Kennedy, and you should apologize for it. It was a strategy on your part, and you had planned your entire speech. At least that's what this leads me to believe. Your strategy was ultimately simple: you wanted this to be made public because you intended to send it to all the cities. It was a strategy on your part. You're engaging in politics, and you're entitled to do so.
When you interfere with member privilege in committee, you must apologize. Obviously, if you think there was no breach of member privilege, you say so. At that point, we will support the Conservative Party motion and we will see that the Speaker of the House of Commons decides.
One thing is certain: if you make a mistake, the only thing to do is to apologize to the committee. I will accept that apology. Any other explanation is merely politics on your part. If you want to apologize to the committee, you will have the opportunity to do so. You made a mistake, that's all, and we'll stop talking about it.
However, if you try to explain to me that that was not what you wanted to do, there's a problem. You had a strategy and today it's clear. You wanted this to be made public because you intended to send it to all the cities. I'm sorry, but I hadn't seen that. You spoke to no one about it and that's your political choice. In doing so, however, you committed a breach of the rights and privileges of the members sitting on this committee. The meeting was being held in camera. No discussion was to be made public, but you did so. You made a mistake. If you apologize for that, this is not a problem for me, but don't try to give me an explanation; otherwise that looks like a political strategy and I'm not going along with that.
:
Mr. Chair and honourable members, I want to thank you for inviting the Transportation Safety Board of Canada to appear before your committee. I bring with me today solid experience: Mr. Jean Laporte, the TSB's chief operating officer; and Mr. Mark Clitsome, who is in charge of all the aviation investigations that we do at the Transportation Safety Board.
Twenty years ago Parliament created the Transportation Safety Board of Canada to conduct independent investigations, no matter whether the accident was on our waterways, pipelines, railways, or in our skies. The creation of the TSB was an investment in Canada's future; it was an investment in the infrastructure that is critical to our country's economic and social health.
This investment has paid dividends to Canadians by making us safer as we move ourselves and our goods across this country and around the world. For twenty years we have reported to Canadians and made it clear what needs to be done to make the system safer. And Canada now enjoys one of the safest transportation systems in the world.
Even so, Canadians expect that we at the Transportation Safety Board work to make it even safer. That is why we will continue to conduct independent, expert investigations. We will inform Canadians about what happened, why it happened, and we will suggest solutions to industry and government. When the board feels that not enough has been done to address the safety issues we have uncovered, we will speak up, as we did last month with our watchlist.
On March 16, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada launched its watchlist, and I'm going to take you on a very brief tour. On it are nine critical safety issues that must be tackled to make Canada's transportation system safer.
In Marine, there are two issues. The first is fishing vessel safety. Almost half of the marine accidents reported to the TSB are fishing vessel accidents. On average, one Canadian a month dies in a fishing vessel accident. The challenges we face are pervasive in the fishing industry; they range from vessel stability to safety culture.
The second marine issue involves Canada's ferries. Our ferries enjoy a good safety record, but we all need to be mindful that tens of millions of passengers rely on them each year. There are over 100 large passenger ferries, and roughly half of these can, and do, carry over 400 people on a regular basis.
At the board we've learned the hard way that these vessels need to be better prepared for an emergency. If there is an accident, ferry operators need to know how many people are on board. Everyone is more likely to get off safely if crews have practised realistic exercises.
In rail, the watchlist speaks to a collision every two weeks between a passenger train and a vehicle at one of Canada's 20,000 railway crossings. The board is calling on the railways and Transport Canada to take the time to figure out which level crossings pose the greatest risk and then do what is necessary to bring the number of collisions down.
The second rail issue is the operation of longer, heavier trains. In the last 15 years the weight and length of trains has increased by 25%. Marshalling is the order in which trains are put together. If you liken a long train to an accordion, pulling forces tend to separate the cars and pushing forces will compress them together. When lighter, more empty, cars are placed in the train without regard to these forces, the result can be a derailment.
Longer, heavier trains have to be marshalled and operated with safety as the imperative. We think that the rail industry understands the importance of this, but on the ground our investigators find that vigilance sometimes flags. While it is very early days, I can tell you that in our investigation of the recent derailment in Pickering, Ontario, we will be looking very carefully at marshalling and its impact on in-train forces.
Moving on to aviation, there are two watchlist issues related to safety at Canada's airports. The first issue concerns conflicts on the ground. While the likelihood of these conflicts is quite low, by focusing on improved procedures and enhanced collision warning systems, we think the risk at Canada's busy airports can and should be lowered even further. We are also concerned about the millions of aircraft that land at Canada's airports. Accidents can happen on the runway, or aircraft can run off the end. We learn hard lessons from all our safety investigations.
