(The Canadian Press circulated the following article by Steven Mertl on August 10.)
VANCOUVER — Criticism of CN Rail is building a head of steam as two of its unions joined a major environmental group Tuesday in questioning the railway’s safety record after two environmentally damaging derailments last week.
The Teamsters Canada Rail Conference and Canadian Auto Workers Local 100, which represent engineers and shop workers respectively, have written Transport Minister Jean Lapierre asking him to investigate CN’s maintenance, repair and inspection practices.
Meanwhile, the Sierra Club of Canada is demanding Environment Minister Stephane Dion prosecute the former Crown corporation for the ecological damage caused by toxic materials that spilled in the Alberta and B.C. derailments.
CN staunchly defends its safety performance, arguing that despite privatization and job cuts, new monitoring technology has made it the safest railway in North America.
The storm broke over CN last Wednesday when a suspected broken rail caused a freight train to derail and dump 700,000 litres of heavy fuel oil in and around Lake Wabamum, 65 kilometres west of Edmonton.
Two days later, another CN freight jumped the tracks over the Cheakamus River canyon north of Vancouver. A ruptured tank car sent more than 40,000 litres of highly corrosive caustic soda into the river, instantly killing thousands of fish and triggering a two-day warning to stay away from the river. Local wells were also temporarily off limits.
“The main reason why we felt strongly about this is because we’ve got two aquatic eco-systems that have basically been destroyed,” Stephen Hazell, Sierra Club conservation director, said Tuesday from Ottawa.
“We haven’t heard much from either level of government about what they plan to do about it, even though we have environmental laws in this country that cover these exact sorts of situations.”
Ottawa should prosecute the railway under the Fisheries Act or the Environmental Protection Act, he said.
“We have been concerned for many years about the growing reluctance of the federal government to prosecute polluters,” said Hazell. “These two instances are among the most egregious that I can recall.”
The unions contend CN’s safety record has declined since it was privatized in 1995 and began shedding staff even as it expanded operations by taking over U.S.-based Illinois Central Railroad in 1998, as well as Crown-owned B.C. Rail in 2003.
“We speculate or believe there are some correlating issues here between the downsizing, the weight increase, the train length increase, CN moving from a Crown corporation to a private organization and that kind of stuff,” said John Burns, vice-president of CAW Local 100 in Vancouver.
“We’re asking the minister in a letter to him to do a comprehensive review of CN practices.”
Bruce Willows, senior vice-chairman of the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, dismissed suggestions his union was exploiting the incidents to push for more jobs.
“Railway safety doesn’t impact directly on our numbers,” he said. “It impacts directly on our members’ lives, their health and safety.
“What we want to do is exclude the possibility that somehow cutbacks have resulted in a reduction with respect to maintenance of track and equipment.”
But CN spokesman Graham Dallas said the railway’s number of reportable accidents has dropped by 20 per cent from last year.
“Obviously we’re not perfect,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of room for improvement but we do take some pride in the fact that the industry bodies . . . clearly show that CN is the safest railway in Canada as well as North America and has been so for a number of years.”
Hazell said CN has downsized dramatically since being privatized.
“We wonder whether or not their whole environmental protection commitment has suffered on account of those cuts,” he said. “We’re just starting to see some of the fruits of that.”
Dallas defended CN’s high-tech approach.
“We’ve got what we believe is a technological solution that provides us a more secure and more effective way of maintaining a safe railway than some of the initiatives in the past using people.”
CN has had a number of newsworthy accidents in recent years, perhaps the worst in 2003 when a freight engineer and conductor were killed during a fiery derailment near McBride, B.C., when a trestle collapsed.
The Transportation Safety Board found inspection and maintenance shortcomings contributed to the accident, a conclusion CN challenged.
Last January, a CN freight carrying hazardous materials derailed in Winnipeg, forcing a precautionary evacuation.
In March, Via passenger service was disrupted when a CN freight derailed near Brighton, Ont., and in May, a 42-car freight train derailed near Avola, B.C.
CN’s American operations have also been hit. Last March, a propane car exploded when a CN freight train derailed in eastern Michigan, forcing an evacuation. In January, a derailment near Schoolcraft, Mich., spilled non-flammable lubricant.
Last October, hundreds of people fled their homes in Detroit when flammable chemicals leaked from derailed tank cars.
Last January, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board fingered poor welds on a broken rail as the cause of a 2003 CN freight derailment near Tamaroa, Ill., which sparked a chemical fire forcing 850 residents to evacuate.
“Our safety record is not impeccable,” Dallas conceded, but added the railway learns something from every accident and will co-operate with authorities investigating the latest ones.
Dallas wouldn’t comment on the unions’ call for a ministerial review but said the Sierra Club’s demand that CN be prosecuted was “premature.”