Bill C-52 (Historical)

Safe and Accountable Rail Act

An Act to amend the Canada Transportation Act and the Railway Safety Act

This enactment amends the Canada Transportation Act to strengthen the liability and compensation regime for federally regulated railway companies by establishing minimum insurance levels for railway companies and a supplementary, shipper-financed compensation fund to cover damages resulting from railway accidents involving the transportation of certain dangerous goods.
Among other things, the amendments
(a) establish minimum insurance levels for freight railway operations based on the type and volume of goods that are transported;
(b) require the holder of a certificate of fitness to maintain the liability insurance coverage required by that Act, and to notify the Canadian Transportation Agency without delay if its insurance coverage is affected;
(c) establish that a railway company is liable, without proof of fault or negligence, subject to certain defences, for losses, damages, costs and expenses resulting from a railway accident involving crude oil or other designated goods, up to the level of the company’s minimum liability insurance coverage; and
(d) establish a compensation fund in the Accounts of Canada, financed by levies on shippers, to cover the losses, damages, costs and expenses resulting from a railway accident involving crude oil or other designated goods that exceed the minimum liability insurance coverage.
The enactment also amends the Railway Safety Act to, among other things,
(a) allow a province or municipality that incurs costs in responding to a fire that it is of the opinion was the result of a railway company’s railway operations to apply to the Canada Transportation Agency to have those costs reimbursed by the railway company;
(b) clarify the Governor in Council’s power to make regulations respecting the restriction and prevention of access to land on which a line of railway is situated, including by means of fences or signs on that land or on land adjoining it;
(c) authorize a railway safety inspector who is satisfied that there is an immediate threat to the safety or security of railway operations to order a person or company to take any measure that the inspector specifies to mitigate the threat;
(d) authorize the Minister to require, by order, a company, road authority or municipality to follow the procedures or take the corrective measures that the Minister specifies if the Minister considers it necessary in the interests of safe railway operations;
(e) provide the Governor in Council with a regulation-making power regarding the submission of information that is relevant to the safety of railway operations by any person, other than the Minister to any person;
(f) authorize the Minister to order a company that is implementing its safety management system in a manner that risks compromising railway safety to take the necessary corrective measures; and
(g) declare that certain regulations and orders that were made under the Railway Act are deemed to have had effect from the day on which they were made under that Act and that those regulations and orders continue to have effect from that day as if they were made under the Railway Safety Act.

Safe and Accountable Rail Act

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this question was partially answered by the parliamentary secretary during his questions and answers. He did mention that as far as the liability levels go, it is something that can be adjusted going forward. As the hon. member knows very well, this legislation proposes the establishment of a special fund that would be there to cover the costs associated with train derailments.

This is a work in progress. This is the second reading of a bill. I am looking forward to input from each side of the House, in debate and at the committee. This is something we can work on together and make better. Things can always be made better.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary for Infrastructure and Communities]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to rise today to speak at second reading of Bill C-52, the safe and accountable rail act. As we know, this bill would amend two pieces of legislation that are important to the protection of our communities, the Railway Safety Act and the Canada Transportation Act.

Canada's economy and the livelihood of people in communities across the country depend on the transportation of goods, including dangerous goods, of course, at times. As the economy grows, so too does the transportation of these dangerous goods.

The bill before us takes important steps to improve the overall safety of the rail system by increasing regulatory oversight, but the reality remains: no matter what actions we take to reduce risks—and we want to take every action we can—we must also be prepared to respond to a catastrophic accident, and this includes being able to pay the costs and compensate for the liabilities that result. This bill would address this element by strengthening accountability.

Municipalities across Canada bear much of the brunt of rail accidents. The bill before us would help respond to those risks. The amendments to the Railway Safety Act contained in this bill would enable municipalities to obtain information to help prepare for effective emergency response. Where there is a serious incident that results in costs for cleanup and repair, the amendments to the Canada Transportation Act contained in this bill would ensure that communities would not bear financial responsibility for such disasters.

Let me first address the matter of emergency response and then move on to the subject of liability and compensation.

Our government has undertaken important measures to improve the ability of first responders and communities to deal with rail emergencies. We need to keep this important dialogue going among shippers, railways, communities, and first responders. Together they can improve planning and operational communications. They can identify best practices for accident protocols in both urban and rural situations.

