Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon.

My name is Chief Chris Case. I'm the fire chief for Chatham-Kent, Ontario, and the co-chair of the dangerous goods committee for the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs, the national association representing the country's 3,200 fire departments.

I'm joined by the CAFC's executive director, Dr. Tina Saryeddine. We appreciate the invitation to discuss the transportation of dangerous goods by rail.

Last year, on the 10th anniversary of the tragedy of Lac-Mégantic, the association, in collaboration with Transport Canada, ran a summary of the status of the recommendations made after Canada's largest rail tragedy. We have provided the clerk with a copy of our article.

I will highlight some of the actions taken, and then I'll discuss some of the remaining vulnerabilities, as well as our recommendations for a national fire administration and the renewal of emergency preparedness equipment.

Before I begin, however, the CAFC would like to express continued solidarity with the people of Lac-Mégantic—the deceased and the 1,000 firefighters who came to assist—and every community that has ever experienced a tragedy of such proportions. They are not forgotten, and they inspire us to do better.

In this regard, after Lac-Mégantic, the Transportation Safety Board made five recommendations. As of 2023, three have been met and two remain in progress. These relate to regulatory oversight and safety management.

The government banned one-person crews on trains hauling hazardous cargo and set new standards to make tank cars carrying flammable liquids sturdier. It established stricter accident liability rules. It imposed lower speed limits in rural and urban areas and gave Transport Canada stronger enforcement powers.

The CAFC was involved in developing the Canadian emergency response to flammable liquid incidents in transportation training program, which is freely available. Rail companies have developed products like AskRail, which are important to first responders.

Transport Canada boosted the number of rail safety inspectors to 155 in 2022, from 107 in 2013. It also quadrupled the tally of inspectors of dangerous goods to 188 from 30. It introduced directive 36 to ensure that the authorities with jurisdiction have access to information about dangerous goods passing through their communities.

CANUTEC also does important work, and we commend it.

The lessons of Lac-Mégantic have not gone unactioned. However, it's one thing to assess the issues of the past and another to be proactive for the future. As the TSB correctly concluded, the tragedy at Lac-Mégantic was the result not of one person, one issue or one organization, but of their confluence. Today, we face the confluence of many new challenges.

Last week, close to 50 of my fire chief colleagues were here in Ottawa. They didn't come to talk about rail safety necessarily, but they could have. They talked about fire and life safety issues in building codes, explosives, wildfires, climate change, electric vehicles and rapid housing construction as examples of why Canada needs a national fire administration. Not only is each of these issues rife with risk, but their convergence could be a disaster of tragic proportions in the blind spot of policy-makers.

The transportation of dangerous goods by rail is no exception. Can another rail tragedy involving dangerous goods happen today, and how can we prevent it? We need both national coordination and local capacity building.

Consider that in my region of Chatham-Kent, the nearest haz-mat team is 90 minutes away, in Windsor. Emergency response plans may be in place, but I have yet to see one. In other cities and towns—up to 56% of them—equipment needs to be updated. This is why we are asking the federal government to restimulate investment in fire and emergency equipment through a cost-matching program with other levels of government. It is not the federal government's job to buy our equipment, but it is its job to keep Canada thriving and prepared.

At the national level, new risks need to be coordinated to avert the disasters of tomorrow. They can't be studied in silos by committees or departments. They can't be solely in Ottawa or in isolation. They need a holistic, national and systematic approach to and oversight of fire and life safety issues in coordination with fire service experts.

This is what a national fire administration could provide you. This is what other countries do. It's what's needed here, and it's not about jurisdiction or money. It's about linking subject matter expertise with policy coordination proactively, not in retrospect. This is our most important recommendation to you.

Thank you for considering this; thank you for your time, and thank you for your attention.

We look forward to your questions.

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