Under the Railway Safety Act, railways are responsible for ensuring their employees are properly trained and certified under various regulations. They design their training programs based on their individual operational needs. Transport Canada’s role is to monitor compliance with these regulations through inspections and audits.
Proper training helps ensure that employees are not only familiar with safety rules and regulations, but that they also know how to apply them.
Transport Canada remains committed to monitoring federal railways and has made training a focus for audits in the upcoming year. In the short term, the Minister issued an Order under section 36 of the Railway Safety Act, requiring certain railways (including short lines) to submit training plans to the department for review.
This winter, the department will conduct a gap analysis of short line railways with respect to qualification standards of operating crews to determine if specific gaps remain in industry training plans, along with any other issues.
Based on the findings, Transport Canada will develop new requirements for a strengthened training regime to cover such things as approved training plans, qualifications for railway trainers, and training frequency, where required.
Through these actions, Transport Canada is ensuring Canada has a railway workforce that is well-trained to perform their duties in a safe manner.
October 2014
