Debates of March 31st, 2015

Safe and Accountable Rail Act

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

When this matter was last before the House, the hon. member for Beaches—East York had three minutes remaining in his presentation.

The hon. member for Beaches—East York.

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, increasingly, and I mean daily, the railways across the country are operating as virtual pipelines.

From virtually none in 2008, the number of barrels of oil moving across the country, through towns and cities, has grown exponentially. There were 200,000 barrels of oil shipped per day in 2013. This year an estimated 1 million barrels per day and next year an anticipated 1.4 million barrels will move through towns and cities, through farmland, by lakes and across rivers.

When this began, we had one inspector for every fourteen tanker cars of oil. As of last year, there was one inspector for every four thousand tanker cars of oil.

Since the devastation of the Lac-Mégantic derailment, including the deaths of 47 people, Transport Canada has hired just one additional inspector. That is over a period of two years. This is not what concern for public safety looks like. It is quite the opposite. It is a demonstration of profound disregard for what has transpired, for the risks that confront us daily and increasingly, and for the prospects of a more and ever-greater catastrophe as trains full of oil roll through densely populated urban Canada with increasing frequency.

While the bill, by way of establishing minimum insurance levels and a pooled disaster relief fund, and by increasing the authority of rail safety inspectors, is a small step forward, we support the bill because we believe it is essential to immediately improve the liability and accountability regime of Canada's railways. In the aftermath of Lac-Mégantic, the Government of Quebec, and by extension the public of Quebec, has been left with a liability of close to a half a billion dollars.

The bill does not nearly come close to acknowledging the nature of the problem, the urgency posed by the risks, the enormity of the potential disaster, the concerns of Canadians and, most critically, it fails to acknowledge the government's unequivocal responsibility for ensuring the safety of the Canadian public.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with intent to the member opposite's expressed support on behalf of the New Democrats, the official opposition, for the swift passage of Bill C-52, and I welcome that.

I know the opposition House leader is close at hand. Will the member ask his House leader to let this bill pass as quickly as possible rather than talk the clock out on it? I know it is in the interest of everyone that we move this swiftly, at least to committee for the next stage.

Will the member help secure a swift passage of the bill so we can move on to studying it at committee?

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, most assuredly the NDP is in favour of swift action and response to the frequency of train derailments, the concerns of Canadians for their safety and the safety of others, and the very real potential of looming disasters of derailments in the context of densely populated urban areas across the country.

It is the government that is playing catchup on this issue. The bill comes forward fully two years after the Lac-Mégantic disaster. There is no excuse for the government to have delayed the introduction of a bill like this to deal with the accountability issues for such a long period of time.

I am happy to assure the House and the Canadian public that the NDP will ensure that we move swiftly to get the right bill put through the House and ultimately passed by the House.

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

Mr. Speaker, would the member comment on the fact that in the last two years there have been 11 major derailments involving the transportation of oil in this country and in the United States? By some fateful luck, the only one that involved a loss of life was the tragic one at Lac-Mégantic. Clearly that is not a record that any government should be proud of, and I do not think the government should be proud of its actions to date on trying to keep Canada safe.

The bill would raise the amount of insurance, but ought we not protect the public rather than just insure the railroads?

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I know my colleague is a tremendous advocate in the west end of Toronto for rail safety on behalf of not only his constituents but all Canadians. He raises a critically important point about the frequency of derailments that we are witnessing across this country. I would remind the House that just last month there were three derailments and, thankfully, those derailments took place in relatively remote parts of the country.

However, as we see a million barrels of oil rolling through cities and towns across this country daily, we face the very real and imminent possibility of enormous catastrophes. There are, quite literally, tens of thousands of Canadians who live within a stone's throw of railway tracks in some of the largest cities. It is not, I should say, just about the transportation of oil by rail, it is also about all dangerous goods and the catastrophic effects of those dangerous goods spilling in some very densely populated cities across this country.

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, legislation is definitely extremely important. Without legislation, we have no laws to implement. Parliament has to legislate, but the government has a fundamental role to play when it comes to implementing the law. It has to ensure that the law is enforced.

In its last number of budgets, the government allocated far fewer resources to inspection and enforcement at Transport Canada. As my colleague said, since the Lac-Mégantic tragedy, only one extra inspector has been hired. There is a serious problem regarding not only the legislation, but also its implementation.

