Mr. Chair, members, good afternoon. Thank you for inviting the Transportation Safety Board of Canada to discuss the important topic of rail safety.

The TSB is independent and operates at arm's length from other government departments and agencies. We report to Parliament through the President of the King's Privy Council for Canada. This lets us be impartial and free from any real or perceived external influence.

As you may know, our mandate and sole objective is to promote air, rail, marine and pipeline transportation safety for modes of transportation under federal jurisdiction. To that end, we conduct independent investigations, we identify safety gaps, their causes and contributing factors, we make recommendations and we release reports.

It is also worth noting what the TSB does not do. We have no authority to determine civil or criminal responsibilities. Even if the TSB is often the first to arrive on the scene of an accident, we do not act as first responders.

Rail safety continues to be top of mind for the TSB. I'd like to share some rail safety statistics.

In 2023, 1,235 rail occurrences were reported to the TSB. This included 321 incidents and 914 accidents, six of which resulted in the release of dangerous goods. This represents a 9% decrease from 2022 in accidents, and a 12% decrease from the 10-year average.

There were a total of 67 transportation-related fatalities in 2023; 53 of those were trespassing fatalities and 13 were crossing accident fatalities. No fatalities were related to a release of dangerous goods.

Since its creation in 1990, the TSB has issued 154 recommendations to the regulator and the rail industry. As of March 2024, 89.6% of the responses to these rail recommendations have received the board's highest rating of “fully satisfactory”.

We are currently reviewing the steps taken by the regulator and the industry in terms of the TSB Watchlist, our program that identifies key safety issues that need to be addressed to make Canada's transportation system even safer.

Inadequate safety measures pose risks not only to the rail industry, but also to the public, communities and the environment.

There are five watch-list safety issues affecting the rail sector, including three multimodal issues. The multimodal issues are fatigue management in freight train operations, safety management and regulatory surveillance. The two rail-specific issues are following signal indications, and unplanned or uncontrolled movement of rail equipment.

In regard to following signal indications, train crews are required to identify and communicate signal indications among themselves and then take appropriate action in how they operate the train. However, when crews miss or don't follow a signal indication, in the absence of physical fail-safe defences, it could result in a collision or a derailment. From 2004 to 2021, there has been an annual average of 35 reported occurrences in which a train crew did not respond appropriately to a signal indication displayed in the field. We have seen a number of concerning occurrences lately.

The board has been calling for physical fail-safe train controls on trains for decades. In 2022, the board recommended that Transport Canada require major Canadian railways to expedite the implementation of physical fail-safe train controls on Canada's high-speed rail corridors and on all key routes. So far, the most optimistic timeline referenced by Transport Canada for the implementation of such a system in Canada, which will be called “enhanced train control”, is 2030. Until then, the rail transportation system relies mostly on administrative defences to protect against such occurrences.

Uncontrolled movements are low-probability events. When they do occur, however, they can have catastrophic consequences, particularly if they involve dangerous goods, as was the case in the 2013 derailment in Lac-Mégantic. That event caused 47 deaths and destroyed most of the downtown area.

After concluding its investigation, the TSB made five recommendations, two of which are still active and are on the TSB Watchlist.

Over the years, there has been significant progress in addressing safety deficiencies and implementing the TSB's recommendations. However, there is still much work that can be done to improve rail safety and to mitigate the potential impacts to people, communities and the environment.

Thank you. We are ready to take your questions.