TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD WATCHLIST
- The latest Watchlist, released in October 2022, includes eight safety issues.
- Transport Canada has made marked progress in addressing safety issues and remains committed to working with the Transportation Safety Board.
- Transport Canada will continue to prioritize Transportation Safety Board recommendations that present the greatest risks within the transportation system.
SUPPLEMENTARY MESSAGES
- Since Watchlist in 2020, Transport Canada (TC) closed four Watchlist-related recommendations related to safety issues that remain on the Watchlist 2022.
- There is a decreasing trendline in the overall number of Transportation Safety Board (TSB) recommendations, which demonstrates TC’s continued commitment to identifying and responding to safety risks.
UPDATE
- The four Watchlist-related recommendations that were closed concerned three marine items on commercial fishing safety and one rail item on safety management.
- Since October 1, 2022, four new TC-related TSB recommendations were published of which three are related to Watchlist recommendations.
- When Watchlist 2022 was released TSB announced that it would now make updates every three years, instead of every other year.
SUPPORTING FACTS AND FIGURES
- 33 (of 81 total) TC-related TSB recommendations are related to one or more Watchlist safety issues.
BACKGROUND
The publicly available TSB Watchlist puts a spotlight on key safety issues and actions needed to make Canada’s transportation system even safer.
TC continues to work with TSB and details regarding progress in addressing Watchlist issues will be provided by the TSB when its Spring Reassessment is released
The following eight Watchlist 2022 descriptions are taken from the TSB website:
- Commercial fishing safety (marine): The TSB has been monitoring commercial fishing safety since 1999 and this issue has been on the TSB Watchlist since 2010. Every year, the same safety deficiencies on board fishing vessels continue to put at risk the lives of thousands of Canadian commercial fish harvesters and the livelihoods of their families and communities.
- Runway overruns (aviation): Runway overruns continue to pose a risk to people, property, and the environment.
- Risk of collisions from runway incursions (aviation): Runway incursions lead to an ongoing risk of aircraft colliding with vehicles or other aircraft.
- Uncontrolled movements (rail): Unplanned and uncontrolled movements of rail equipment create high-risk situations that may have catastrophic consequences. Between 2010 and 2021, the number of uncontrolled movements has not shown a downward trend.
- Following railway signal indications (rail): Train crews do not consistently recognize and follow railway signals. This poses a risk of train collisions or derailments that can have catastrophic consequences.
- Fatigue management (multimodal): Fatigue poses a risk to the safety of air, marine, and freight train operations because of its potential to degrade several aspects of human performance.
- Safety management (multimodal): Some transportation operators in the air, marine, and rail sectors are not managing their safety risks effectively, and many are still not required to have formal safety management processes in place. Moreover, those operators that have implemented a formal safety management system (SMS) are not always able to demonstrate that it is working and producing the expected safety improvements.
- Regulatory surveillance (multimodal): Regulatory surveillance has not always proven effective at verifying whether operators are, or have become, compliant with regulations and able to manage the safety of their operations.