I commend Transport Canada for establishing an emergency response task force that brings together industry and community stakeholders to examine national needs for emergency response to accidents involving dangerous goods. In this way, we will strengthen the links between communities and industry and identify ways to improve emergency response.

In the consultations on the need for more co-operation and coordination in emergency response, Transport Canada heard from, among others, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs, and the Aboriginal Firefighters Association of Canada. Each of these organizations expressed concerns about the capacity of our communities to deal with rail incidents involving dangerous goods. Each has called for more effective sharing of information to support first responders.

This bill contains provisions to make that happen. It would authorize regulations to require a railway to provide information to municipalities when significant railway operational changes are occurring at that particular location. The bill would also amend the Railway Safety Act to provide new regulation-making powers with respect to a railway safety management system, or SMS. An SMS includes a risk assessment, a list of mitigation measures, and a plan to monitor the effectiveness of these measures. Regulations under the bill before us can require railways to share summaries of these risk assessments with municipalities. These two measures would help establish better communication between railways and the municipalities and would provide first responders with information they require to be fully prepared for emergencies.

I have been talking about the impact on communities of large catastrophic events, but I would also like to observe that the bill before us would remove from provincial and municipal taxpayers the cost of fighting smaller fires that may result from a company's railway operations.

These incidents sometimes happen as a result of railway activities, but because a train moves on before the fire is apparent, it can be difficult to ascribe cause and effect, and hence liability. As a result, the province or the municipality and their taxpayers are sometimes on the hook for the cost of putting out the fire.

This bill would amend the Railway Safety Act to give the Canadian Transportation Agency authority to determine whether a fire was caused by rail operations. If so, the agency could then determine the costs and require the railway to reimburse the province or municipality for these costs. However, despite all these best efforts, railways will never be able to prevent all accidents.

This brings me to a second component of this bill, changes in the liability and compensation regime for rail. Under the current system, a railway company must insure against accidents, but as we have seen with the tragedy at Lac-Mégantic, that insurance coverage was insufficient to cover the resulting liabilities.

In response, the bill before us would legislate the minimum amount of insurance that a railway would be required to hold, depending on the type and volume of dangerous goods the railway carries annually. This approach is objective and would provide greater certainty that there will be sufficient insurance coverage in the event of a railway accident.

Requiring federally regulated railways to carry minimum levels of insurance is a necessary first step for the government to fulfill its promise in the 2013 Speech from the Throne.

The second step is to put in place a regime that shares responsibility between shippers and railways, so that industry is held accountable. Common carrier obligations of the Canada Transportation Act require railways to ship any products offered for transport. This obligation benefits shippers, who can rely on getting their goods to market.

Given this, the bill would clearly establish the roles and responsibilities of shippers and railways in the event of an accident involving crude oil. Railways would be liable without proof of fault or negligence, up to their insurance level, for a crude oil accident.

However, to pay for liabilities that could be in excess of a railway company's mandated insurance level, the bill would require shippers of crude oil to pay into a supplementary compensation fund through a levy. This fund is called the fund for railway accidents involving designated goods. This fund would be used to cover the same liabilities for which railways are held accountable. The fund could later be expanded through regulation to include other dangerous goods.

To finance the fund, these amounts would be collected from shippers for the movement of crude oil and held in a special account in the consolidated revenue fund. Together these measures would ensure adequate resources were available to cover the liabilities associated with a disaster of the magnitude of Lac-Mégantic.

Through this, the bill before us would establish the polluter pays principle for rail transportation. The overall approach is similar to the regime now in place in marine transportation and is in line with actions the government is tabling for the pipeline, offshore drilling, and marine sectors as well.

In this way, we would ensure that victims and taxpayers are not on the hook to pay for the costs of emergency response or other liabilities associated with a tragic accident involving dangerous goods carried by rail. We would be balancing the common carrier obligations with shipper accountability.

These measures would allow liability for potential catastrophic rail accidents to be shared between railways and shippers, and it would result in transportation choices that better reflect true costs and risks.