When an Air France aircraft ran off runway 24L in Toronto, we learned we had a problem, and this problem has continued. In a recent publication of the Flight Safety Foundation's AeroSafety World, Canada was shown to have more than twice the rate of runway overruns in wet conditions than the rest of the world. Building sufficient runway end safety areas, or the alternative, engineered material arresting systems, will be difficult and it will take political resolve to make the ends of Canada's runways safer.
Another aviation issue the TSB focused on is called controlled flight into terrain. In Canada between 2000 and 2009 an unsuspecting crew flew a perfectly good aircraft into the ground 129 times. Let me try to put that figure in perspective for you. This represents just 5% of aviation accidents, but nearly 25% of all fatalities. The answer to this problem is technology; it's to fit smaller aircraft with terrain awareness warning systems, and we must get on with it.
The last two watchlist issues are common to marine, rail, and aviation. The first one I want to talk about is data. Recently the TSB participated in an International Civil Aviation Organization safety meeting in Montreal, where the world grappled with the challenge of recovering the recorders from Air France flight 447. To do our job, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada needs objective data from onboard recorders--an airplane's black box, a locomotive's event recorder, or a ship's voyage data recorder. The patchwork of requirements we have in Canada is no longer acceptable. We need to ensure that when there is an accident the safety board will always have secure, retrievable data.
The last issue on the watchlist that I want to discuss with you is safety management systems. This is an issue in marine, rail, and aviation, but because I know you are now studying aviation safety, I will focus on SMS in the aviation world. I also want to talk about business aircraft and the lessons learned from our Fox Harbour investigation.
The Transportation Safety Board has consistently emphasized the advantages of safety management systems. I want to be really clear about that. These systems are a powerful, internationally recognized management tool to help organizations find trouble before trouble finds them. At the board we think SMS is the right way to go, but to make these systems work there needs to be a firm and consistent commitment from companies, and oversight from the regulator is critical.
Safety management systems have been fully implemented by Canada's 35 large carriers--those are the CAR 705 carriers, which transport most passengers in Canada. It should be noted that our large carriers have a very good safety record. The challenge to come, in our view, will be with the rest of the aviation industry--Canada's air taxis, helicopter operations, commuter airlines, and flight training schools. For smaller companies, whether they operate commercial or business aircraft, Transport Canada will need to closely monitor the industry to ensure all are on board and there is a smooth transition to SMS. This is something we will be paying special attention to in our investigation.
Then there is the unique case of business aircraft. Let me stress that it is a unique case. Let me put the issue in context and tell you about our Fox Harbour investigation.
About a decade ago, Transport Canada and the Canadian Business Aviation Association began to transfer responsibility for certification and auditing to the CBAA. This transfer of responsibilities was premised on the CBAA maintaining a number of conditions. I won't go into all of those conditions, but I specifically want to talk about the condition on safety management systems.
The intent was for the CBAA to require each business aircraft operator to have a functioning safety management system. When a Global Express aircraft touched down short of the runway in Fox Harbour, Nova Scotia, the TSB's investigation took an in-depth look at the transfer of responsibilities and at the implementation and functioning of the SMS in the business aviation community. What we found was that while commercial operators were required to implement SMS in stages, on a fixed timeline, business operators were free to implement SMS on their own terms with no fixed timeline.
This meant many, including the operator in Fox Harbour, did not have a fully functioning SMS. This operator, for instance, did not properly assess the risk of introducing a larger aircraft to its fleet, in accordance with sound safety management principles. That is why the board recommended that the CBAA set SMS implementation milestones for its certificate holders and that Transport Canada ensure that the CBAA put in place an effective quality assurance program to audit certificate holders.
On March 16 of this year, Transport Canada went one step further and decided to take back the certification and oversight of business aviation. This change will come into effect on April 1, 2011. I must say, the TSB is pleased with this outcome.
As is our practice, we will continue to monitor the response to this and all board recommendations and we will be reporting on whether progress has been made. When efforts come up short, as they did with the nine issues on our watchlist, the TSB will report to Canadians and challenge industry and government to step up and make transportation safer.
The early reactions by the regulator and industry to the watchlist have been positive. On the vast majority of issues we are in agreement about the safety issue, but they are on the watchlist because progress has been far too slow and the problems we identified over and over in our investigations have not been fixed. Sometimes I think this is because industry consultations drag on and that is part of the regulatory process, and sometimes it's because the regulatory process itself is not nimble enough to deal with critical safety issues.
Let me leave you with this thought. Perhaps we should have a faster, more streamlined way of dealing with regulatory changes that are necessary for the safety of Canadians.
Thank you. Merci de votre attention.
Now we would be pleased to answer your questions.