Canada’s federal transportation agency in probe of Toyota safety concerns

Canada launches probe into Toyota safety concerns

TORONTO — Canadian politicians on Thursday accused the nation’s transportation agency of failing to take swift action after receiving acceleration-related complaints in Toyota vehicles three years before the company began a series of safety recalls.

Senior officials with Transport Canada came under fire after revealing the agency did not take steps to alert the public after it received 17 acceleration-related complaints during a Parliamentary committee probe into the issue of its handling of Toyota’s safety concerns.

Liberal member of Parliament Joe Volpe said the agency took a lackadaisical approach to safety problems, potentially putting Canadian lives in jeopardy.

Volpe said Transport officials were not even aware of concerns the acceleration problems may stem from a software error, rather than floor mats or sticky pedals, until Parliamentary members brought it up at a technical briefing with officials on Monday.

“The (transport) minister is not asking, the department is not asking and Toyota is not offering,” he said. “Everybody else in the world is looking at this and we’re not? What, you can’t ask for the information?”

Gerard MacDonald, Transport Canada’s associate deputy minister, said the department did not take action because the agency did not suspect there was a problem with the automaker’s accelerator.

“When we receive an acceleration problem, it does not necessarily mean that it is related to a sticky accelerator,” he explained. “Of those 17 (complaints), there was nothing in the subsequent investigation that took place that gave them reason to believe it was the result of a sticky accelerator.”

Officials said they were not aware of any complaints of a “sticky pedal” until Toyota informed the department in January it had received five complaints.

The Parliamentary committee probe is part of a larger investigation by the government into the recall of 270,000 Toyota vehicles in Canada. The probe was launched a month after the automaker found itself in a storm of negative publicity and lawsuits over the issue of sticky pedals, which have lead to fatal crashes caused by sudden unintended acceleration.

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has tied 52 deaths to crashes allegedly caused by the accelerator problems, and the agency has received new complaints from owners who had their cars fixed and said their vehicles suddenly accelerated afterward.

Transport Canada said it has received 25 complaints relating to brake problems in the Toyota Prius and 33 relating to the models that were involved in the sticky pedal recall since 2005. Of the latter, two relate to fatalities but Transport Canada has not confirmed whether the deaths were caused by the sticky pedal or other unrelated issues.

Top Toyota executives have faced three U.S. congressional hearings, focused mostly on Toyota’s foot-dragging on problems of sudden unintended acceleration and whether the Transportation Department’s safety division failed to hold the company accountable for big safety problems that have been linked to the 52 deaths.

Toyota Canada president Yoichi Tomihara and managing director Stephen Beatty are scheduled to testify before Parliament next week. However, Volpe said their testimony would be worthless unless Toyota sends North American chief executive Yoshi Inaba, who has testified before the U.S. Congress.