Lac-Mégantic : Lac-Mégantic : questions sans réponse

It is a story of a dysfunctional regula- tor; the story of a government that turned a blind eye to the potentially cat- astrophic consequences of the surge in oil-by-rail shipments in the single- minded pursuit of its “energy superpower” ambitions; a government that in the name of deficit reduction starved Transport Canada’s regulatory re- sources, disabling its capacity to cope with the oil-by-ra [...] There is substantial documentation on the industry’s successful re- sistance to new regulations to deal with the huge increase in the transportation of dangerous goods, and its advocacy for the remov- al of existing regulations dealing with the transportation of danger- ous goods in the lead-up to Lac-Mégantic. [...] The bankruptcy trustee decided to pro- ceed in spite of the shortfall, which is due to three of the companies involved refusing to contribute to the Fund. [...] The statement from Tadros was much blunter than the language of the report itself, specifically its findings on the causes and contributing factors Lac-Mégantic: Loose Ends and Unanswered Questions 15 to the Lac-Mégantic accident.10 Of the 18 such factors listed, only the last three related explicitly to regulatory failure: two of them (17 and 18) pinned the blame on Transport Canada’s Quebec offi [...] The absence of a second crew member to verify the application of hand brakes or to discuss the locomotive oil leak, clearly re- moved a vital safety defence thereby contributing to the accident.11 The same can be said for Transport Canada’s decision to allow MMa to proceed with single-person train operations (sPTO), and its approval of the industry’s 2008 re-write of the Canadian Rail Operating Ru