(The Canadian Press circulated the following article by Lori Fazari on August 29.)
OTTAWA — It has been a month of high-profile train derailments for Canadian National.
The company insists its safety record is top-notch. Its unions are calling for a federal inquiry to look at the issues of safety and staff cutbacks.
“One of the concerns that our membership raises is that there is the deferred maintenance. The question is that there’s been downsizing over the years,” said Ken Neumann, national director for the United Steelworkers, which represents 3,500 CN track maintenance workers.
“We need to get to the bottom of it. You’ve had a series of derailments which put communities and workers at risk.”
Unions representing the rail line’s employees want the federal government to call an inquiry that would look into the company’s practices to see whether the series of derailments are coincidence or cause for greater concern.
“We want the minister (of transport) to explore the possibility the derailments are related to decreased maintenance, inspection and repair,” said Bruce Willows of the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, which represents about 900 CN locomotive engineers.
CN spokesman Graham Dallas said the company is constantly inspecting and maintaining its railway lines, spending $800 million on its track last year compared with $700 million two years ago.
“Everybody is doing everything they can first of all to co-operate with the investigations underway by the Transportation Safety Board, and then, once those are completed, to act on those recommendations and to take necessary steps to ensure that those never happen again,” said Dallas.
On Aug. 3, a 44-car train derailed along the north shore of Lake Wabamun, west of Edmonton.
The derailment ruptured 12 of the cars, spilling about 730,000 litres of bunker C fuel oil and a potentially hazardous wood preservative along the shore and into the lake.
Two days later, a CN freight train headed for Prince George, B.C., derailed over the Cheakamus Canyon near Squamish, spilling more than 40,000 litres of highly corrosive sodium hydroxide into the river, killing thousands of fish and other wildlife.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada is investigating both derailments.
In the Wabamun investigation, suspect pieces of track recovered from the area where the trains derailed have been sent to the board’s Ottawa lab for metallurgical analysis, along with a piece of wheel from one of the derailed cars, said senior investigator Art Nordholm.
Environment Canada has said CN likely violated federal environmental legislation when its train cars derailed, and is collecting evidence to prepare a brief for the Department of Justice, which will make the final decision about charges.
CN has experienced 72 derailments on its main tracks so far this year, compared with 49 in the same period last year.