Toyota Canada questioned regarding recall in Ottawa

In Ottawa yesterday, executives from Toyota Canada apologized to the Canadian public, answered challenging questions from the Canadian Government. These questions were regarding the recent sticking accelerator pedal recall that affected 270,000 vehicles in Canada.

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A number of Toyota top executives were present at the hearings in Ottawa. These executives were the following:

• Yoshi Inaba, (Chief Operating Officer of Toyota Motor North America)
• Yoichi Tomihara (Chief Operating Officer of Toyota Canada)
• Stephen Beatty (Managing Director of Toyota Canada)
• Ray Tanguay (President of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada)

Toyota started off by offering Canadian drivers an apology, and stated they should have acted sooner to remedy the situation. “"In retrospect, it would have been good to have had a discussion (with Transport Canada) about it," said Toyota Canada managing director Stephen Beatty.

Jeff Waston, a Conservative Member of Parliament from Essex, Ontario has ties to the automotive industry. Jeff once worked in the trim department at Chrysler assembly plant in Windsor, Ontario. He questioned Toyota about notifying Transport Canada regarding five complaints about sticky accelerator pedals from October 2009 to January 2010. "You know you've got a problem and you told nobody about it," Jeff Waston stated.

Toyota Canada stated that they did not report the incident until they were sure they had a problem. Waston acknowledged that Toyota contacted CTS to design-fix the pedal back in December.

Yoshi Inaba said that the reason why Toyota Canada did not report the problems to Transport Canada was that they have received only received a few complaints on the matter. Stephen Beatty also added that the current law only requires automakers to report defects and not complaints.

Inaba said Toyota was doing everything it could to meet the demands from the Canadian Government, including providing Transport Canada and NHTSA with “black box” readers. These readers will be used to evaluate data from Toyota vehicles that have experienced unintended acceleration in the past.

Finally, Toyota said the decision process of issuing a recall will be done within North America instead of Japan. This will insure recalls of Toyota vehicles will be speedy and done in a timely fashion.

[Source: Globe and Mail , Business Week]