1997 ANNUAL REPORT,
PROVINCIAL AUDITOR
MINISTRY OF TRANSPORTATION
CONTENTS
Thursday 12 March 1998
1997 annual report, Provincial Auditor: Section 3.13, commercial vehicle safety and regulation
Ministry of Transportation
Ms Jill Hutcheon, assistant deputy minister, safety and regulation division
Mr David Carroll, regional manager, drivers and vehicles office, central region
Mr Michael Weir, director, carrier safety and enforcement branch
STANDING COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC ACCOUNTS
Chair / Président
Mr Bernard Grandmaître (Ottawa East / -Est L)
Vice-Chair / Vice-Président
Mr Richard Patten (Ottawa Centre / -Centre L)
Mr Marcel Beaubien (Lambton PC)
Mr Gary Fox (Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings / Prince Edward-Lennox-Hastings-Sud PC)
Mr Bernard Grandmaître (Ottawa East / -Est L)
Mr Jean-Marc Lalonde (Prescott and Russell / Prescott et Russell L)
Ms Shelley Martel (Sudbury East / -Est ND)
Mr Richard Patten (Ottawa Centre / -Centre L)
Mr Peter L. Preston (Brant-Haldimand PC)
Mr Joseph N. Tascona (Simcoe Centre / -Centre PC)
Mr Terence H. Young (Halton Centre / -Centre PC)
Substitutions / Membres remplaçants
Mr Toby Barrett (Norfolk PC)
Mr John Hastings (Etobicoke-Rexdale PC)
Mr Mario Sergio (Yorkview L)
Also taking part / Autres participants et participantes
Ms Marilyn Churley (Riverdale ND)
Mr Ken Leishman, assistant provincial auditor
Clerk / Greffière
Ms Donna Bryce
Staff / Personnel
Ms Elaine Campbell, research officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 1025 in room 228, following a closed session.
1997
ANNUAL REPORT, PROVINCIAL AUDITOR
MINISTRY OF TRANSPORTATION
Consideration of section 3.13, commercial vehicle safety and regulation.
The Vice-Chair (Mr Richard Patten): We're ready to start. There will be other members joining us as well. Rather than do a rotation, I'll just take a list of members who would like to comment or ask questions.
Let me welcome our witnesses this morning to our committee session. Could I ask for the sake of Hansard if you might each introduce yourself. Do you wish to make some comments before we go to questions?
Ms Jill Hutcheon: Yes. I'm Jill Hutcheon, assistant deputy minister, safety and regulation division.
Mr David Carroll: I'm David Carroll, the regional manager for the drivers and vehicles program for the Ministry of Transportation's central region.
Mr Michael Weir: I'm Michael Weir, director of the carrier safety and enforcement branch in the safety and regulation division.
Ms Hutcheon: With your permission, I'd like to begin by providing a very brief overview of transportation, the objectives of our carrier safety and enforcement program and the major actions we have taken in support of these goals, and then address some of the issues and the recommendations made by the auditor in his report.
Transportation is really, as we all know, indispensable to the quality of life enjoyed by Ontarians. Our economic prosperity depends on our ability to move people and goods efficiently across the province. Some $2.7 billion worth of goods are transported on our highways every day, and over 600,000 manufacturing jobs rely on transportation.
By supporting our industries in the global marketplace and enabling people to travel safely to and from work, the ministry fosters a positive business climate that can create jobs and facilitate trade and commerce. Our transportation network also allows our citizens and our visitors to participate in many activities that add to the quality of their lives.
Safety is fundamental to us and to an effective transportation network. As you know, the annual social cost of traffic crashes in Ontario is estimated at $9 billion in terms of health care, lost income and property damage. Further, collisions can create significant economic costs by disrupting key transportation corridors. Closing Highway 401 or the QEW for even one hour can cost businesses millions of dollars and cause undue stress for commuters. The ministry is working to ensure our transportation system minimizes those social and economic costs related to traffic collisions.
The ministry promotes a safe, sustainable, efficient and high-quality transportation network through its core businesses. We have three core businesses, the first being transportation policy and planning, which is really designed to enhance our economic competitiveness by ensuring our people and our goods get to their destinations efficiently and on time.
Our second core business, provincial highways management, ensures that Ontario's bridges and highways are safe and usable. It also protects the taxpayers' investment in the roads system through timely repair and rehabilitation.
Our third core business is road user safety, which of course focuses on making our roads safer by regulating and licensing users and vehicles, by monitoring compliance and enforcing truck and bus safety.
Clearly our commercial vehicle safety and enforcement program is focused on that road user safety core business. However, we feel it supports all of our core businesses. By promoting the safe operation of trucks and buses, we not only improve safety for all of our motorists, but by reducing collisions we minimize the disruption to our major economic corridors and by enforcing weight laws we reduce the wear and tear on our highways and bridges. Weight enforcement also helps to reduce the risk of collisions from overloaded vehicles that take longer to stop or have worn component parts. We believe these three objectives complement each other and we continually strive to promote the right balance between all three businesses.
Our strategy for managing commercial vehicle safety consists of setting safety standards, enforcing those standards, and intervening in cases of non-compliance. Standards in areas such as vehicle maintenance and inspection, hours of work for drivers and load security are established through both legislation and regulation. These standards are then enforced by our staff throughout the province, who conduct inspections and lay appropriate charges.
The commercial vehicle operator's registration, which we'll talk more about this morning, enables us to monitor the safety performance of carriers and intervene when consistently poor performance is identified. Our interventions are based on a system of progressive discipline that includes warning letters, interviews, facility audits and ultimately sanctions such as fleet limitation, suspension and the cancellation of permits.
These strategies all together are directed towards the 170,000 trucks, 30,000 buses and 480,000 licensed commercial vehicle drivers in Ontario.
Regulation of the trucking industry has changed dramatically over the last two decades. In the 1980s, our enforcement program focused on the economic regulations governing the industry. By 1988, most areas of that industry in the United States and Canada were deregulated. To ensure that safety would not be compromised under deregulation, Canada established the National Safety Code, which set minimum safety standards for the truck and the bus industry.
The combination of the competitive market and the economic recession of the early 1990s took its toll on the trucking industry in Ontario. Some companies found it difficult to make ends meet, and stopped spending the money required to keep their vehicles in safe operating condition. In response, with our enforcement program, in working with the industry we have expanded our joint focus on safety.