I would like my colleague to elaborate a bit more on the government's true willingness to ensure rail safety for Canadians.

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague raises an excellent point, that laws and regulations are but paper in the absence of their implementation.

We have seen from the government no sense of urgency in responding to derailments across this country. The minister talks in the House about working diligently to deal with these issues and yet we have waited two years beyond the disaster at Lac-Mégantic for this bill, which is only a very partial step in a response to what we are seeing across the country. The most important step is the step that puts rail safety inspectors on the job, implementing the laws of this country, ensuring that the Canadian public is safe, and preventing further disasters and derailments across this country.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened closely to my colleague's speech. I would like his thoughts on what the parliamentary secretary had to say.

He thinks that we should limit our debates in the House in order to speed up a process that has been dragging on for two years already. If there is one thing I have heard myself say a number of times in the House, it is, “We will support this bill at second reading because it is a step in the right direction.”

I have a simple question. With this bill, could the government not do more than just take a step in the right direction and actually solve this ongoing problem?

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the government is too easily satisfied with its very small steps. What the derailments and the government's lack of action on the issue raise for us is a system of rail safety that has been broken since the Liberals brought in the Rail Safety Act in 1999 where direct federal oversight over public safety with respect to railways was given over to a safety management system allowing the opportunity for railway companies to self-audit and self-manage the safety of Canadians. That is an abdication of the most fundamental responsibility that a government has, which is to protect the safety of Canadians.

The issue of safety has been raised now for years. In 2007 the Canada Safety Council sounded the alarm in a report about the deregulation of Canada's rail system. Here we are now in 2015 and the government chooses to take a very small step in the right direction on the issue.

The purpose of this debate in the House is to raise for the government and for all Canadians the broader issues about a rail safety system that is fundamentally broken and about the government's fundamental abdication of its most important responsibility, which is the safety of Canadians. There is a lot at risk here as we have seen from the frequency of derailments and in particular the Lac-Mégantic disaster.

The New Democratic Party will continue to talk about these issues in the House until the government changes its views on the deregulation of rail safety in the country, or until we replace the government in the House later this year.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join the debate here today on Bill C-52, the safe and accountable rail act. The tragic July 2013 derailment in Lac-Mégantic was an unprecedented event that I know none of us will forget.

Our government's response to the tragedy has three fundamental components: accident prevention, preparedness and response, and accountability. Under the first two pillars, our government has introduced a number of measures to address issues related to rail safety and the transportation of dangerous goods. Bill C-52 goes further to address these issues.

Today I would like to speak to the third pillar, accountability, and specifically the liability and compensation regime for rail. The Lac-Mégantic tragedy highlighted the need to further strengthen the rail regime to make sure that if an accident does occur, there are sufficient resources to compensate victims, pay for cleanup and protect Canadian taxpayers.

To do this, our government undertook a comprehensive review of the liability and compensation regime for rail. As part of this review, Transport Canada did in-depth research and analysis and consulted subject matter experts. The department also undertook a two-phase consultation process in which a wide range of stakeholders, including railways, shippers, provinces and communities, shared their views and technical information. All of the input and analysis generated during the review has informed the regime changes put forward in the bill.

Today, I would like to outline how Bill C-52 improves upon the current liability and compensation regime for rail and how these changes would benefit Canadians. Liability and compensation for railway accidents is determined through the courts based on fault or negligence. Under the current regime, the Canada Transportation Act and the Railway Third Party Liability Insurance Coverage Regulations require that a railway company carry adequate third party liability insurance coverage as a condition of receiving a certificate of fitness allowing it to operate.

The Canadian Transportation Agency determines what constitutes adequate insurance on a case-by-case basis. This is based on an assessment of risks associated with the railway's operation. It also makes a comparison with insurance held by railways with similar operations and with industry practices.

Under the Canada Transportation Act, it is up to the railway company to notify the agency in writing whenever it cancels or alters its third party liability insurance coverage, or whenever a change in operations may mean that its coverage is no longer adequate. If the agency determines that a railway's third party liability insurance is no longer adequate, it may suspend or cancel the railway's certificate of fitness.

The Transportation Safety Board's report on the Lac-Mégantic derailment indicated that the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway did not notify the agency of certain significant operational changes, namely its increased transportation of crude oil.

