By Cheryl Jahn

Northern MP pushes for rail safety info

Dec 11, 2024 | 2:31 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – “In May 2022, this committee issued a report with 33 recommendations for improving railway safety in Canada,” explains Stephen Scott, the Director General for Rail Safety for Transport Canada, speaking to a Parliamentary transport committee. “I am pleased to report today that of those 33 recommendations, 31 have been completed or we have actions underway to complete. This is being done through existing legislative and regulatory authorities already available to the department.”

It just takes a quick look at First Avenue in this city to know that rail is a major form of transportation. And there are some highly dangerous goods flowing through the city; goods that flow through the heart of every community along Highway 16.

It’s an issue MP Tayler Bachrach has tackled for a decade.

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“This is a longstanding issue for communities in Northwest BC,” he says. “People see these trains rolling through their communities with tank cars. They don’t know what’s in the tank cars, and they ask questions about what if something really bad happens. Are we protected? Are lives in danger? Is our property in danger? And I’ve been working on this for over a decade, ever since I was the mayor of Smithers. We’ve been asking CN, asking Transport Canada, what the plan is.”

This region is no stranger to derailments. A very dicey derailment took place recently near Giscome School. Several cars went off the tracks. And the country is no stranger to it either.

“In 2023, 1,235 rail occurrences were reported to the Transportation Safety Board,” says Yoan Marier, Chairperson for the Canadian Transportation Safety Board. “This included 321 incidents and 942 accidents, six of which resulted in the release of dangerous goods. This represents a nine per cent decrease from 2022 in accidents and a 12 per cent decrease from the ten-year average.”

But what is most concerning to Bachrach is not necessarily the numbers but the ability for local emergency personnel to deal with whatever comes their way in the event of a rail mishap. And he says there are no answers from those in charge of rail safety.

“Asking these Transport Canada officials, of course, they understand the risks. But asking them about what capacity communities need to have in order to safely evacuate people within that radius that could be affected. They didn’t have any answers to my questions. It was astounding.”

He says fire chiefs and first responders all across the country have those concerns.

“We need to push the government to do a better job of answering people’s basic questions, providing transparency and ensuring that communities have the tools to respond when things go badly.”

He says on Thursday there will be testimony from the Fire Chiefs Association.