Transportation Safety Board of Canada

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The Transportation Safety Board (Bureau de la sécurité des transports du Canada) is the Canadian agency responsible for maintaining transportation safety in Canada. The agency investigates accidents and makes safety recommendations in several modes of transport, including aviation, rail, marine, and pipelines. The headquarters are located in Gatineau, Quebec.

The TSB was convened for the first time under the Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board Act, which was enacted on March 29th, 1990. It was formed at least partly in response to widespread criticism of the Canadian government's handling (through the responsible agency at the time, the Canadian Aviation Safety Board) of the investigation into the crash of Arrow Air Flight 1285.

The provisions of Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board Act were written to establish a more arm's length relationship between the board and the government. This new mechanism's first major test came with crash of Swissair 111, on September 2, 1998, the largest single aviation accident on Canadian territory since the Arrow Air disaster. The TSB delivered its report on the accident on March 27, 2003, some 4 1/2 years after the accident and at a cost of $57 million CAD, making it the most complex and costly accident investigation in Canadian history.

The Transportation Safety Board's mandate is as follows:

conducting independent investigations, including public inquiries when necessary, into selected transportation occurrences in order to make findings as to their causes and contributing factors;
identifying safety deficiencies, as evidenced by transportation occurrences;
making recommendations designed to eliminate or reduce any such safety deficiencies; and
reporting publicly on our investigations and on the findings in relation thereto

The TSB may assist other transportation safety boards in their investigations. This may happen when:

an incident or accident occurs involving a Canadian-registered aircraft in commercial or air transport use;
an incident or accident occurs involving a Canadian-built aircraft (or an aircraft with Canadian-built engines, propellers, or other vital components) in commercial or air transport use;
a country without the technical wherewithal to conduct a full investigation asks for the TSB's assistance (especially in the field of reading and analyzing the content of flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders).