Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Bonne après-midi. Thank you for this opportunity.
Before I share our thoughts on Bill C-52, I'd like to tell you a bit about our organization.
Safe Rail Communities was created in the wake of the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster, which occurred in the early hours of July 6, 2013. Forty-seven people died a violent death that night. Why? They were too close to a rail line where crude oil tank cars derailed and exploded.
My neighbours and I live within metres of a rail line in the west end of Toronto in an area called The Junction. Our riding is bordered on three sides by rail. Trains are a part of our daily life. Their low rumble is our constant soundtrack. When we learned that the same lethal tank cars that derailed in Lac-Mégantic first travelled past the windows of our children's bedrooms as they slept, we realized that we needed to act.
We researched derailments and plotted their steady rise. We learned that tank cars carrying the same type of volatile crude oil that exploded in Lac-Mégantic were travelling past our homes in never before seen numbers. In 2014 it was 280 times the number of cars that travelled in 2009.
In March of 2014 Safe Rail Communities was born. We are a group of ordinary citizens who are concerned about dangerous goods being transported by rail. Our goal is to raise awareness on this issue and to press government and industry to take meaningful action. We share our knowledge and resources with others across Canada who live close to rail lines. We take every opportunity to publicly document our recommendations on this issue, which is why today I am pleased to share with you our group's thoughts on Bill C-52.
Although it has some promising elements, we feel that Bill C-52 could go further to ensure safety and accountability. Before I discuss what Safe Rail Communities would like to see added to Bill C-52, I would like to discuss six concerns that our group has identified within the current legislation.
Our first concern relates to liability insurance. Bill C-52 sets a minimum insurance requirement of $1 billion for class 1 railways, but CN and CP already carry at least $1 billion in liability insurance without a law telling them to do so. An accident on the scale of Lac-Mégantic would require liability insurance about six times this amount. This estimate of $6 billion U.S. for a high-consequence event comes from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration in its draft regulatory impact analysis.
Our group would instead recommend that class1 railways carry unlimited liability to cover the full cost of a rail accident. This would put the focus squarely on prevention. It also fits with the polluter pays principle, which is the supposed basis for Bill C-52.
Our second concern with the bill concerns how this minimum insurance coverage is determined. Right now the amount of insurance needed is dictated by the total tonnage the railway carries in a year. However, the risk of accident is always in relation to a single event. This means a railway carrying only a few large loads a year could have coverage that is drastically insufficient to cover the damage those few large loads could cause.
Our third concern is who has a say in deciding liability. Railways can avoid liability if they can establish, according to Bill C-52, that any other defence set out in the regulations applies. The federal cabinet is given power to decide these regulations. The cabinet's future decisions about what defences will be available to railways adds uncertainty to this legislation. It also provides the possibility of decisions that could undermine the effectiveness of Bill C-52.
Our fourth concern with the bill is that it restricts the ability to sue for environmental damages to the government. This means members of the public, whether an individual or group, will not be able to sue for environmental damages. Our concern is that even though both the federal and provincial governments have had the ability to sue for environmental damages for more than a decade, they have not done so. We wonder who will hold railways responsible for the damage they do to the environment.
The fifth point we'd like to make concerns the compensation fund that the bill proposes. Bill C-52 imposes a levy on the companies that ship dangerous goods by rail. The levies collected will be used to create a $250 million compensation fund. But again, $250 million is relatively small compared to the estimated cost of $6 billion U.S. needed to compensate a high-consequence event. Moreover, there is likely no access to the compensation fund for environmental damages because of the priority given to other types of damages.
Our sixth and last point concerns railway safety inspectors. Bill C-52 authorizes inspectors to identify immediate risks and request any measure that would mitigate risk. We find this amendment to the Railway Safety Act unclear. We would like to see included in the bill an inspection schedule with specific criteria to determine risk and with specific corrective action.
These six deficiencies of Bill C-52 that I've just outlined for you are of great concern to us. In our view, a preventative approach that highlights meaningful action should be the focus of legislation covering railway safety and the transportation of dangerous goods. Prevention should be paramount, then mitigation.
I'd now like to share what we feel should be included in any legislation that addresses safe and accountable railways. First, there should be increased government regulation and enforcement. The rail disaster in Lac-Mégantic and subsequent fiery derailments have shown that the current safety management system, with its reliance on self-regulation, is inadequate.
Secondly, existing rail safety technologies such as positive train control, automated railcar monitoring, and automated track inspection should be implemented with robust standards.
Third, first responders should receive current information about any dangerous good travelling through their communities. In a rail disaster precious time is wasted confirming train manifests.
Our fourth recommendation also touches on the matter of transparency. Last summer's Bill C-31 included the repeal of sections of both the Railway Safety Act and the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act. These sections provided the opportunity for Canadians and interested groups to review and comment on proposed regulation at the last stages of the regulation-making process. These sections should be reinstated.
Our fifth point is that crude oil can and should be stabilized and/or treated at the point of departure to decrease its volatility.
Our sixth point is that we would like to see effective tank car standards for crude oil. The current standard is the CPC-1232, which has been shown in the Lynchburg and Gogama derailments to be inadequate.
Finally, we believe that the speed of trains carrying dangerous goods should be monitored and enforced.
The safe transport by rail of dangerous goods, including crude oil, involves many factors, such as track condition, volatility, tank car integrity, and speed.