The bill before us would protect our communities by helping to prevent accidents and by sharing information that improves emergency response, and if there were an incident, this bill would ensure that communities and taxpayers were not the ones who pay for the response, cleanup, and compensation. I truly hope that all members in this House will join me in supporting this bill.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, with Bill C-52, the federal government appears to be suggesting that as it is the regulator it is also the responsible party when it comes to paying for or assuming the responsibility to regulate those who should pay for the result of a disaster or derailment. However, with Lac-Mégantic, the federal government has only paid a small portion of the actual cleanup costs. We are wondering whether this bill will cause the government to rethink its decision not to compensate fully the Government of Quebec for the costs related to the Lac-Mégantic disaster, part of which is because the railroad involved was under-insured.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is absolutely crystal clear that Bill C-52 would improve the safety of railways in our country and improve the safety of communities as well. That is our ultimate goal and intention. Should an accident occur, we would ensure that industry is held accountable where that is appropriate and that there is shared responsibility between the railway and the shipper.

Furthermore, with this bill we would ensure that there would be adequate levels of insurance in place, and in addition to that insurance fund, a supplementary fund for any costs over and above those insurance levels.

Clearly, these are measures which would significantly improve the safety of communities and of railways across the country.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Party caucus sees merit in the legislation. The member is the parliamentary secretary for infrastructure and I want to ask him a question which I posed just a while ago.

We all talk about the importance of our rail lines and certain things that we can do with legislation such as what we are talking about that would improve upon it. However, there is no doubt there is also a role for the government going beyond legislation and investing in our rail lines. This is a fantastic opportunity for the government to look at using infrastructure dollars to improve the quality of our rail lines.

I wonder if the member, given his position, might want to provide some comment regarding the government's attitude toward infrastructure spending on our rail lines.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his support of this important legislation, Bill C-52, and for his interest in the importance of infrastructure across the country.

As the hon. member may be aware, VIA Rail receives a significant taxpayer-supported subsidy to help with its operations. With respect to large railway operations in the country, we certainly expect them to invest in their own operations. That said, under the new building Canada plan, the largest and longest infrastructure investment in the country's history, there are eligible categories for certain short-line rail systems to support, in particular, small communities.

I hope my hon. colleague will help to raise awareness about all the various supports that the federal government provides for the railway system and for infrastructure in our country.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Davenport.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak to the bill, which is strangely entitled “the safe and accountable rail act”. I would question the safe part of it, but it certainly is a way of making railroads more accountable for their actions.

The parliamentary secretary said a moment ago that the prime purpose of the bill is to make Canadians safer. I wonder how a bill that deals primarily with insurance and liability would actually make Canadians safer, unless of course, we are proposing to give over the regulation of the railroads to the insurance companies and make the insurance companies responsible for making sure the railroads are safe. Maybe that is what it is doing, but that is certainly not something I am in favour of.

It is a core responsibility of government to protect its citizens. That can come in any number of ways, but here we are talking about how to protect the citizenry of Canada from the actions of a federally regulated body, namely the railroads.

Protecting our citizens is not something the government should see as an expense on the expense line of the ledger, and yet that is all too often what we hear about. It is actually a duty and it is not something on which we should be looking to cut our expenses or cut taxes and make Canadians less safe. It is not something it should be seeming to do, but we have seen the Conservative government do it time and time again, in food safety, in airline safety, and now in rail safety, where we have a system that clearly did not protect the 47 residents of Lac-Mégantic nor the centre of that town which was destroyed by the rail system, which the current government and the Liberal government before it helped to create.

The bill is a step in the right direction. Clearly, the government seems to have adopted the NDP principle that the polluter should pay and that the person who is responsible for something like this should pay, but we think that this could go a whole lot further. There are flaws in the bill that need addressing, and we will discuss those in committee.

However, the bill would not really do what the government suggests it would do to make the rail system safer. It would make the rail system more financially reliant on the shippers and rail companies themselves and less so on the federal and provincial governments. It is a shifting of responsibilities. It is not a creation of safety per se, unless, as I said earlier, we are expecting the insurance companies to be the ones to manage the safety systems in Canada.

Why is there all this focus on rail safety suddenly in this country?

The focus is caused in part because of Lac-Mégantic. Lac-Mégantic opened our eyes to a number of other issues that face us in the rail safety world.

