Comment 119599

By Haveacow (registered) | Posted June 27, 2016 at 18:06:21 in reply to Comment 119596

I have no doubt that TC (Transport Canada)is under pressure to change. The Mayor of Toronto for example called out TC a few years ago for challenging Smart Track after the Prime Minister (Harper) had made promises for funding. The problem, TC was gutted by Harper. TC took some of the biggest hits in all of the federal government cuts, in terms of the shear number of layoffs and the number of staff made redundant (jobs will not be replaced). Not counting Coast Guard cuts, which is also a Transport Canada responsibility, 2100 jobs were made redundant at TC and temporary layoffs numbered around 1000 this just in Ottawa alone.

When a new train design is introduced to Canada that has never run here before, its TC's job to check it out and make sure it can legally run on Canadian Railroads. It took TC 15 months to check out and make legal, Ottawa's new fleet of Alstom's Cordia Lint 41 DMU's for the Trillium Line (The old O-Train Line). It only took 5-6 months to check out and make legal the original BR 643 Talent DMU's back in 2000. The reason given was the lack of staff to do the job! The actual approval process was slightly faster, 4 months for the new Lint 41 DMU's than took for the Talents. However because they had so few staff the trains sat outside waiting for a year in O-Train's storage facility at Walkley Yard before TC had enough staff to do the job. This is only one of the new realities at TC and the new government under Trudeau said there will be no hiring binge in the Federal Government to make up for the enormous cuts of Harper's government. So yes I really want some institutional change at TC but I won't hold my breath.

Permalink | Context

Events Calendar

There are no upcoming events right now.
Why not post one?

Recent Articles

Article Archives

Blog Archives

Site Tools

Feeds