The decision was certainly a strategic one for a lot of reasons. Most saliently, the community observed the growth in rail traffic in the area due to, obviously, growing and industrial development. We also saw interest groups beyond other first nations in the region starting to voice their concern.
Kitselas is engaged on a bunch of these projects. A lot of them have rail components, so we've gotten to know them throughout the consultations around these projects. We began to grow frustrated at the fact that these significant aspects were not being assessed or incorporated into federal or provincial assessments.
The way we saw it, the cumulative growth in traffic could only lead to a greater probability of disasters. We knew that quantitative risk assessments were legally required for large-scale industrial projects. We had seen that shipping assessments were undertaken for marine shipping. TERMPOL studies had gone from a sort of honorary system to a standard expectation.
We asked ourselves why this wasn't similarly done for incoming cargo on rail. That fact, in conjunction with the recommendations from Dr. Shandro's report, really led us to do the study.