Bill C-33

Bill C-33: Strengthening the Port System and Railway Safety in Canada Act

Full name:

An Act to amend the Customs Act, the Railway Safety Act, the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, 1992, the Marine Transportation Security Act, the Canada Transportation Act and the Canada Marine Act and to make a consequential amendment to another Act

Amendment topics include:

Marine Act

The Bill would give the power to the Minister, where the Minister is of the opinion that there is a risk of imminent harm to national security, national economic security or competition that constitutes a significant threat to the safety and security of persons, goods, ships or port facilities or the security of supply chains, to order port authorities and persons in charge of port facilities to take measures or stop any activity in order to prevent the harm. As failure to comply with these orders would be punishable by imprisonment under subsection 127(1) of the Act, they could engage the right to liberty under section 7 of the Charter.

Railway Safety Act

The Bill would prohibit interference with railway works, equipment or operations, as well as damage or destruction of railway works or equipment in a manner that threatens the safety of railway operations. It would also prohibit behaviour that endangers or risks endangering the safety of a station, railway equipment, or individuals who are at the station or who are on board the equipment, as well as unruly behaviour toward employees or persons acting on behalf of a railway company. Further amendments would prohibit the obstruction of officers carrying out functions under the Act. As contravention of these prohibitions would be punishable by imprisonment

Dangerous Goods Act

The Bill would allow the Minister to designate enforcement officers. It would also grant certain powers to such officers for the purpose of determining whether a violation has occurred, including the power to enter and search places, to require the attendance of persons, and to order the production of documents, information and data.

—Justice Canada

Comments made during debate over the act include:

Remarks

Thank you for the opportunity to speak on Bill C-33.

Unifor is Canada's largest union in the private sector and represents 315,000 workers in every major area of the economy.

Unifor represents thirty-two bargaining units and ten-thousand members in the rail sector. This includes Engineers, Conductors, Locomotive, and freight -Mechanics, Electricians, Crane-Operators and contingent of semi-skilled support workers such as labourers and productions workers who manufacture Freight-Car, Locomotive and Track Components.

Unifor also represents 2300 workers in the marine sector.

In the rail sector, Unifor members preform safety inspections on freight cars, physically, visually, audibly and sometimes even by smell.

Our members preform brake tests, inspect the trains mechanical components, to ensure they are working properly and are free of defects.

Current legislation requires these trains to be inspected and tested at a train's origin and destination points.

However, regulatory exemptions have already been granted that allows rail companies to remove safety inspections and tests conducted by a qualified mechanics to be replaced with technology that is limited and largely untested and unregulated.

We believe digital inspection creates some conflicts when the interests of the company's profits and the "inspection results" do not align.

Unfortunately, technology and digitization is referred to in this Bill only in the context of facilitating efficient supply chains and rules making.

Unifor believes this bill continues and entrenches “the fox watching the hen house” type regulatory environment for the rail sector.

We believe that the large rail employers have taken advantage of this deregulated environment to hiding behind safety to increase their bottom lines.

In an unregulated automation system, there will be a lot of pressure for systems to be tweaked not for safety, but for convenience.

Unifor believes technology should be invested in and implemented to increase safety and security of our supply chains.

However, as it stands now, the focus has been on replacing workers while attempting to reach the same level of safety.

There is even a current arbitration before the board about whether this digital safety inspection work is covered by our union's contract.

The US Department of Transport's Volpe Centre research on rail technology has said replacing workers should not be the focus of technology implementation.

The Volpe Centre's recommendation is to promote the augmentation of work, not the replacement of work, with technology to increase safety of the rail system.

It is our understanding that this is also the position taken-up by the US White House.

We submit that any change to Canadian legislation that oversees safety should include the principle of augmentation in the pursuit of increased safety, not simply to replace workers in search of increased profits.

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Unifor is also concerned that the amendments made by Bill C-33 on the ability to consult with third parties is just language to support the outsourcing of responsibility to a third party on regulations and exemptions.

If the Minister's office feels it does not have in-house capacity to make good decisions on rules and exemptions, it should invest in a publicly financed independent research arm to look at the impacts of rules, exceptions granted, and the implementation of technology. Not a private third-party.

Unifor is concerned that private third-party recommendations will be based on private, proprietary data.

Safety Management Systems and Security Management Systems are already black boxes because they use "software"—as if software development is some alien process that cannot be regulated.

Unifor maintains that rule making and the exemption process should be made public.

Therefore, data collected on the impact of rules and exemptions should also be made public.

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Finally, we would also like to echo concern brought-up by our comrades at CUPE and ILWU about the implications of the new powers of the minister when it comes to sustaining supply chains.

While we recognize that the language was written to deal with pandemic-like emergencies, we feel the language is too broad and, though not the intention of the language, could be used to interfere with the right to strike.

We believe the best model for expanded powers for emergencies should be done through a list of issues and types of disruption that constitute emergencies and actions impacting supply chains.

We submit that such a list can be clear to the public while also sufficiently broad to deal with security against external actors, without undermining Charter rights and legitimate actions.