Mr. Speaker, the events in Lac-Mégantic more than 18 months ago have caused the Canadian public to wonder just how safe our railroads are. Many communities like mine in York South—Weston grew up around railroads, as railroads were a key driver of economic growth for them. Alas, that economic driver has long since left my community, but the railroad tracks remain and are perilously close to houses, schools, daycare centres, seniors' facilities, and other sensitive locations throughout the riding and the whole of the city of Toronto.
Railroads began shipping crude oil in quantity in 2009 and have increased that amount more than five hundredfold since then. This means that trains with several hundred carloads of crude oil whiz through our neighbourhoods several times each day. Until the Lac-Mégantic accident, people did not pay much attention to this. We thought of crude oil as the sticky tar we saw on television on beaches after Exxon Valdez or the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Who knew it was more like gasoline and that the effects of an accident could be so deadly?
When we learned at committee that even carloads travelling as slowly as 20 kilometres an hour ruptured and exploded at Lac-Mégantic, I demanded action from the government. The scathing report of the Transportation Safety Board found no one individual at fault but 18 different causes, including massive failure by Transport Canada, which reports to the Minister of Transport.
The Transportation Safety Board recommended that alternative speeds and routes be explored to move trains around major cities. This was one of many recommendations. This is done routinely in U.S. cities like Washington and New York.
The government's response was to lower speeds to 60 kilometres per hour in cities and to demand that the railroads do risk assessments and analyses of alternative routes to be provided to Transport Canada.
The results of those government-demanded risk assessments and route analyses were provided to Transport Canada last fall. At committee I asked Transport Canada to provide a copy of those assessments to the committee as part of our study of the transportation of dangerous goods. The City of Toronto also requested copies of those reports. Imagine my surprise when Transport Canada replied to the committee that it would not release the risk assessments, that they are somehow the property of the railroads and are somehow protected, confidential information.
These reports and assessments were demanded of the railroads by the government as a necessary part of the determination of the level of risk the railroads were exposing populations to. The government can and should treat these reports as publicly available information and should have clearly indicated this to the railroads when these were demanded. To suggest now that residents of my riding or any riding through which a railroad runs cannot know the potential risk of the railroad to them, based on speed, routing, and the use of rail cars with a long history of rupture, is an affront and unacceptable situation.
To suggest, as the parliamentary secretary has done, that Transport Canada will only share notices and orders issued to the railroads with municipalities does not deal at all with the need for individuals and municipalities to know specifically what risk there is, what mitigation measures are available, such as rerouting and speed reduction, and any other information that may be disclosed by a risk assessment.
Residents of York South--Weston and beyond have learned that Transport Canada has not been a very good steward of the safety of Canadians. The Transportation Safety Board and the Auditor General of Canada were highly critical of the actions of Transport Canada. We deserve to see the evidence, and until it has proven itself worthy of our trust, we need to see these risk assessments.