In recent years the profile of truck safety in Ontario has been greater than ever before. As you know, there were several serious incidents involving large trucks that resulted in fatalities and injuries. The coroner's 1995 inquest into two fatalities involving truck wheel separations resulted in calls for severe penalties and tighter regulatory requirements for the trucking industry. The government responded to those recommendations with the introduction of its road safety plan in 1995, and these initiatives have been further supported by three separate road safety acts introduced, as you know, in the last two years.
In June 1996, Bill 55 increased our fines for commercial vehicle safety offences, and in December 1996, Bill 92 provided the legislation required to introduce a carrier safety rating system. In July 1997, Bill 138 made wheel separations an absolute liability offence and also provided the authority for the commercial vehicle impoundment program, the first of its kind in North America. On February 2 of this year, we began impounding vehicles with critical defects for a minimum of 15 days.
We have also worked to develop partnerships with the industry and have worked in cooperation with the Ontario Trucking Association in ensuring that individuals are being trained and certified to install wheels and adjust air brakes on commercial vehicles. We established Target '97, a joint government-industry task force on truck safety. The release of its report in March 1997 has led to an implementation schedule where we are working closely with industry to implement all of those recommendations by the end of 1999.
Several of the initiatives I've already mentioned relate to the observations that were made by the Provincial Auditor. However, I would like to respond more directly to some of the specific recommendations in his report.
Let me start by saying how helpful the report has been in our efforts to improve commercial vehicle safety and regulation in Ontario.
We agree with the auditor's suggestion that the ministry should focus its limited resources on initiatives of the highest priority and monitor their progress. To facilitate this, we have gone out and established what we call road user safety teams, with dedicated resources. Those teams monitor and report on all the priority projects that are going on.
By prioritizing and establishing a plan, we have successfully implemented several new safety initiatives, including the commercial vehicle impoundment program and enhancements to our CVOR system. This approach is also going to allow us to deliver on our commitment to implement a carrier safety rating system next year.
The auditor also recommended that we should assess the effectiveness of our commercial vehicle safety initiative to make better informed decisions and initiate appropriate corrective actions.
As part of our annual business planning process, we have now developed performance measures for all of our core businesses. Our effectiveness is measured by the out-of-service rate during RoadCheck, an annual North American road safety blitz. In 1997 the out-of-service rate for commercial vehicles in Ontario was 33% compared to 39% in 1996 and 43% in 1995. We're confident this downward trend will continue.
Enforcement staff have identified tools to monitor the effectiveness of their safety efforts, this again in response to the recommendations of the auditor, and performance indicators include the number of safety inspections and the number of audits for each of our enforcement districts. We have also now articulated key priority areas to our enforcement staff to help concentrate their efforts, and we have established a formal program effectiveness and efficiency mandate as part of the branch activities.
The auditor also recommended that the ministry develop targets for the appropriate number of vehicle inspections, for weight inspections and for facility audits. The number of safety inspections varies over time due to our staff changes, training and labour issues, and changes in our program priorities and our delivery strategy. Having said that, we have now established a minimum goal of 40,000 safety inspections for 1997-98, and with the two weeks that are left in the fiscal year, I can safely say that we are going to meet that performance target.
The auditor also suggested that the ministry establish appropriate targets for weight inspections. Currently we monitor compliance with weight regulations and target higher-risk factors for inspection, so in order to facilitate weight inspection, the ministry is experimenting with some new technology. Automated methods of recording weights have been put in place at some of our most strategic stations, and the technology is proving to be extremely useful in the deployment of our resources.
The auditor also noted that the number of our facility audits was too low and that it fluctuated between regions. Our approach to facility audits on an overall basis involves the use of risk-based methods for selecting commercial carriers for those audits; that is, carriers are targeted for selection based on specific risk categories, such as out-of-service vehicle inspection rates, complaints and poor CVOR safety records.
Recently we have introduced a more rigorous and comprehensive audit process, and while this audit takes more time, it's very effective in changing carrier behaviour. Since 1996, 79% of the carriers have improved their safety performance after being audited, and over the next three to four years, with the carrier safety rating in place, we will ensure that all truck and bus operators are audited.
The Provincial Auditor also made some observations about the inconsistent application of our bus inspection processes.
We are committed to ensuring the safe operation of buses in Ontario, and we're working very quickly to enhance our current safety regime through implementation of recommendations made to us by the Bus Industry Task Force. We're also increasing our emphasis on roadside inspections for buses to complement our facility audit program. All of our enforcement officers are being trained on bus inspections, and we have also acquired portable ramps that enable us to conduct more thorough inspections at the roadside.
The auditor's report recommends that the ministry develop guidelines for the operating hours, the staffing and the scheduling for our truck inspection stations, and we recognize right now there currently is a significant variance in those operating hours and staffing. This is due to the fact that they are at least in part locally determined and reflect the different operating conditions that exist throughout the province. However, we are also developing new guidelines that will incorporate initiatives supporting the commercial vehicle impoundment program, which include things such as hiring 80 additional enforcement officers, and around-the-clock operation at 10 strategic truck inspection stations. These stations were chosen for around-the-clock operation based on criteria such as commercial traffic volumes, their proximity to international border crossings and the ability of carriers to find alternative routes around the stations. The operating hours of those stations will be very straightforward: By the end of March they will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
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Some other observations were made in relation to our compliance monitoring and intervention process. The auditor recommended that the ministry address the backlog on our interventions. This backlog developed as a result of the ministry's decision to lower the threshold at which corrective action was to be taken against a carrier. By lowering those thresholds, significantly more carriers became subject to our interventions and our caseload grew considerably. We agree that this was an unacceptable situation and we have taken the necessary action to correct it. We have eliminated the backlog, and to ensure that a backlog does not develop again, we are working on legislation and policy for a much more streamlined program with regulated intervention and sanction levels, an initiative which also responds to the Target '97 recommendations.
Finally, the auditor expressed some concern about the ministry's motor vehicle inspection station program. This program is responsible for licensing private garages to issue safety inspection certificates for vehicles that operate throughout Ontario. We are committed to ensuring that these stations are adequately monitored. In pursuit of this commitment, we have implemented a new enforcement protocol to identify high-risk situations. Specific approaches such as targeting stations that regularly issue certificates to carriers with high roadside out-of-service rates are being used. We have also initiated a review of the program that will include enhancements to ensure high-risk stations are routinely identified.