Following the Lac-Mégantic tragedy, it also became clear that the $25 million in insurance held by the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway would be insufficient to cover the scope or damage from this unprecedented and catastrophic accident.

In the 2013 Speech from the Throne, our government committed to ensuring that railways carry more insurance. Bill C-52 will implement four levels of mandatory minimum insurance requirements for railways. Under this new regime, the Canadian Transportation Agency will assign railways to a minimum insurance level based on specific criteria focused on the type and volume of dangerous goods hauled.

Railways that carry little or no dangerous goods will be required to hold $25 million in insurance. For railways carrying higher amounts of dangerous goods, there will be an initial requirement to hold either $50 million or $125 million in insurance, depending on the type and volume of dangerous goods carried. One year later, those requirements will double to $100 million and $250 million respectively. This phase-in will provide short line railways with sufficient time to adapt to these new requirements.

Finally, railways that carry substantial amounts of specified dangerous goods, namely class 1 railways, CN and CP, will be required to hold $1 billion in insurance. A railway's third party insurance will have to cover specific risks, including bodily injury or death, property damage and risks associated with pollution.

These new insurance requirements will ensure that the risk associated with a railway's operation is assessed objectively using specific criteria and that a railway's third party liability insurance is aligned with that risk. These requirements will also ensure that there will be sufficient insurance to cover the full cost of the vast majority of potential accidents.

As it stands in the current regime, there are no additional sources of funds to turn to in the event of a catastrophic incident other than the public purse. Often the process for addressing claims in such cases can be lengthy and costly, with delayed and uncertain outcomes for victims.

Bill C-52 ensures that the liability and compensation regime for rail will be able to address a catastrophic incident without burdening the taxpayers. It does so by creating a modernized two-tier regime to cover the cost of accidents involving crude oil, like the one experienced in Lac-Mégantic. This new regime will extend responsibility for compensation beyond railways to include shippers as well. It will also define the liability of railways in order to provide claimants with greater certainty of compensation.

In the case of a rail accident involving crude oil, a federally regulated railway will automatically be held liable without the need to prove fault or negligence. Railways' liability would be capped at their minimum mandatory insurance level and they will have the ability to seek financial redress from at-fault parties through the courts.

Federally regulated railways will also be held liable for crude oil accidents involving any provincially regulated railways operating on their tracks. This will ensure that all railway accidents involving crude oil that occur on federal track are covered through the new regime.

To ensure that liability is shared as designed in the new regime, the bill makes changes to section 137 of the Canada Transportation Act to clarify that railways will not be able to impose their third party liabilities on shippers, for example, through a tariff. Railway insurance will be the payer of first resort, and as I mentioned, would be sufficient to cover the cost of most rail accidents. However, should the damage from a rail accident involving crude oil exceed the railway's insurance level, the new shipper-financed compensation fund would cover remaining costs.

Shippers are part of the polluter pays equation, requiring them to share in the liabilities associated with the transport of their goods, and reflects the fact that the qualities of their product contribute to the risks and costs associated with an accident.

The proposed fund will be financed through a levy on shippers of crude oil. This levy will be set at $1.65 per tonne of oil in the first year. Following this, it will be adjusted annually for inflation based on the consumer price index.

The levy will be collected by federally regulated railways, remitted to the government and deposited in a special account in the consolidated revenue fund. Railways will be required to keep records on the collection of levies.

The Minister of Transport will have the authority to turn the levy off once it has been capitalized sufficiently. We are targeting an amount of $250 million, which we expect will be collected in approximately five years. This estimate is based on a reasonable projection of oil-by-rail traffic growth in the coming years. The minister may then turn the levy on again as necessary.

The shipper-financed fund will be managed by an administrator appointed by the Governor in Council. The administrator will be responsible for establishing and paying out claims once the railway's liability limit is reached.

To ensure transparency, the administrator will report to Parliament, through the Minister of Transport, on the fund's management. There must also be a special examination of the fund at least once every five years.

In the unlikely event of damages from a rail accident exceeding both the railway's insurance and the amount being held in the supplementary compensation fund, the federal government's consolidated revenue fund will cover the remaining costs. The government will then be reimbursed through the levy. A special levy could even be imposed on federally regulated railways in order to accelerate repayment of the amount charged to the consolidated revenue fund.

