Consultation: Canada deliberate on adding Competency Based Training for Dangerous Goods’ Transportation Rules

Transport Canada (TC) recently opened a discussion to revise Part 6 of the Transportation of Dangerous Products (TDG) and set new training requirements. 

Published in the Canada Gazette Part 1 on 11 December 2021, the recommendations aim at providing a more grounded system for the training oversight by removing the words ‘adequately prepared’ from the TDG Regulations and inputting references to the new standard CAN/CGSB-192.3-202- Transportation of dangerous goods training, assessment, and competency.

This new move is fostered by the increasing mindfulness of the existing training provisions that do not provide a vigorous body of rules. Although most stakeholders meet or surpass the training requirements, TC inspectors have noticed that some employees need to know more about the knowledge and skills needed to do this dangerous goods transportation, despite having a valid training certificate. TDG monitoring program discovered that 55 of the 409 dangerous good incidents (that resulted in injury or death between 2014 and 2019) were ascribed to the lack of proper and adequate training.

Transport Canada has been working for quite some years on the issue. It started a targeted consultation in 2016, including more than 100 agents from government, specialists, companies, industry affiliations and training suppliers, after which there was a more firmly focused consultation with 35 of the stakeholders; and after that, there was an open online meeting. After all these came the improvement of measures and propositions for regulatory revision.

Last Update: 2022-01-26