Design, Facilitation, and Evaluation of exercises for testing electronic shipping documents for all modes.

The Transportation of Dangerous Goods (TDG) Directorate within Transport Canada (TC) requires the services of a contractor to conduct exercises to simulate the use of electronic shipping documents during emergency scenarios involving dangerous goods/hazardous materials. Between 2020 and 2022, TC is leading a regulatory sandbox that will allow selected companies to test their capacity to provide dangerous goods information electronically to first responders during an emergency. To appropriately assess feasibility and safety considerations, TC will hold up to a total of five exercises in the form of drills with select carriers and first responders. These exercises will be split accross each region of Canada (Pacific, Prairie & Northern Region, Ontario, Quebec, Atlantic) and across every mode of transportation (road, rail, port and airport). The objective of the drills is to evaluate the Strenghts, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) of the use of an electronic shipping document in lieu of the paper version. This will involve testing various implementation strategies and functionalities proposed by carriers through the development of scenarios that simulate anticipated releases of dangerous goods that would trigger the deployment of first responders at the scene. These drills will be specifically designed to evaluate elements of using electronic shipping documents in place of paper shipping documents and will allow TC to collect evidence for future rulemaking.