Locomotive recorder legislation law takes aim at railway risk managers

A new federal law passed Thursday is intended to mandate the videotaping of locomotive crews in order to let railway risk managers help prevent accidents.

Bill C-49, The Transportation Modernization Act, was signed Thursday into law by Governor General Julie Payette.

Federal Transport Minister Marc Garneau delivers a speech on the Transportation Modernization Act and the Ocean Protection Plan at a business luncheon in Halifax on Tuesday, May 23, 2017. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan

A section mandating video and voice recorders on most train locomotives does “not come into force until regulations are finalized,” a Transport Canada spokesperson told Canadian Underwriter Friday. “The entry into force will be specified by the regulations.”

Canada’s Senate initially wanted to block the portion of Bill C-49 that would give railway operators the ability to access some video footage.

Union leaders told Senators earlier this year they were opposed to giving employers access to video footage of rail crews.

But both Transport Minister Marc Garneau and Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) chair Kathy Fox contended that railway firms could improve safety if they were allowed to review randomly-selected recordings. This way, Fox noted earlier, companies could identify weaknesses in procedures or employee training.

Once regulations associated with Bill C-49 come into force, railway companies will be able to “use recordings to conduct analysis in order to identify safety concerns as part of ongoing safety management through random sampling,” the Transport Canada spokesperson wrote Friday in an email to Canadian Underwriter.

Companies will also be able to use video and audio recordings to “determine the cause of a reportable accident/incident not being  investigated by the Transportation Safety Board,” the Transport Canada spokesperson added.

TSB is a separate organization from Transport Canada. TSB reports directly to Parliament and is responsible for investigating safety incidents and accidents in pipelines, maritime, aviation and railways.

In a report on a fatal train accident in 2012, TSB recommended that locomotive video and voice recorders be mandatory. In 2012, a VIA Rail passenger train derailed and tumbled down an embankment northeast of Hamilton, Ont. after travelling 67 miles per hour in a 15 mph zone.

It was unclear to investigators whether the crew noticed the signals.

Locomotive recordings were among the new measures brought in with Bill C-49, an omnibus piece of legislation that deals with other federal transport issues such as airplane passenger rights.

The bill passed third reading in House of Commons Nov 1., 2017. It passed third reading March 29, 2018 in the Senate, but with several amendments.

When the Senate sent it back to the House of Commons, Garneau indicated the government agreed with some Senate amendments but disagreed with others.

The Senate officially told the House of Commons earlier this month it “insists” on some of the changes it proposed to Bill C-49. The last time the House and Senate disagreed on amendments was in 2006, the CBC reported earlier.

On May 22, the Senate passed a motion indicating it did not “insist” on some of its amendments. As a result, both houses of Parliament agreed to the same version, which is now law.