To summarize, the Ministry of Transportation is acting on all fronts to implement the recommendations of the Provincial Auditor. To date, two thirds of the auditor's recommendations have been fully implemented. Over the period of the last two years, several other measures have been implemented which we think enhance commercial vehicle safety in Ontario.
We recognize there is much more to be done, and we're committed to implementing the remainder of the auditor's recommendations. We are also committed to the continuous improvement of our carrier safety and enforcement program. Future initiatives will be based on our fundamental goals of improving road safety, protecting the infrastructure and fostering economic competitiveness.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you this morning. We welcome any questions you may have of us.
Mr Peter L. Preston (Brant-Haldimand): I just have two short questions. Number one, I haven't heard about wheels coming off vehicles. I'm questioning whether that is because it's not newsworthy any more or because you're doing a good job.
Mr Weir: We believe the incidents of wheel separations are becoming less and less. We still have wheel separations reported to us. It's not a legal requirement that wheel separations be reported, unless of course they result in a collision. Our officers tell us that since we have stepped up our enforcement attention to wheel separations and to wheel component parts, and certainly introduced the absolute liability offence for wheel separations, wheel component parts and equipment, lugs, wheel fasteners, those defects have become less and less. We believe there's a real opportunity to fix this problem and solve it. We're not there yet. They are still coming off.
Some other things have occurred, if I might just continue, that have contributed to a solution here. We know that one of the major causes for wheel separations is improper inspection and improper maintenance and installation. As Jill mentioned during our opening remarks, in conjunction with the Ontario Trucking Association, we have introduced a mandatory training and certification program for wheel installers in this province. I can tell you that to date over 12,000 people have been trained to do that. That training involves proper installation techniques, including torquing and retorquing of wheel fasteners.
We think we've made some progress in this area and hopefully those numbers will continue to decline.
Mr Preston: The next question goes along with the inspection. Your figures are 32% for vehicles taken off the road. When an inspection blitz goes on, we hear it's over 50%. Possibly it can be accounted for by the fact that if I were an inspector I would pick that bad one and that bad one and that bad one, and the ones that are obviously well cared for I would not spend as much time on. Is this the case?
Mr Weir: I think there's an important distinction to be made here. When we hear on the radio or we read in the newspaper reports of the results of our inspection blitzes, often the numbers are higher than what we've reported. Those are targeted blitzes. Our enforcement staff are paid to target the crap out there and that's why, if we're doing our job properly, the out-of-service rates should be higher in a targeted environment. What we reported on this morning was the results of a three-day road check, which is a random sampling of vehicles out there.
During a road check we will inspect every fifth truck that comes across the truck inspection station, whether it's a 1997 Peterbilt or an old, very-worthy-of-attention-looking vehicle. That would account for the differences in those numbers.
Mr Terence H. Young (Halton Centre): I understand you have these roving inspection vehicles. I forget; what do you call them, Mike?
Mr Weir: We have two different types. We have recently introduced a mobile truck inspection station which you may be referring to. We also have a fleet of approximately 200 patrol cars that carry around portable weigh scales in their trunks and have other types of tools and equipment to help our officers do their jobs.
The mobile truck inspection station is a new idea. It is a large van or a Winnebago type of vehicle that is equipped with computer technology and satellite communication technology. It pulls a trailer that is equipped with eight lightweight portable scales. It has signs. It can accommodate up to four officers comfortably with working space. It has all the facilities of a permanent truck inspection station, but it costs about $4.8 million less.
The other advantage of a mobile truck inspection station is that we can take it to where our clients are rather than waiting for our clients to come to us at a permanent facility.
Mr Young: That's my concern, that truckers just take alternative routes to avoid inspection. For a trucking company whose trucks are not necessarily in excellent mechanical condition, when they go out in the morning, is it totally unpredictable where your inspection stations will be? Could they run into them at any time or are there still some routes you don't put them on?
Mr Weir: No, it's not totally unpredictable. By the end of March, when we're operating our truck inspection stations 24 hours a day, seven days a week, they'll be pretty reliable. But the point you make is the ability of the trucker to be able to find alternative routes around those truck inspection stations and what we are doing about that.
Our mobile truck inspection station, together with our fleet of patrol vehicles, allows us to patrol those bypass routes to be able to intervene and find those trucks that choose to take alternative routes, and either escort them back to a truck inspection station if we need to do a comprehensive inspection or we can do it right there on the side of the road if the space provides.
Mr Young: Do they do a visual check of the truck or do they just pull them over sporadically?
Mr Weir: They will pull them over sporadically on the bypass routes, and not randomly; again, I would suggest that the majority of our enforcement efforts are targeted so we will be --
Mr Young: How do they target them?
Mr Weir: They are targeted according to visual, how the vehicle looks. Does it look like it needs some attention? Is the operator a known violator to our officers?
Mr Young: I was travelling on Trafalgar Road in north Halton a couple of weeks ago behind a truck and constantly coming off the back of the truck were bits of -- I don't know what it was, but it was hard stone or something hitting the windshield etc. I called Halton Regional Police on my cellular phone and said, "I'm behind this truck," and I gave them the number. Who should I call next time and what enforcement is available when there's someone who's on an alternative route and is obviously breaking the law? What can you do and what are you doing to address that?
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Mr Weir: I would suggest first, if it's possible despite stones flying into your windshield, that you attempt to identify the operator in some way. I think making the call to the police is quite appropriate. I think calling our enforcement offices is also appropriate. In the future, when we're operating the truck inspection stations 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you will always be able to get hold of somebody within MTO enforcement.
Mr Young: So call the truck inspection.
Mr Weir: Call the truck inspection. We will advertise. Right now we have a 1-800 number for general information. In the future we hope to link that into our 24-by-7 stations.
Mr Young: With the number of people increasingly using cellular phones it's a great opportunity to catch bad operators red-handed, basically. The citizen just calls a 1-800 number and says, "I'm following this truck and it's got no mud flats" or "there are stones falling off" or whatever.
