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Message from the Chair

Kathy Fox, Chair, Transportation Safety Board

For nearly 25 years, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) has sought to advance transportation safety by investigating incidents and accidents, and then reporting publically on what we find. That's thousands of investigations, from coast to coast to coast, and countless lessons learned.

Thanks in part to our work, for example, large passenger vessels are required to carry voyage data recorders, and a comprehensive safe towing policy and procedures have been developed for small vessels in ice-infested waters. Our work has prompted substantive changes in the federal electrical code and improvements in pipeline control room management. In the aviation world, we have successfully pushed for safer non-precision approaches; and our rail investigations have resulted in emergency response assistance plans for the transportation of large volumes of liquid hydrocarbons.

The transportation industry has changed significantly over the past 25 years. However, one thing has remained constant: our determination to find out what happened, why, and what needs to be done to make Canada's transportation network safer. It's a commitment that hasn't wavered since our first investigation back in 1990, and it's fuelled by the extraordinary men and women who work here. TSB personnel are dedicated experts from a wide variety of professional backgrounds: fishermen, pipeline operators, locomotive engineers, airline pilots, computer technicians, engineers, journalists, and members of the Canadian forces—to name only a few. All of them, in turn, are committed to our core values: excellence, openness, integrity, respect and safety—and committed to making the TSB a leader in advancing transportation safety, both in Canada and abroad.

So whether we're interviewing witnesses, sifting through wreckage, or analyzing data from "black box" recorders, Canadians can be sure that we are always pushing for a safer transportation network for everyone: on our waterways, along our pipelines or railways or in our skies.

Kathy Fox

Chair, Transportation Safety Board