The two-tier regime for crude oil accidents will provide broad coverage of the cost of crude oil accidents. It will cover all actual loss or damage incurred as well as costs incurred by the federal or provincial crown in responding to the accident. The crown may also seek compensation for the impairment of the non-use value of public resources.

Oil is being transported in growing volumes over long distances across our country and we know that accidents involving crude oil can cause significant harm to people, property and the environment. Creating this second tier of compensation for large-scale accidents involving crude oil is another way that we are adapting to this phenomenon, recognizing the valid concerns of Canadians about the movement of oil by rail.

Enhancing compensation for rail accidents involving crude oil will complement efforts we have taken recently to strengthen rail safety and the transportation of dangerous goods, for example, by improving tank car standards. However, recognizing that crude is not the only product that could cause significant damage if involved in a rail accident, there is flexibility in this regime to include by regulation other dangerous goods in the future. The two-tier approach brought forward in Bill C-52 will ensure that enough resources will be available to cover all damages stemming from a rail accident. The increased insurance requirements will hold railways accountable and provide sufficient compensation for the majority of potential accidents. The supplementary fund will provide an additional source of compensation for crude oil accidents and share liability more broadly with shippers.

Robust oversight and enforcement mechanisms are key to ensuring that the strengthened liability and compensation regime functions as intended. The Transportation Safety Board found that the regulatory requirements in place at the time of the Lac-Mégantic derailment did not ensure that an increase in operational risk was reflected in railways' insurance coverage. Therefore, this bill also establishes more robust oversight and enforcement mechanisms to ensure that railways comply with the requirements of the new regime. Railways will continue to be obligated to notify the agency of any changes to their operation that may affect their insurance coverage. Under the new regime, however, the agency is empowered to make inquiries to determine compliance and must suspend or cancel the certificate of fitness of a railway that fails to maintain the minimum mandatory level of insurance.

We have also introduced administrative monetary penalties, AMPs, as an additional means of ensuring compliance. The agency may apply AMPs up to $100,000 to a railway that fails to maintain the correct amount of insurance, or fails to notify the agency of a change affecting its insurance coverage. An AMP of up to $100,000 per violation would also ensure the compliance of railways for collecting and remitting the shipper levies and for keeping records concerning the levies. The Minister of Transport may designate a person to be responsible for assessing compliance and applying these penalties.

Finally, the agency will have clear authority to make regulations concerning the information it needs to verify compliance.

These strong enforcement mechanisms support greater accountability and are critical to ensuring the benefits of the strengthened liability and compensation regime are realized.

Another advantage of the changes brought forward under Bill C-52 is that they bring the liability and compensation regime for rail into step with regimes in other modes and sectors. The polluter pays principle, which is the concept that those responsible for causing damage as a result of their operations should pay for their liabilities, guides the proposed changes to the regime for rail. It is also at the heart of the regimes for marine tankers, the nuclear sector, pipelines, and offshore oil and gas.

There are particularly strong links between the proposed regime for rail and the marine tanker regime, both of which have two tiers: an insurance tier and an industry-financed fund. They share responsibility between different participants in the supply chain. The administration of the rail regime's shipper-financed fund is also modelled on that of the marine regime's ship-source oil pollution fund.

More important, the regime for accidents involving crude oil, including a shipper-financed fund, reflects our government's responsible resource development agenda.

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of the measures put forward in Bill C-52. In addition to further improving rail safety and the transportation of dangerous goods in Canada, this legislation addresses gaps in the liability and compensation regime for rail that were brought to light following the Lac-Mégantic tragedy.

The primary goal of the bill's strengthened liability and compensation regime for rail is to make sure that in the future, should a rail accident occur, victims will be fully compensated and the environment will be remediated. It does this by holding railways and shippers accountable, not by burdening the taxpayer.

I therefore hope that all of my colleagues will join me in supporting the safe and accountable rail act, and help pass it quickly.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to ask my colleague a question about railway safety. My riding is actually very close to Lac-Mégantic, or just over an hour from the area that was severely affected by a rail disaster, as all my colleagues know.