That brings me to the subject of technology. I have an acquaintance who has a trucking company. When they come into the depot they don't have to stop and bring in a clipboard with paperwork as much as they used to. They drive by and there's a reader that reads the transponder on the mirror of the vehicle, and that tells the operating company the weight of the vehicle, who's driving it, how far they've been, how much time they've been on the road and a whole range of things. What technology are you using to address the bad operators and how are you using technology to address our safety problems?
Mr Weir: We're using technology in a number of different ways, both to identify the bad operators and to identify the good operators. There are two different approaches you can take to attempt to change behaviour: One of them is certainly deterrents, and we use technology to help us in that regard; the other is incentives. I'll talk a little bit about both, if I might.
I've talked about the mobile truck inspection station now and the lightweight portable weigh scales. We have implemented weigh-in-motion sensing devices that are imbedded in the pavement previous to some truck inspection stations across the province. This allows us to weigh vehicles at mainline highway speeds, and we have readers that will gather that information and help us determine what the weight compliance is like on a particular stretch of highway.
We also use AVI technology -- that's automatic vehicle information -- that we're piloting right now at the Trafalgar truck inspection station that allows us, through the use of a transponder, to identify who the operator is and will communicate that at mainline speeds with the truck inspections stations to identify that this operator is an operator who has a superior safety performance record and has been granted the right of bypassing the truck inspection station.
Mr Young: So they have to still pull off the highway --
Mr Weir: No, they don't.
Mr Young: How does it work?
Mr Weir: With the AVI, a carrier who wants to be a transponder holder must prequalify. They have to have a 90% or better safety performance record, which is verified through both their on-road performance and a comprehensive facility audit or safety assessment. Then they're granted the right to use this equipment. Again, the equipment, the transponder, will tell our officers at a truck inspection station that this is a member of that exclusive club and they are granted the right to bypass the scale, which provides an incentive to operators, because time is money and 15 minutes of delay at a truck inspection station for a just-in-time operation equates to real dollars.
Mr Young: I drive the QEW most days. One time there was a truck following a car within less than 10 feet at 110 kilometres an hour; 100 to 110 is the speed the traffic goes. It was just driving rather recklessly, I thought. There was a number on the back of the truck so I called it and asked for the manager of the trucks; it turned out I was calling Winnipeg on this 1-800 number. In speaking to the manager of the trucks, he said, "Oh, yes, I can see this driver right now." Using a satellite, he can see exactly where his truck is and can tell the speed the truck is going, because there's satellite communications on the truck. I said, "He's just turning off at Hurontario Street," and he said, "Oh, he's not supposed to be going there." So what's to prevent trucking companies from bypassing your technology by using satellite technology?
Mr Weir: I guess they could use satellite technology as a way to route traffic. The satellite technology wouldn't be able to determine where our mobile vehicles are, obviously, so that's still a bit of a --
Mr Young: They could perhaps see from a satellite, but I guess they're not using visual, are they?
Mr Weir: No. Satellite technology has wonderful opportunity in terms of enhancing the economic competitiveness of the industry but also as an enforcement tool and a compliance tool for us, and we are looking at that.
In fact, I can tell you that during our audits we use a company's own satellite system as a tool for us to uncover violations of hours of work or logbook violations. It goes something like this: We are in there looking at the face of a logbook, where drivers are required by law to record what their daily and weekly hours are. We'll often first make a trip upstairs, in the company's facility, to the logistics department, and if they're satellite-equipped it's even better, because as you suggest, they can tell to the minute where the vehicle is at any given time of the day. We would track a vehicle to a driver, based on a company's own satellite technology, and if the information that's on the face of the log suggests that the driver was somewhere else, we have a problem. Yes, satellite technology can be most useful.
Mr Young: I remember that about five or six years back somebody I worked with in a former job whose husband was a driver -- I don't know if this is true, but she said there are drivers who take speed, or bennies, as they call them, to stay awake when they're driving long term. Does this problem exist, and what do you do to address it?
Mr Weir: Jeez, the incidence of drug use in the transportation industry is more of a perception now than it is reality. The federal government about three or four years ago was considering a mandatory drug testing policy in response to one that has been implemented in the US. Surveys at that time suggested that less than 2% of people in the commercial, on-highway transportation business were popping pills to stay awake. I don't have any more recent data than that.
There are laws in place under the Criminal Code of Canada that address both drug use and alcohol use. If we suspect we're dealing with a driver who is under the influence of drugs we certainly turn that matter over to the police. We don't find it a lot, though. I think that is really what you're getting at. It doesn't appear to be a major issue.
Mr Young: One thing I see a lot, which I already mentioned, is 50 tons of truck 10 feet behind a car. If the car had to slam on the brakes, you know there is no way the truck could stop. It's common. Sometimes they're going down a hill and they don't want to change gears; they've got 12 gears and they don't want to have to shift down to seventh gear or whatever, so rather, they just touch the brakes a little and figure, "Well, the traffic will speed up." It's happened to me as well. You look in your rear-view mirror and think you've had it. Certainly if there was an accident, you're gone. Is there anything we're doing to try and address that?
Mr Carroll: The enforcement of moving violations of that nature is the responsibility of the police forces. The Highway Traffic Act actually has a law now that stipulates a minimum following distance for commercial motor vehicles when on a highway where the speed limit is over 60 kilometres an hour. The police do enforce that section when they see that behaviour taking place.
The people who report those incidents to the Ontario Provincial Police have been successful in having the police follow that up with the carriers. I can think of a few instances lately where letters to our minister resulted in follow-ups with the carrier and a note placed to the file in Mike's office in St Catharines that would reflect on that carrier's performance.
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Mr Young: The carrier, but would it also reflect on the driver?
Mr Carroll: Yes. Most of the responsible carriers take driving misbehaviour very seriously and they have their own internal sanctioning and penalty systems in place. It does affect their rates of insurance and ultimately their CVOR. Following is called headway under the Highway Traffic Act, and leaving sufficient headway is now a legislated responsibility for truck drivers.
Mr Weir: If I could add to that answer, we have been working very cooperatively with the Ontario Provincial Police in terms of trying to complement. We are two enforcement organizations. We have two functions that we need to perform and those have to be very complementary. Where we are running into situations and moving violations, we're certainly encouraging our police colleagues to react to those things.