One was that there is a 500-fold increase in the amount of crude oil that is being transported across the country, and it's crude oil that we have also discovered is not particularly inert. In fact, it is very explosive. Once this oil reaches its containers, it catches fire almost immediately, in some cases with huge and explosive results, as was the case in Lac-Mégantic and a number of other places across this country.

As a result, we have witnessed, with that 500-fold increase in the transportation of these dangerous goods, an alarming increase in the number of incidents involving these dangerous goods. There were 11 in the past two years alone. They were major accidents involving rail and the transportation of crude oil.

Now, I will hear the Liberals yelling that if we are not going to have it in rail, we are going to have it in pipelines. Some of this oil, in fact most of this oil, cannot be transported in pipelines because it is too dangerous. It is too gaseous. It would create too high a pressure inside a pipe. It does the same thing in rail but in a much smaller container. As a result, while rail containers are apparently safe as long as they are standing still and not moving, those rail containers, once they are moving and break, have disastrous consequences.

We also have discovered that the containers the government has been using for some considerable period of time to transport water, milk, and inert substances, but only in the last few years have we been transporting enormous quantities of dangerous goods in these containers, were known in 1989 to be unsafe. That was over 25 years ago and yet the government did not do anything about this until last year.

Last year, the minister announced that 5,000 of the 80,000 of these railcars would be taken off the rail immediately and that the rest would be replaced over the course of three years. Then we discovered that the ones that are replacing them are not safe either. Now we have been told that we are going to replace the railcars over a period of 10 years because the DOT-111s and DOT-1232s are not safe for the transportation of oil.

What do we do in those 10 years? What kind of effective safety are we promoting for the people of Canada if the vehicles that are going by their homes, schools, churches and daycare centres are not safe? That is part of what we are hoping the government will actually consider.

We also discovered as a result of this incident, but also as a result of the good work by the Auditor General, that Transport Canada is not doing a good job in particular with regard to managing the safety management system, SMS, with which the Government of Canada has replaced the direct oversight of the rail system. In theory, where before we had random inspections by government inspectors, now we have a system where the government inspects a safety management system put in place by a railroad for compliance and that the inspection of that system is how the government inspects the railroads. The trouble is the inspection of the system did not happen. As the Auditor General discovered, it was not happening, and in something like only 20% of the cases where transport officials intended to audit a railroad did they actually do it.

The Transportation Safety Board also found that Transport Canada had not been doing a good job with regard to its inspections of the safety management systems of the very railroad that failed, MMA, Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway. We examined the results of the Transport Canada investigation. It found 18 separate causes for the incident, although the minister and the parliamentary secretary said it was just one individual. No, it was not one individual. The Transportation Safety Board said very clearly there were 18 separate causes, some of which were with Transport Canada. It did not audit MMA. Despite knowing that it had serious flaws since 2002, it did not audit it. It did not follow up on the safety deficiencies and did not oversee the organizational and operational changes which MMA made, including the one-man crews, which was part of the reason that this all happened.

We have a government that is responsible for Transport Canada, and in turn Transport Canada, with a 20% cut in rail safety over the past few years, does not have the wherewithal to do all of the inspections that it needs to do of the safety management system. We have a system that is falling apart all around us, caused at first by the Liberals and now continued by the Conservatives, a safety management system that is not keeping Canadians safe.

I come back to the title of the bill, the safe and accountable rail act. Yes, it does something about when there is an accident, but we should not be saying “when there is an accident”. We should be saying that there should be no accidents.

Last week at committee, CN admitted freely that there will be accidents, that there will be derailments. If we are going to admit that there are going to be derailments, how are we going to effectively protect Canadians? These railcars are not going to be replaced for 10 years. In the derailments that have taken place, such as in Lynchburg last year, the railcars carrying dangerous oil were the DOT-1232s, the newer more modern ones, and the train was going 24 miles an hour. In Gogama the train was going 38 and 43 miles and hour. In Mount Carbon, West Virginia, the train was going 33 miles an hour. In Galena, Illinois, the train was going 23 miles an hour. They all exploded. They all broke and exploded.