I am pleased to see that some measures might reassure residents and allay their fears. What I hear most from the people living in the Eastern Townships and Lac-Mégantic is that they want the companies responsible for the spills or railway accidents to also be responsible for the costs resulting from a disaster. These accidents are unfortunate and there will probably be more of them because the number of cars transporting oil is increasing and the quality of the infrastructure seems to be decreasing. Therefore, these disasters could well happen again, as we have seen in northern Ontario.

Could the government member reassure the people of Lac-Mégantic and the Eastern Townships about corporate responsibility in the event of a spill that causes irreparable damage?

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague opposite who has been working obviously on matters related to the Sherbrooke Airport as well, in co-operation with the government. We appreciate his contributions in this House.

I want to assure the member opposite that with this bill the government not only is addressing the question of the liability of federally regulated railway companies, but it is also ensuring that the liability regime is shared, in the case of accidents involving crude by rail, to include the shippers, by a new fund, a new levy that would establish the supplementary fund such that when railway companies' insurance level has been maxed out, shippers then will participate additionally in any charges that may result. It might be compensation for victims. It might be for remediation of the environment. It might be the costs of municipal forces, such as firefighters who come to fight a fire related to an accident.

There are a number of charges laid out in the bill. I hope that the member will support it.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, in incident after incident, particularly in my province of Alberta, the determination by the Transportation Safety Board has been that despite inspections by the government and despite surveillance by the industry saying that the traffic should continue and the rails were safe, time after time, after the fact, after serious incidents, the Transportation Safety Board has determined that the company has replaced rail with defective rail, and it has serious concerns that defective rail simply is not being identified.

Could the member please advise us if he thinks that, given the exponential increase in seriously dangerous rail traffic, maybe it is time to restore ourselves back to a more intensified government surveillance system?

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to address the exponential growth in oil traffic that is being talked about here. We heard at the standing committee on transport, in our recent study, that oil by rail actually went down by a significant amount last year, relative to 2013. There were some 35,000 fewer carloads, I believe, in 2014. That is not to say that with the pickup in the economy oil by rail could not potentially go up again. That is why we want to provide a safe regime, which includes liability and compensation.

The government is obviously sensitive both to the safety management systems functioning properly, with the creation of a safety culture for the federally regulated railway company and how it enforces its own practices, and to oversight. It has increased the number of railway safety inspectors by 10%. The number of transportation of goods inspectors is up by about 85%.

The government has taken the recommendations of both the Auditor General and the Transportation Safety Board very seriously and is acting on them to ensure that we are fulfilling our responsibility.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Mr. Speaker, in the parliamentary secretary's speech, he talked about some of the consultations being held as part of the bill, including a process of a couple of stages. I wonder if he could comment on some of the things we heard, as part of that consultation, from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and from the provincial governments about their support for this.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Tobique—Mactaquac for his intervention and for his strong work on this and a number of important matters the government is engaged in.

We conducted some exhaustive consultations. It was the two-step process the member alluded to and that I talked about in my speech. We were not only consulting with railway companies and shippers, which could be affected by a new liability and compensation regime that is jointly shared by both, but were seeking important information, technical information, and input from municipalities and other stakeholders. Those consultations led to the measures contained in this particular bill.

First of all, we are keeping our commitment that the liability regime should be shared. It is not just railway companies that would be required to be liable. The liability would be shared with shippers.

There is also the establishment of a new fund and in how the levy would be done to ensure that the taxpayers would not be burdened by the cost of either the cleanup or charges to victims. I mentioned earlier first responders and firefighters who attend to a fire. The costs they incur in their cleanup would be covered. Those claims would be fully compensated by the shippers and the railway companies.

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

Mr. Speaker, one of the things that troubles me is the limit on liability. The Lac-Mégantic disaster resulted in about $400 million worth of liability, of which $25 million was covered by insurance. There is $375 million, so far, that we know of, of expense to the taxpayer.

Even if this fund were fully implemented, that would still leave $125 million missing. That is funnily close to the amount the Province of Quebec has been asked to pay, by the Government of Canada, for the failure of a federally regulated system, and of the owners of the vehicles, which is a federally regulated railroad, to contain the vehicles in Lac-Mégantic.

Would the provinces and municipalities be on the hook in the way they are in Lac-Mégantic? Will the government consider reimbursing the Province of Quebec the $155 million it has already spent on the Lac-Mégantic disaster, and it will spend more, as a federal expense, as it was a federal railroad?

