He asked once, he asked twice, but still the RCMP would not take his advice...

It’s pretty safe to assume that if you drove your car into a mailbox, building or another car, that one of the first things that might happen would be that you would be asked to take a breathalyzer test and/or be asked to provide a blood sample. It would be even more urgent to examine all possibilities, especially if your actions led to the death of innocent persons.

Yet when the Queen of the North plowed into Gil Island, resulting in the loss of two lives, there was no testing of those crew members involved with the operation of the ill fated ferry. That despite the fact that the President of BC Ferries asked a number of times for testing to be done by investigating RCMP officers, a refusal to do so which left the BC Ferries head David Hahn dumbfounded at the time.

In Tuesday’s Globe and Mail the embattled President of BC Ferries went on the record with his thoughts about those early days of the Queen of the North investigation. He outlined his interpretation of his company’s involvement in the process; once the notification was made that the Queen of the North had sunk off of Gil Island.

Hahn has been busy making his concerns known now, as part of his campaign to have the federal government make it clear that mandatory drug and alcohol testing should be required in safety sensitive roles on the ferries.

The RCMP has yet to provide any indication as to why they refused to conduct intoxication tests at the time of the incident, falling back on the cover that the incident is still under investigation. It will be interesting to learn why a key aspect of an investigation, did not take place at the most critical point of the process to find out what went wrong that night.

While the Ferries president's information is of interest to the public, the timing is rather curious. By going public now with his concerns, instead of when the incident took place, it could appear to some to be designed to be a form of damage control. Especially after the release of last weeks notice by the Transportation Safety Board that there was evidence of frequent drug use on the northern routes of the Ferry Corporation.

At the time of the sinking, Mr. Hahn kept his comments to himself, rather than going public with his thoughts, despite his concerns over possible impairment at the time of the accident and his unsuccessful urging of the RCMP to conduct impairment testing of the employees.

The union representatives for the Ferry workers continue to remain silent on the issue of drug and alcohol testing, declining as recently as Monday to offer a union comment or position on the issue.

It seems that from government to company to union, everyone wants to stay quiet on the problems at BC Ferries. It makes for a culture of silence there, one which doesn’t leave the public with a great sense of reassurance on the state of affairs on our coastal waters.

The passengers and customers might be inclined to wish that they would begin to lift the shroud of silence on the many safety issues in the transportation sector. There’s a need for all participants to become a little more engaged in the process of making their industry and our transportation system safer.


RCMP refused to test crew for drugs: ferry chief
BC Ferries president describes how his repeated requests were rebuffed
JUSTINE HUNTER
Globe and Mail Update
October 23, 2007 at 3:00 AM EDT

VICTORIA — David Hahn, president of BC Ferries, repeatedly asked to have the bridge crew of the Queen of the North tested for drug and alcohol in the hours after the ship crashed and sank, but RCMP investigators refused.

That revelation follows last week's findings that some members of the crew regularly consumed marijuana both on and off the ship, and the assertion that there was no evidence to show that any crew members on the doomed ship were impaired.

The Queen of the North sank in the early hours of March 22, 2006, after ramming into Gil Island at full speed. The ship had failed to make a crucial course correction, and a series of investigations are still under way into how that happened.

But Mr. Hahn said in an interview that he is still baffled that no tests were done to rule out drugs or alcohol.

From the moment BC Ferries' lawyers touched down in Prince Rupert four hours after the ship sank, Mr. Hahn was pressing to have the crew tested for evidence of intoxication.

“That's when I started saying, talk to the RCMP, I want drug and alcohol testing done on these people, if nothing else just to know that there wasn't anything like that involved,” Mr. Hahn recalled.

When Mr. Hahn, sitting at the company's operations centre in Victoria, was told the RCMP were not prepared to seek testing, he said he was in a state of disbelief.

“I said, ‘Go back into the room and tell them this is what we want to have done and that it's important to have it done.' It was again rebuffed, they felt there wasn't any indication, based on their interviews with the individuals, that there was any impairment.”

Mr. Hahn kept his concerns to himself at the time: Publicly, the ferry president said shortly after the crash that there was no evidence that alcohol played a role.

The RCMP refused comment Monday on the decision not to conduct intoxication tests after the ferry disaster, which claimed two lives. “The matter is still under investigation,” said Constable Annie Linteau, an RCMP spokesperson.

Last week, the Transportation Safety Board announced that it had uncovered evidence of drug use aboard the ship. But the TSB stressed that it was not linking the drug use to those in command on the night of the crash.

“The TSB learned that several crew members of the Queen of the North regularly smoked cannabis between shifts, both on board and off the vessel. The board stressed that there is no evidence that the crew members on the bridge at the time of the accident were impaired,” an Oct. 17 statement said.

John Cottreau, a spokesman for the TSB, said Monday the statement wasn't meant to clear the bridge crew, but to simply point out the lack of hard facts.

While it is in the TSB's power to ask for such testing, it did not request tests in this case and he could not say why. “It just wasn't done,” he said.

The TSB was set to release its final report on the sinking this fall, but new evidence – crew testimony suggesting no officer was on the bridge at the time of the crash – has sent investigators back to conduct more interviews. That second set of questioning led to the board's concerns about drug use.

The issue of testing for drugs and alcohol seemed obvious, Mr. Hahn said, particularly given the evidence that the captain of the Exxon Valdez was intoxicated while operating the oil tanker that crashed into an Alaskan reef in 1989.

Mr. Hahn wants the federal government to allow mandatory and random drug and alcohol tests of crew in safety-sensitive roles.

“There are times when public safety flat out trumps human rights,” he said. “I want to feel good when my kids go on the ferries. I don't want to worry about them.”

Jackie Miller, president of the union representing the ship's crew, declined comment Monday.