(The following story by Ian Bailey appeared on the Globe and Mail website on August 8.)
VANCOUVER, B.C. — British Columbia’s Transportation Minister, reacting to NDP calls for a plan to address concerns about Canadian National Railway Co. safety in B.C., says he isn’t going to panic every time a train runs off the tracks in the province.
“I don’t panic every time there’s an incident,” Kevin Falcon said.
Instead, Mr. Falcon said yesterday, he will continue to press his federal counterpart, Lawrence Cannon, for vigilance over the rail system, because Mr. Cannon is responsible for the issue.
“What I say to the federal minister is I expect the federal minister to take whatever steps are necessary to ensure the public can feel the railways are operating safely,” Mr. Falcon said in an interview. “I am satisfied the federal minister has taken this issue seriously.”
Mr. Falcon was responding to questions about CN’s safety record raised by an incident in Prince George last weekend in which two trains – one carrying gasoline and the other lumber – collided on the banks of the Fraser River, causing a spectacular fire, but no injuries or serious environmental damage. CN has blamed the accident on “an experienced manager” who made a mistake. The company is declining to comment about it.
“When you’re a Minister of Transportation, it is very easy to grandstand when an incident happens that’s completely outside your regulatory purview,” Mr. Falcon said, suggesting he has as little power on railways as he does over an airline incident or accident.
“But it’s completely dishonest and, frankly, misleads the public in terms of what the role of the provincial and federal government is, respectively, in an incident.”
The minister’s response rules out such NDP requests as a public inquiry into CN’s safety record in B.C., whistle-blower legislation to protect CN workers who want to talk about outstanding safety concerns, and a move to compel CN to regularly disclose measures to improve safety and security operations.
Opposition transportation critic David Chudnovsky laid out the proposals yesterday, reacting to the weekend crash, which comes after CN was hit with five federal and provincial environmental charges for a CN derailment in 2005 that spilled enough caustic soda to kill 500,000 fish in the Cheakamus River near Squamish.
Mr. Falcon described the Prince George incident as an “unfortunate” collision.
“I don’t believe it necessarily requires running to the phones and trying to look busy and pretend the Minister of Transportation of B.C., who has no regulatory authority, is trying to pretend he is doing something here.”
Mr. Chudnovsky said the status quo was unacceptable.
“What’s wrong with the status quo is that we have a situation where CN, month after month, is running trains off the rails,” he said.
Mr. Chudnovsky said his ideas were non-partisan. “It is a logical, realistic, concrete plan for making CN Rail safer in British Columbia.
“There is absolutely no reason why the government shouldn’t take this up. There is absolutely no reason why Minister Falcon shouldn’t provide leadership on this question.”
But Mr. Falcon accused Mr. Chudnovsky of trying to score political points over the Liberal government’s decision in 2003 to sell publicly owned BC Rail Ltd., then Canada’s third-largest railway, to CN for $1-billion. During the 2001 election that brought the Liberals to office, the party promised not to sell BC Rail.
“You only hear [the NDP] get hysterical about CN. I just think they are politically grandstanding,” Mr. Falcon said. “I don’t take any criticism from the likes of David Chudnovsky because he is just politically grandstanding on an issue he knows very little about.” There were 42 CN derailments in 2005, but 26 in 2006, and there have been 22 as of June of this year.
A CN spokeswoman said the company would stay out of the Liberal-NDP crossfire. “This is a provincial political issue that CN will not get involved in,” Kelli Svendsen said.