I can tell you that the Ontario Provincial Police have stepped up their attention to aggressive driving, and following too closely by truckers is certainly one of them. We've been encouraging them to do that. In fact, in northern Ontario we have a pilot program now that we operate where our officers ride with OPP officers, and we're running a similar pilot in the eastern region. This allows us to look for violations of things across the spectrum. We have two different organizations now dealing with a violator: one from, say, an aggressive driving or moving violation perspective, and another officer belonging to MTO who has been properly trained to do vehicle inspection and look for compliance with transportation laws. There are things happening.
If those types of things occur again, if there's any way to identify the vehicle, the police do have the ability to take prosecutorial enforcement action after the fact.
Mr Young: If I could suggest some kind of communications plan, a road safety plan -- you've got hundreds and hundreds of people out there who do have cellular phones. Maybe we need a 1-800 number to call. After the person who owns the trucking company gets a number of calls, they're going to identify their driver problems and deal with it because of the cost of insurance, obviously.
You have I imagine very expensive-to-operate video cameras up high in the air along the QEW, the Gardiner and elsewhere. Are they ever used to address vehicle safety or are they simply for traffic reporting?
Mr Carroll: Those cameras are primarily there to monitor traffic flow in order to operate the Compass system, which is the system of signs that direct traffic to follow the route of least resistance. The cameras are not used for enforcement purposes; however, they are used, subsequent to an incident or a collision, for evidence in prosecutions.
Mr Young: Is there any potential to use them to increase safety?
Mr Carroll: I don't believe the cameras are able to identify the vehicle accurately.
Mr Young: They're too far away, right?
Mr Carroll: Yes, they're quite a distance, unless they zoom in on a vehicle.
Mr Young: Just one final question. I travel the QEW most days and others travel the 401, and I've always said that if Ontario were a living thing, we have a heart attack twice a day. Both of them are dysfunctional in rush hour to a degree. We're almost a victim of our own success, our economy is going along so well. This is not new -- before I was in Parliament, I travelled by GO train for six years and I was on the highway before that -- but it's getting worse.
I understand that the 407 is going to reduce QEW traffic. Maybe you could tell me by how much, when it's completed all the way to Burlington, you think it will reduce traffic on the QEW. And here's the big question: Do we have a comprehensive long-term plan that includes perhaps more toll roads or toll highways, and does it also include beefing up parking in GO train lots? I mean a really comprehensive plan. I can't tell you the number of times I drove to the GO station, in my previous job, and there were no parking spaces. There were three or four or five cars with me and all of us went right back and got on the QEW. I think what we need is an integrated, comprehensive plan. Is there one in the works or do you have one?
Mr Weir: That's a pretty broad question. I can tell you, from my peripheral knowledge of work going on in other parts of the ministry, our policy and planning division has a provincial planning office. They are developing an integrated transportation plan for the province. It includes some of the elements you've discussed. I can't tell you in an absolute number what the reduction in traffic will be on the 401 and on the QEW when the 407 is completed, but we're already seeing the effects of the 407 come to fruition in terms of lightening congestion. Can anybody add to that answer?
Ms Hutcheon: No. I think what Mike has said is right. The ministry is looking at all those issues. As we talked earlier, we're very much focused on transportation policy and planning, that renewed focusing. We're looking at those issues very carefully and that's happening right now. We will be addressing it more as the year goes on.
Mr Mario Sergio (Yorkview): I have a number of questions, but because of time, I have to get some information to some other questions. I'll just have a couple of questions.
Ms Hutcheon, you mentioned that lowering the threshold has been helping the department to practically catch up with the backlog. I am wondering what is being done to make sure that indeed we won't fall back again on any backlog.
Ms Hutcheon: Mike, could you address what we're doing?
Mr Weir: In fact, what we suggested was a lowering of the threshold. The thresholds are set at a level where we deem the carrier's safety performance to be unacceptable. That's what triggers an intervention by the ministry. We lowered that threshold a couple of years ago, and as a result of lowering the threshold, more carriers came into the system. We weren't functionally organized to be able to deal with that. What I can tell you is that since that time we have done some reorganization in the branch. We are deploying our resources away from non-critical areas to what we deem to be critical areas, of which indeed carrier safety management is one. We hope and we're proposing that by the end of this year we will be able to completely abandon our attention to higher operating licences and redeploy existing staff to safety management.
Target '97, the government-industry committee, recommended that the intervention levels be regulated and that our sanctions or interventions also be regulated. In the future, we hope that through an automatic sanction process that whole process will be streamlined and we won't find ourselves in the same kind of a backlog situation.
The backlog situation was really our ability to analyse a carrier's record and determine what action should be taken. In many cases, those carriers were out-of-province operators and we have worked with our out-of-province colleagues and have had them actually respond and take action. We now have cooperative agreements with many provinces and the US, where they will go in and do an audit, for example, of a carrier we have found to be unsafe.
Mr Sergio: With respect to the road user safety team, when do you expect implementation of that?
Ms Hutcheon: We have seven different teams that are set up and each one of them is working on a set of specific initiatives. For instance, on commercial vehicle impoundment, they've done all the policy development, the program development. They're now implementing. For others of those teams, they're working on issues like road user safety related to drinking and driving and their work will be completed later this year. So seven teams, and they all have different time lines they're working on. The ones that are working in the truck area are continuing to have results now through the end of 1999.
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Mr Sergio: You have mentioned a number of new initiatives and more stringent regulations, including the safety themes you have just mentioned. Are they going to be out there on a continuous basis doing what they are supposed to do individually, or is it for a period of time until hopefully things get better and then disband them? Are we going to have that on a continuous basis?
Ms Hutcheon: The difficulty we had in the beginning was that we were trying to do the day-to-day operations and trying to do the new initiative all with one set of people, so as you said, we set up dedicated teams. Those teams have a beginning and they have an end, because what we expect is that once the implementation is done, the actual day-to-day operation will happen through that branch that has the ongoing responsibility for it. They're all time-limited and they all work according to very rigorous project methodology, with a beginning and an end.
Mr Weir: Mr Sergio, were you referring to specific enforcement initiatives in the field as opposed to how we manage things administratively?
Mr Sergio: I think a little bit of both, because I have heard the ministry is working on a number of things. I guess one is the implementation and ongoing operation of those programs, and the other is the administrative part.
