Let’s Talk: Safety Management Systems in the Rail Industry

The Railway Safety Managements Systems Regulations, 2015 were created in response to a number of reports and recommendations that highlighted gaps in an earlier version of the regulations. The purpose was to enhance the quality of safety management systems (SMS) by improving how:

• the systems were used by the rail industry; and
• Transport Canada (TC) oversees rail safety.

Since 2015, TC has conducted over 150 safety management system audits of rail companies, including 12 of the national freight railways. As part of these audits, we established a baseline for every federally regulated railway in Canada that will be used to measure whether compliance is improving.

Although there’s been a lot of progress in safety management system requirements and oversight, there is still room for improvement. The 2018 Rail Safety Act Review highlighted the progress made by TC’s Rail Safety Branch. The review also recommended that the department create a way to assess the effectiveness of a railway company’s safety management system.

Other reports, such as the 2021 Auditor General’s report and the 2022 report from the House of Commons Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, highlighted things to improve, including:

• assessing the effectiveness of railway companies’ safety management system processes; and
• establishing stronger requirements to make sure that rail companies are conducting risk assessments and addressing hazards.

What is Transport Canada proposing?

Based on these recommendations, TC is reviewing the 2015 Rail Safety Management System Regulations to see how we can strengthen SMS performance to improve rail safety.

The first of several steps is to get feedback from stakeholders and the public on the strengths and weaknesses of the current system. We’ve written a discussion paper and asked five questions to gather feedback and help facilitate the discussion.

We want to hear from you

Your opinions and feedback are important.

To participate and have your say:

• We invite you to read our consultation document.
• Please go to "register" at the top of the page or sign in.
• Send a formal written submission via the “Submissions” tab before September 26, 2022.
• Participate in our discussion forum through the “Have your say” tab. The forum will be open until September 26, 2022.

As set out in Sections 19 and 20 of the Access to Information Act, be sure to identify any parts of your comments that we shouldn’t make public because they include personal information or third-party information. Explain why your comments should be kept private, and for how long.

Unless you tell us that a section is private, it could appear in any regulatory proposal that TC publishes in the Canada Gazette.