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News release

TSB 2016-17 Annual Report to Parliament features investigation highlights, statistics, and status of Board recommendations

Gatineau, Quebec, 20 July 2017 – Tabled in Parliament yesterday, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada's (TSB) 2016-17 Annual Report highlights the TSB's major achievements and the work it has done to advance transportation safety on Canada's waterways, along its pipelines and railways, and in the sky in the last year.

In 2016-17, the TSB published 44 investigation reports and issued a total of 20 recommendations in the Marine, Rail, and Aviation sectors. Watchlist 2016 was released with two new safety issues and was featured prominently through a proactive outreach campaign. The annual report provides a substantive update on Watchlist issues and related activities.

Initiatives of particular interest are the first-ever multi-modal TSB Transportation Safety Summit and the completion of the Railway Safety Issues Investigation Report: Expanding the use of locomotive voice and video recorders in Canada. The Safety Summit, held in April 2016, brought together senior Canadian transportation executives from government and the transportation industry, along with some of their labour organizations, to share best practices—notably for capturing and using safety data in a proactive, non-punitive way—and to identify ways of strengthening organizational safety culture and safety management. The railway safety report, released in September 2016, also involved the participation of key railway stakeholders. It reviewed some best practices, identified and evaluated implementation issues, examined potential safety benefits of the expanded use of on-board recorders, and collected background information for the development of an action plan to implement locomotive voice and video recorders. It also served as a foundation for legislative changes recently tabled in Parliament.

On a less positive note, the reassessment of 69 outstanding recommendations still requiring government and industry action showed little progress. The response to only one of these outstanding recommendations has been upgraded to Fully Satisfactory, the TSB's highest rating. Of the other 68 recommendations, nine were reassessed with a higher rating because of positive information received from the change agents, five received a lower rating due to a lack of progress, and the status the other 54 has not changed at all.

"We remain determined to continue to push for action where we feel more can be done to make the transportation system, and by extension all Canadians, safer still," says Chair Fox. "Our activities build on over a quarter-century of cutting edge investigative work, solid reporting, and advocating for safety. It may be hard to quantify in concrete terms the impact that our work has. That is because the effect is cumulative. But year after year, we see a steady trend in declining accident rates and we are heartened by that," she added.


The TSB is an independent agency that investigates air, marine, pipeline, and rail transportation occurrences. Its sole aim is the advancement of transportation safety. It is not the function of the Board to assign fault or determine civil or criminal liability.

For more information, contact:
Transportation Safety Board of Canada
Media Relations
Telephone: 819-360-4376
Email: media@tsb.gc.ca