Mr Weir: I just want to add then an operational perspective to that, if I might. Jill mentioned how we've set up dedicated teams to develop policy, work out the processes and put new programs in place in the division, covering a number of different areas. One of those, for example, was the commercial vehicle impoundment team. What that team has been successful in doing is getting new legislation passed and securing government funding to put 80 new enforcement officers on the road, for example, operate some truck inspection stations 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and actually conduct vehicle impoundments. That's the operational result of having dedicated teams in place.
Mr Sergio: That takes me to my next question, with respect to getting some more money for some new people out there. It's interesting that a number of things are being planned by the ministry and the minister responsible. We are talking about increasing inspections, increasing standards, increasing performance, increasing regulations, and I believe your department has been receiving some cuts. How are we going to accomplish all of that if you don't have the necessary tools to do that?
Ms Hutcheon: First of all, for those new initiatives we have undertaken, we have received funding to carry those out in the way we need to. For instance, the 80 additional officers were in fact additional officers. We weren't asked to fund that from within. We made our case and we got approval for that. As well as that, what we're trying to do is streamline our processes, take more advantage of what exists regionally and locally, so that we can move resources around and in fact in some cases take fewer resources to do the same job, but we go about it in a re-engineering sense. I think we feel confident that we have received the resources we need to support the work we're doing on these initiatives.
Mr Sergio: A lot of emphasis is being placed on the safety of the vehicle itself, let alone flying wheels and stuff like that. I haven't heard anything with respect either to education or what happens to the driver himself or herself. It's fine and dandy if there is something mechanically or physically wrong with the vehicle, but what about -- I've heard very little about it -- the behaviour of the driver? As you said at the beginning, many accidents are happening not because of a faulty vehicle but because of the behaviour of the driver. I think we should go to the beginning and ask, how can we eliminate that 50% or whatever percentage may be attributed to an impatient driver who, because somebody else's behaviour may cause that driver to lose it, let's say, commits an error, following too closely or whatever?
What is being done in those two parts? One is the instruction or education on a continuous basis, and the other I just mentioned.
Ms Hutcheon: Dave, do you want to --
Mr Carroll: I can start off and maybe Mike can talk a little bit about Target '97 when I'm finished.
Mr Sergio: If I take too long, Mr Chair, you stop me, okay?
The Chair: No problem.
Mr Carroll: One of the real features of the commercial vehicle operator registration program is an automated recordkeeping system to register all convictions, accidents and detentions involving a commercial motor vehicle. If the driver commits an offence while driving a commercial motor vehicle, that offence is recorded on the CVOR, so even though it may not be an offence related to a mechanical defect of the vehicle, it is a violation that shows up on the carrier's record, and an accumulation of these convictions can affect the operator's livelihood because the privilege to retain the CVOR depends on a good performance record. So driver behaviour is a very important part of our regulatory regime.
Target '97, which was a joint government-industry task force that came up with 79 recommendations to improve truck safety in this province, had a number of recommendations and suggestions that would elevate the performance of the driver. Mike, maybe you can speak to some of those recommendations.
Mr Weir: Sure, I'll do that. I just wanted to add a couple of things. We talk a lot about doing vehicle inspections on the highway, that's true. Those inspections fall under the umbrella of an organization called the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance. We do a level 1 inspection. We often refer to it as a vehicle inspection but it does include some specific driver components, and I want to tell you what those are.
We look at driver qualifications, obviously, through the licence. We examine the driver for the existence of alcohol and drugs. We look at their logbooks and examine their compliance with hours-of-work regulations. We look at compliance with seatbelts and we look at whether or not the driver has properly completed a pre-trip inspection report. We also talked earlier about -- and you're absolutely right -- how driver error is the major contributing factor to collisions, and so driver performance and behaviour has to be one of the priority areas.
In terms of education and awareness, we have an office within our safety policy branch that has a sole mandate for conducting public education and awareness. It's called the road safety marketing office and it has actually taken now a decentralized approach to road safety marketing. We have teams of people in each of the ministry's five regions that work with community groups to try and further our driver and road safety initiatives.
We also have a number of communication tools that we use. We have a commercial motor vehicle newsletter that goes out to the trucking and the bus industry, highlighting new initiatives and new approaches. Our staff participate in seminars and conduct numerous presentations, attend driver meetings with companies to try and educate them on what their obligations are, and the major associations -- the Ontario Trucking Association, the Private Motor Truck Council of Canada and a number of other organizations -- have as part of their strategic plan education and awareness of their members, to which we contribute pretty significantly in terms of in-kind resources.
Mr Sergio: Just one more, Mr Chair: the installation of advertising signs now along highways, are you expected to monitor a driver's response as to the road safety or hazard, if you will, of those signs? I do get the odd call saying: "I don't have time to watch the traffic and read those signs. Are you planning to put up more signs?" Well, first of all, I don't put up any signs, but it is part of a campaign and I believe we may see more than less. Are you going to respond or solicit a response from drivers, from the public, as to the effectiveness of those signs with respect to safety and stuff like that?
Mr Weir: Again, you're right. The whole issue of signage on the highway and more signs and more tasks for the driver to do while they should be concentrating on the most important task at hand, and that's operating the vehicle on the highway, is a pretty complex issue, and there has been lots of research done around whether more signs distracting the driver actually detract from safety.
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We, however -- and I think this is what you're referring to -- have signs now erected on the highways in some parts of the province that are changeable message signs on the Compass system and have safety messages around sharing the road with larger vehicles: "Slow down," "Are you wearing your seatbelt?" etc. We are actually getting a pretty positive response to those things from both the trucking industry and the general public.
Mr Sergio: Thanks for coming down.
Mr Marcel Beaubien (Lambton): Thank you for being here. My colleague Mr Young did such a good job of questioning, I don't have any questions left. However, I have two comments, one serious and the other not so serious. As a taxpayer and as a resident of Ontario, I think we appreciate what the ministry is doing on improving the road safety in Ontario, and I urge you to continue the good work that you have done.
Mr Weir, you have done a very good job also with regard to safety. I have a Mike Weir in my riding who drives a golf ball very well. Do you drive a golf ball quite well?
Mr Weir: If I had that Mike Weir's ability, sir, I wouldn't be here this morning.
Mr Beaubien: Thank you. That's all I have to say.
Ms Marilyn Churley (Riverdale): That's a hard act to follow.
Good morning and thank you for your presentation. I'm aware of another safety concern regarding commercial vehicle safety, and that is the proper inspection and regulation of the goods being carried. I would just like some information as to who is responsible for that.
