News release

Today, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada’s (TSB) annual report for fiscal year 2021-22 was tabled in Parliament. The report discusses key annual statistics on occurrences in the air, marine, pipeline and rail modes of transportation under federal jurisdiction, and how the TSB has worked to advance safety for travellers and industry workers in all four sectors across Canada.

“This year we focused on completing some of our more detailed and complex safety investigations,” comments TSB Chair Kathy Fox. “As well, in keeping with our commitment to engage with our stakeholders, we met with industry for our Watchlist mid-cycle consultations to gauge progress made and discuss any emerging safety issues. The results of these sessions will inform Watchlist 2022, which will be released this fall.”

The year in results

• The TSB began 54 new investigations and completed 39 across all four transportation sectors (air, marine, pipeline, and rail).
• Limited-scope Class 4 investigations accounted for 44% of the total investigations completed during the reporting year.
• TSB investigators deployed 46 times to the sites of some of these occurrences, virtually or in person, to collect data and carry out analysis in order to identify what happened and why, and highlight known and emerging safety issues.
• There were 10% more fatalities (103) across all transportation sectors in 2021 than there were in 2020 (94). The 2021 total represents a 23% decrease in fatalities from the 10-year average of 133.
• In support of TSB investigations, engineers, technical specialists and human factors investigators began 167 projects and completed 175 technical reports in 2021–22. They also began 17 projects and completed 15 technical reports for foreign investigation agencies.

The TSB received a total of 172 confidential SECURITAS reports in 2021–22. This number is slightly lower than the 189 reports received the previous year.

Safety issue investigation and safety communications

In December 2021, we released a safety issue investigation (SII) (A18Q0140) involving a series of 18 occurrences between 2013 and 2018 that took place at certain airports undergoing construction in Quebec and Nunavut. A summary review of these occurrences revealed a particularity in the method used to carry out the construction: the width of the runway was reduced rather than the length. The investigation found that information pertaining to airport construction, can be difficult to communicate clearly and effectively in a notice to airmen (NOTAM). As a result, the Board recommended that NAV CANADA make available, in a timely manner, graphic depictions of closures and other significant changes related to aerodrome or runway operations to accompany the associated NOTAMs so that the information communicated on these hazards is more easily understood (A21-01).

In the spring of 2021, we launched a rail transportation SII (R20H0082) to understand why there is an increase in the rate of railway crossing accidents involving motor vehicles during winter months in Canada. An SII is broad in scope and involves looking at multiple occurrences in order to identify the underlying safety issues. Research outcomes from this SII will be communicated in a final TSB report, which will provide findings and, potentially, recommendations for improving road-rail level crossing safety, especially during winter months.

Throughout the year, the TSB also issued 15 new safety communications, mainly directed to regulatory agencies and industry stakeholders.

As well, the Board reassessed the progress achieved on a number of active recommendations. As a result:

• By April 2022, 2 outstanding recommendations had been closed as Fully Satisfactory.
• Since 1990, the Board has made 617 recommendations, the responses to 84.1% of which have led to a Fully Satisfactory assessment.
• Nonetheless, there were still 84 outstanding recommendations, slightly less than half of which date from 10 years ago or more.

The annual report for 2021-22 is available on the TSB website and includes the list of all investigation reports released during the year with examples of safety actions taken.