We have been told by the government that it is going to limit the speed of these vehicles in cities to 40 miles an hour. Clearly, even 23 miles an hour is too fast. If we are going to have derailments, we should at least make sure that the oil stays in the car when it derails. The only way to do that is to slow the trains right down, maybe to the speed that was in place after the Mississauga derailment, which was 15 miles an hour.

I welcome the fact that the government is paying attention to rail safety, but I wish the government would actually do something to make Canadians more safe.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it was interesting that the member made reference to the fact that it was the moving and braking that had the potential to cause issues. Would the member provide some clarification on the issue that VIA Rail will give priority to transportation of large freight trains that carry many of these dangerous goods to the degree in which VIA Rail trains pull to the side and allow the freight train to go through? My understanding is the New Democrats are advocating that VIA Rail should be given priority. If that is the case, we would see more of these trains carrying oil tanker cars having to do more braking and shifting of speeds and so forth.

Which system would be better for the safety of Canadians? Should VIA Rail continue to allow our freight trains to have the priority of going through? Alternatively, should it be reversed, where VIA Rail is given priority to go through and the freight trains would be expected to pull to the side?

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that is a pretty weak argument in favour of pipelines. If the Liberals are trying to suggest that VIA Rail is the cause of derailments, we are not here to talk about that. We are here to talk about whether the equipment that is being used and the manner in which it is being used is safe for Canadians. It is my belief that currently it is not safe. To throw up smokescreens is not helpful to this debate.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague has quite a lot of knowledge and understanding of the whole issue of our rail system in Canada. He represents an area just to the north of my own in the city of Toronto. We are right in the middle of a large transportation hub through which much of the dangerous goods that traverse the country pass.

Could the member speak a bit to the issue of emerging and growing cities and communities around rail corridors, and what particular issues occur when we have more and more people living right next to rail corridors?

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, clearly my riding is one of those, like that of the member for Davenport, that has a very busy rail corridor running through it. That corridor is carrying DOT-111 and DOT-1232 cars full of very dangerous oil at reasonably high speeds. The residents in my riding and those in Davenport are all worried that the greater increase in numbers of these vehicles is exposing them to a greater risk.

The minister demanded that these rail companies investigate the possibility of diverting these cars around major cities as is done in the U.S. Unfortunately, Transport Canada refused to share those risk assessments with either the public or the parliamentary committee. Therefore, we are in the dark as to what risk these railroads and these speeds pose to the individuals who live along rail corridors and who live in my riding of York South—Weston and in the member's riding of Davenport.

[Marc-André Morin, NDP, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to know what my colleague thinks about the state of the tracks throughout the railway system.

Last summer I was at a railway crossing along the trans-Canada railway between La Tuque and Senneterre in the town of Parent. Every time an axle passed over a particular spot, the rails bent about an inch. Then, the train passed over a wooden bridge that is about 75 years old.

If our tracks are maintained according to the same standards used in Siberia, I am wondering whether we actually have any kind of safety in transportation.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am aware of the system in Canada of railroads being allowed to let their rails deteriorate as long as they go slower along those rails. In those circumstances, individuals who live nearby are subjected to much slower trains taking much longer to go through and, therefore, making the rail crossings more dangerous. Those individuals are also subject to the notion that these rails are not particularly safe.

It all comes back to the notion of how Transport Canada is inspecting and managing the safety of the rail system in Canada.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-52, An Act to amend the Canada Transportation Act and the Railway Safety Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in this place on behalf of the good people of Davenport in the great city of Toronto to debate a very important bill for the constituents in my riding of Davenport, and that is the bill to amend the Canada Transportation Act and the Railway Safety Act.

What we are talking about here is rail safety. I would like to let people who are watching know that in communities in Toronto, including the community I represent, and in fact, I myself live very close to a major rail artery, every day dangerous goods are carried through. The rail line sort of bisects the city of Toronto, the biggest city in the country. The train that ultimately exploded and led to the tragic events in Lac-Mégantic actually traversed right through the city of Toronto.

For many people that is a staggering realization, because there are thousands upon thousands of people who live literally metres away from the rail line. For them, the debate we are having is not just a theoretical conversation. It is not just about what happens somewhere else. It is about the very communities in which they live.