I have been told by people in the business that increasingly since deregulation some of the smaller trucking companies, in order to compete financially with the larger ones, are hauling goods unsafely. I don't know a lot about it, but from what I've heard, it is in terms of the packaging of food. I'm not talking about classified hazardous waste here, because I know that's a separate entity, but certain goods that could be dangerous if in a collision or spilled, that sort of thing. I have heard that this is increasingly becoming a problem, yet there is not very much focus on it and we don't hear a lot about it. Flying truck wheels, obviously, are our biggest concern and the issue we're talking about here today, because people are being killed. But I think it's something that is happening and needs to be addressed. I don't know who is responsible for it, under which act it falls, so I would just like a little more information about that.
Mr Carroll: If I might respond to that -- thank you for the question -- the Ontario Highway Traffic Act has a pretty thorough and rigorous set of regulations that stipulate how loads have to be secured and bound so that they don't become dislodged from a vehicle. The fines are very severe for an operator who is stopped and found to have a load that's insecure, and various securement devices may include side boards, tarpaulins, cables, chains and different locking systems that are required to secure a load.
Our ministry vigorously enforces the load security regulations under the Highway Traffic Act. All of our 291 officers who are out in the field every day inspect every vehicle they come across for load security, and we lay a lot of charges over the course of a year against carriers for insecure loads. We normally catch those offences before they result in a load coming off. Thank God we don't have a large number of steel coils and pipes and logs coming off vehicles, and we attribute that to a pretty aggressive enforcement campaign on the part of our ministry as well as the police forces across the province that are also charged with the responsibility of enforcing those sections. So it's a very important part of the CVSA inspection that Mike spoke about earlier and it's probably one of the most important parts of our program.
Mr Weir: I would just add that there is now an initiative going on across North America to develop one standard for load security that would be applicable in both Canada and the United States. It includes things carried inside vans or closed compartments and things carried on flatbeds and outside vans. It's a pretty sophisticated scientific area, but the yardstick is being moved forward in that respect. I would suggest that the incidence of load security is improving as opposed to declining.
Ms Churley: I'm wondering, then -- I had this discussion some time ago. It seems to me that the issue was less about load security than perhaps the safety and quality of the foodstuffs or how things are overpacked. I assume there are regulations around how things are packed so that when they reach the end goal they're in good condition. I suspect that was the concern being expressed as opposed to the load security.
Mr Weir: Okay, I see. That might be familiar to you, because there is some regulation under consumer and commercial relations with respect to the packaging of goods. That is not an area that we actually enforce.
Ms Churley: You're right. When I was the minister responsible for that area -- there's a section that deals with that, although not exclusively. That's something that you really can't speak to.
Mr Carroll: One thing we do come across from time to time is a carrier who puts packages, rolls of paper or something, in a standard van-type trailer and relies on the sides of that van trailer to contain the load. That just won't do it because those semi-trailer vans have a very thin, lightweight side to them, and if those rolls of paper or boxes become dislodged on a corner, they can come right through the side of the vehicle. So part of our inspection involves opening up the doors of those trailers and looking to see that despite the fact that the vehicle has sides, the load is actually anchored to the deck of the trailer.
Ms Churley: Thank you -- unless you had something to add.
Mr Weir: I was just going to add that there is a relationship between what you're suggesting and our work, and if you take perishable commodities as an example, that's a very time-sensitive move. We often find there's a direct correlation between the movement of perishable commodities and violations of speeding and hours of service.
Mr Preston: Mention was made of budgeting. In most other jurisdictions in Canada the federal government pays for the Trans-Canada Highway. In Ontario your ministry has to and is in the midst of rehabilitating the highway from end to end, because it hasn't been done in about 15 years. If the federal Liberals were to pay their fair share of that highway, would you be able to utilize those funds in your safety program? Just a yes is good enough.
Mr Weir: Yes.
Ms Churley: It's been so apolitical up to now.
Ms Hutcheon: We certainly could take advantage of funds.
Mr Weir: In fairness, I should point out that the federal government has helped the provinces establish their safety codes and has provided some limited funding in that respect, but hey, if they're willing to issue a cheque, we'll take it.
Mr Preston: I just wanted to hear that they were sharing in a safety program, really.
Ms Churley: Aren't you downloading these highways to the municipalities?
Mr Preston: Not the Trans-Canada.
Ms Churley: A lot of the other ones, though, so I'd be careful. I want that on the record, Mr Chair. I'm not defending the Liberals, though.
Mr Young: We just did a press release in Oakville. Oakville is getting a cheque for $1.59 million for transportation costs, so we might be downloading some things, but we're helping them pay for it too. Let's get off the partisan stuff.
Interjection.
Mr Young: No, it's no problem.
I wanted to ask you, every once in a while you hear about the 401 stopped dead because a truck has had a load shift, and it's always load shift. Somebody's driving too fast on a ramp and the truck flips over. I'd like to know, how much does that cost the economy and all the other trucking companies and individuals sitting on the highway when that happens? Who's responsible and who, if anybody, pays for it, and what are you doing about it?
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Mr Carroll: A good example that comes to mind is, I guess it was six or eight months ago when a vehicle rolled over on the 427 ramp and shut that artery down for the better part of a day. The estimated cost to the economy of Ontario was in the millions of dollars, so the costs are enormous.
It's difficult to collect those kinds of costs from the populace. The carrier is accountable and responsible for cleanup costs that can be quite substantial. The carrier involved in a major incident like that where there is a lot of disruption is immediately targeted for intervention by the carrier safety and enforcement branch. They would be brought right to the front of the line for an assessment of their safety programs, which may be through an audit or through an interview with the principals of the company, so that we can find out if there is a contributing cause.
Mr Young: What about repeat offenders? Say you do an investigation and you find out that driver or that company has done this before, more than once.
Mr Weir: There's a section in the Highway Traffic Act that gives the registrar of motor vehicles the ability to take action for cause and certainly if there are spectacular incidents and after an investigation we find a number of things that might have contributed to that, we do have the authority to take action now.
Mr Young: But we all pay. There's nobody who -- the insurance companies don't pay, right?
Mr Weir: Absolutely. Well, a lot of damages are sought through the civil litigation process after these kinds of things, but I think you're right that there are a lot of parties that don't avail themselves of those opportunities. They are called the general public, and they do pay.
