Our Safety Policy outlines our key measures for ensuring a safe and secure working environment 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Safety leadership training is key to creating and successfully embedding a values-based culture of safety. CN has deployed safety leadership training for front line supervisors and management employees in partnership with global safety leadership experts. In addition, training to drive a safety leadership mindset is also included for many unionized positions in operations. Through workshops, in-field coaching and materials including a leader safety handbook and videos, leaders are trained on their role in sustaining a company-wide safety culture. A basic tenet: Leaders create the culture. Culture determines behaviour. Behaviour drives safety.

Looking Out for Each Other is an integral part of CN’s safety culture. It’s a vital safety mindset that employees are taught and integrate into their daily practices to ensure everyone goes home safely at the end of the day. This peer-to-peer engagement strategy trains employees to speak up about potential at-risk work practices (exposures) or physical hazards in the field to help others stay safe at work. Looking Out For Each Other is also an important part of the training curriculum for all new hires and an important driver of CN’s safety culture to help keep all our railroaders safe.

Part of the ongoing safety actions are daily Job Safety Briefings – a series of interactions that focus on the specific safety requirements/instructions and exposures associated with a work tasks. There are also weekly field Exposure Reduction Discussions to eliminate or control exposures. Workplace hazard inspections are organized weekly to assess a location’s condition and conditional risks to employee safety with any corrective actions taken.

In addition, ongoing Safety Summits provide an opportunity to engage employees in strengthening CN’s safety culture. Summits promote effective two-way communications and the sharing of safety best practices. Safety Summits also provide a forum for employees to share their ideas and identify opportunities and challenges which can be addressed jointly. Of particular importance is the opportunity to discuss Life Critical Rules, controlling exposures and employee’s commitment to safety.

CN has more than 100 joint union-management committees across the network that are doing good work to improve local safety culture and engage the workforce on health and safety initiatives. The Committees work to resolve health and safety issues, review safety incidents to better understand causation and recommend corrective measures, connect with employees in the field and get ideas on where to improve.