TSB’s Annual Report Highlights Safety Issues in Canadian Transportation

Transportation occurrences reported to the TSB, 2018 to 2022

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) announced June 22 that its 2022-23 Annual Report, which includes key annual statistics on occurrences in the rail, air, marine and pipeline modes of transportation under federal jurisdiction, was tabled in Parliament.

“This year we focused on completing many of our long-running investigations, some of which have highlighted significant safety issues present in Canada’s transportation system,” said TSB Chair Kathy Fox. “Additionally, last fall we released the most recent edition of the TSB Watchlist, putting the spotlight on key safety issues and actions that need to be addressed to make Canada’s transportation system even safer.”

Among the results of the report:

• The TSB began 50 new investigations and completed 59 investigations—20 more than the previous fiscal year—across all four transportation sectors (rail, air, marine and pipeline).
  
  
• Limited-scope Class 4 investigations accounted for 41% of the total investigations completed during the reporting year.
  
  
• TSB investigators deployed 69 times to occurrence sites to collect data and carry out analysis in order to identify what happened and why, and to highlight known and emerging safety issues.
  
  
• There were 5% more fatalities (107) across all transportation sectors in 2022 than in 2021 (102). However, the 2022 total represents a 16% decrease in fatalities from the 10-year average of 128.
  
  
• The TSB completed eight technical reports for foreign investigation agencies.
  
  
• The TSB received a total of 188 confidential SECURITAS reports of incidents and potentially unsafe acts or conditions across the modes of transportation. All but two SECURITAS reports were closed by the end of the year.

According to the report, the TSB received 1,376 reports of rail transportation occurrences in 2022 (995 accidents and 381 incidents), including 66 fatalities.

TSB’s major safety investigations in the rail sector included a report (R19W0002) released in August 2022 regarding a collision between two freight trains near Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, including two recommendations to Transport Canada, one of which builds on outstanding recommendations going back more than two decades. This accident highlights major issues in the rail industry and reinforces TSB’s call for physical fail-safe train controls.

The TSB also issued 28 new safety communications, mainly directed to regulatory agencies and industry stakeholders. As well, the Board assessed the responses to 62 active recommendations to determine what progress is being made.

The TSB Annual Report for 2022-23 is available here and includes the list of all investigation reports released during the year with examples of safety actions taken.