Some things are being done to try to alleviate those things. Dave has mentioned how we can intervene. The police are also experimenting now. They have actually established traffic reporting centres, the objective being to get those crashes removed from the highway as quickly as possible and get traffic moving again.
Mr Young: There was recently a very tragic and horrible accident in Quebec with a bus with a lot of passengers aboard. Our bus inspections from 1989 to 1996, the auditor noted, had gone down. What are you doing with regard to bus safety so we can tell the people of Ontario our buses are safe?
Mr Carroll: Obviously the safety of buses on our highways is something that all of us are very concerned about, and it's something that we are committed to in the Ministry of Transportation. Last fall there was a joint industry-government task force that focused its attention on bus safety, and they tabled a report which identified 76 recommendations that would improve bus safety in the province. The ministry is currently developing a plan that will lay out the implementation of these 76 recommendations. Many of those recommendations are identical in nature to those that were addressed by the Target '97 task force looking at truck safety matters.
The decline in the bus inspection numbers can be attributed to some inconsistencies across our 17 administrative districts in Ontario. That can be attributed to the variance in the extent to which the enforcement officers direct their attention to on-road inspections of buses versus off-road inspections through a facility visitation program. We have been increasing our emphasis on on-road inspection of buses. That takes a little bit more time to do, it's a little more awkward in setting up the signage and doing the inspections, but we feel we need to have an on-road bus enforcement program to complement the off-road facility program.
All of our officers are now undergoing training to an internationally recognized standard for inspecting motor coaches and buses, and we have acquired ramps, as Jill mentioned earlier, to allow a more thorough inspection of the underside of a large bus.
I think that is what we can attribute the decline in inspection numbers to. However, when we complete the training program for the officers and we establish a reasonable balance between on-road and off-road inspections, we should stabilize those numbers.
Mr Young: So buses, just like trucks, would have to pull off and wait, every bus that's on the highway at that point, and they would be inspected, or would it be sporadic?
Mr Carroll: We have a couple of different tacks that we use to do on-road inspections. The one that's the easiest to put in place is what we call destination inspections, where we go to a place like Wonderland or the Royal Winter Fair, and after the passengers disembark, our officers would do the inspection. Another technique we use is to convert our truck inspection station to a bus inspection station, using programmable signs in advance of the station. We keep the trucks out for that day and we get the buses to come in.
Mr Young: I assume if a bus is found to be unsafe for any reason, it's off the road for that day.
Mr Carroll: Absolutely.
Mr Young: Then you would follow up with the carrier and look at their other vehicles as well?
Mr Carroll: Absolutely. Those types of events where you have a detained bus again flag that carrier for a closer assessment by the carrier safety branch.
Mr Young: Does that include school board buses?
Mr Weir: Absolutely. To continue on, if I might, Dave has broached the topic of a more thorough assessment of buses. The bus inspection program, just for clarity, was an off-road examination of a bus company's maintenance practices only. We also have another program, called the facility audit program, that is a much more comprehensive review of all of a carrier's obligations, including maintenance. Our objective is to roll the bus inspection program into the facility audit program so that we're doing everything; we're not only looking at one small sector but we're looking at all their obligations. Under the carrier safety rating program that is scheduled to be introduced next year, we'll be implementing with that a mandatory audit program for all commercial vehicle operators in the province over a cyclical period.
Mr Young: So your busing safety standards are national standards now? Is it set to a national standard, or are our standards higher?
Mr Weir: Some of them have been established nationally through the national safety code; others have been implemented provincially. I would think that our standards in place, with some of the more current legislation that has been introduced, are probably the toughest in North America.
Mr Young: That was my next question: How do you measure our standards against the others? Obviously you're in communication with other jurisdictions.
Mr Weir: Yes.
Mr Young: I worked for a company for 14 years, Bell Canada, that had a superb safety program. They're self-insured. Part of the program was that they recognized safe drivers. There are people at Bell Canada who have driven every day on the job for up to 35 years and never had an accident. It proves defensive driving can work.
What I wanted to ask was, have you ever considered a recognition program for drivers and carriers that meet or exceed standards? The benefit of that would be not only the recognition -- it's good for business -- but also they might get lower insurance rates. Have you ever considered anything like that?
Mr Weir: Two different perspectives. I'll deal with the carrier first. I just mentioned the carrier safety rating program; I think I mentioned it earlier. There's a real opportunity in incentive-based programming in conjunction with the big stick. When safety rating is in place, we will have the basis upon which to do some very good, solid incentive-based programming. Things like connecting the privilege of hauling an oversize, overweight load down the highway should be connected to safety performance. That results in a competitive economic advantage.
Mr Young: So those are real economic incentives?
Mr Weir: Economic incentives, absolutely.
Mr Young: What about actual recognition, an award for safe drivers or carriers?
Mr Carroll: There are a couple of programs in place in Ontario which have been very effective in recognizing good performance. One of them is the Ontario Trucking Association's Knights of the Road program, where they publicize the achievements of drivers with exemplary records over the years. These road knights, as they're called, go out and speak to schools and community colleges and try to attract professionals into that occupation.
Another program we're part of, as the Ministry of Transportation, is the annual challenge event, which is the Ontario truck-driving championships. The ministry participates in that through providing judges, but also we hold our annual inspectors' competition alongside their truck-driving championships. So it's a good partnership of our inspectors working with the best of the best in the trucking industry. There are cash awards to drivers who are able to manoeuvre these multi-axle vehicles through the serpentine courses. It's really quite an amazing thing to watch them do it. That's probably one of the best forms of recognition in the profession.
Mr Young: Is there one for accident-free for so many years, long-term, that sort of thing?
Mr Weir: Not through the Ministry of Transportation right now, but there is through the Council of Driver Trainers, which falls under the umbrella of the Transportation Safety Association of Ontario.
Mr Young: It's an idea that might be worth following up.
Mr Weir: It is. We are often asked, as is our minister, to attend driver award banquets and recognize long-standing achievements such as the ones you've described.
The Vice-Chair: There being no further questions, let me, Ms Hutcheon, Mr Carroll and Mr Weir, thank you for being with us this morning. We very much appreciate your illuminating answers.
We'll take five minutes in closed session just to discuss with the researcher.
The committee continued in closed session at 1140.