It is also important to note while we are debating this that in cities like Toronto which have rail lines criss-crossing and intersecting large areas of residential neighbourhoods, when the rail lines were first put in, many of those communities were not there. They were industrial areas, but development has changed the face of cities like Toronto and what we are seeing now are residential communities very close to rail lines.

For the people I represent what is in those tankers is very important. How we ensure the safe transport of what is in those tankers is very important to my community and therefore this debate is important.

As many of my esteemed colleagues in the NDP have said today, we are in favour of the bill, but support for the bill underlines some very serious concerns that we have around rail safety in the country. It is not just the NDP that has concerns about rail safety. It is not just members of my community in Davenport that have concerns about rail safety. The Auditor General also has concerns about rail safety.

I know the government always welcomes the views and opinions of the NDP here in the House, but every once in a while it is nice to quote third parties. In this case, I will read a bit of the Auditor General's 2014 report on Transport Canada's oversight of rail safety, because it is the oversight of rail safety, the implementing of a system of safety that the people in my community are looking to the government to achieve. While we support the measures that are in the bill, it does not go any distance toward ameliorating the concerns in my community around rail safety.

The report from the Auditor General really underlines and gives credence to the concerns of the people in Davenport. The report states:

Despite the fact that federal railways were required 12 years ago to implement safety management systems for managing their safety risks and complying with safety requirements, Transport Canada has yet to establish an audit approach that provides a minimum level of assurance that federal railways have done so. While it has done a few audits of those systems most of the audits it did were too narrowly focused and provided assurance on only a few aspects of SMSs [safety management systems]. At the rate at which the Department is conducting focused audits, it will take many years to audit all the key components of SMS regulations, including key safety systems of each of the 31 federal railways.

That is just not enough for the people of Toronto. That is not enough for people of my community of Davenport. This does not cut it. It is going to take years for Transport Canada to conduct the audits. By the time it has finished conducting those audits, hopefully the Conservative government will be long gone and we will have new regulations and new standards for rail safety in this country.

The guidance and tools provided to inspectors for assessing federal railway safety management systems are missing many key elements. That is not us saying this. That is the Auditor General saying this. For example, they contain few requirements to help inspectors plan, conduct and conclude on audits and inspections, and for following up on findings. This makes it difficult for Transport Canada to ensure that its inspections and audits are effective in determining whether railways are taking corrective actions where necessary.

Lastly, Transport Canada does not have a quality assurance plan to continuously improve its oversight of rail safety. Is it any wonder that Canadians from coast to coast to coast are concerned about rail safety? They may be, as we are, happy that there are steps being taken around insurance and compensation, but we need to talk about preventing accidents as well as who pays for them when they happen.

This is not just a case of red tape versus yellow tape. This is not a question of onerous regulations versus caution tape that we use to cordon off accident sites. This should be a matter of course.

We are transporting dangerous goods in record quantities and record frequencies today. Not only are our regulations not keeping pace with the changes, the government has diminished and stripped away oversight and allowed companies to do the oversight themselves. The Auditor General's report shows that Transport Canada does not have the tools to even oversee the oversight that the companies are charged with implementing.

Most fair-minded people would accept that when rail companies are transporting dangerous goods through municipalities, the municipalities have a right know what is being brought through their cities, not three months later, but before it happens. That is a fair expectation that most people would have, yet we have not had any of that conversation happen among Conservatives.

I know that in the Province of Ontario, the Ontario NDP has pushed for “right to know” legislation that would enable municipalities to know what was coming through their cities and towns before it came through. This would allow emergency response units and fire crews to at least be properly on guard. It would also allow residents to know what the risks are of what is passing right through their backyards. That is, in fact, literally what happens in Toronto and in my community. It is fair for Canadians to want to know that stuff.

When we look at the Auditor General's report, we understand the enormity of the deficit in rail safety in this country. It also underscores a massive policy failure with regard to the Conservative government and its unwillingness to nurture the clean energy economy in Canada. The Conservatives are leaving $5 trillion of economic activity in clean energy technology on the table while they continually pump out and transport oil products that clearly do not come with the oversight and safety requirements that they need.

Things like “right to know” legislation are vital for cities like Toronto, where we have neighbourhoods upon neighbourhoods growing and developing right along the rail line. This is not 1920. This is 2015, and we need to pull these regulations and safety requirements up to modern standards.