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure that the member has read the provisions of Bill C-52, in which the short-line railways would be expected to carry more liability insurance based on the type and volume of the dangerous goods they are carrying. That is one of the very first ways to ensure that railway companies are bearing increased responsibility for the safe operation and transportation of dangerous goods, specifically crude, by rail.

Beyond those increased levels of insurance, there is the supplementary fund. As I have said, we are targeting that fund at $250 million, but there is obviously flexibility in the way the mechanism of the fund and the implementation of the levy are put to place. That would be done for repayment.

With a review at least every five years, if the risks change, there is flexibility built into the law such that the fund itself and the amounts in the fund could be re-examined and, if necessary, adjusted.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to say that I will be sharing my time with the member of Parliament for Timmins—James Bay.

I rise today to speak to Bill C-52, an act to amend the Canada Transportation Act and the Railway Safety Act. I would like to say at the outset that I, along with my colleagues, am pleased to see that the government, at least incrementally, is coming forward with some reforms addressing the concerns of the Canadian public. A good number of the measures in this bill are welcomed, although there may be some significant changes and additions we might want to add at committee.

I recommend that, top of mind, we recognize that the federal government has almost sole responsibility and power to regulate the rail sector, in particular the major lines. This is a mandate, based on my own experience too often in the past, not delivered effectively, both in preventing and responding to rail-related disasters.

Deep and widespread concern continues to be expressed about the risks that exponentially increasing dangerous rail traffic poses to Canadian communities, a concern shared by my constituents, and frankly, by all Albertans. Why the concern? A major percentage of hazardous rail cargo either originates in Alberta, is shipped into the province, or is shipped out of the province to markets. Each time I commute from my home to the airport to head to Ottawa, parallel to me along the highway I witness continuous lines of tanker cars. In summer months, my cottage shakes from the heavy-loaded railcars, and I whisper a silent prayer, “Please, no derailment today”. I will explain my reaction and my fear momentarily.

I regularly hear complaints from constituents who are distressed that their daily commute is delayed by tanker cars blocking their route to work or school. Massive rail terminals constructed on the eastern edge of my constituency store and shunt loaded tanker cars close by businesses, a university, and commuter traffic. Residents of my riding of Edmonton—Strathcona loudly cheered the decision recently by Canadian Pacific to finally remove some of the rails that, until a few weeks back, shunted tanker cars, unsecured, right into the heart of Edmonton's historic Old Strathcona district into housing, businesses, and significant commuter traffic, mere feet away.

A few years back, the Hardisty town council expressed concern about the construction of a massive American co-owned crude-by-rail terminal that would load 120 tankers per day. In Bruderheim, the largest constructed crude-oil-to-rail terminal automatically loads 180 tanker cars, or 700 barrels, with 13-unit trains of diluted bitumen per day to be shipped south to the United States.

I met with Albertans protesting that a CN Rail siding, once used to load grain for now abandoned grain elevators, located 30 metres from two wildlife conservation areas, less than 200 metres from two homes, and 700 metres from a golf course, was being converted to shunt Imperial Oil tankers. Strathcona County councillor Alan Dunn dubbed the decision to store tankers in the middle of country, residential, and agricultural areas “an abomination”, in his words.

Albertans have experienced 3,421 rail incidents in the past decade, 1,700 of which were derailments, with 122 fatalities and 13 evacuations. This monumentally increased dangerous railcar cargo, coupled with the Lac-Mégantic tragedy and the continuing derailments of similarly dangerous cargo, have caused heightened public concern and increased calls for government action, including by municipal councillors.

To fully understand Albertans' concerns about hazardous rail traffic and their lost confidence in a government response, I wish to share highlights of just three major rail accidents that happened in Alberta over the past three decades.

First, the 1986 Hinton train collision between a CN freight train and a VIA Rail passenger train killed 23 people and seriously injured 95 others. Until the Lac-Mégantic disaster, it was the most lethal Canadian rail disaster since the Dugald accident of 1947. The resulting investigation revealed serious flaws in CN's employee practices. A commission of inquiry investigated the crash. Justice René Foisy, from the Court of Queen's Bench in Alberta, following 26 days of public hearings, condemned what he described as a “railroader culture” that prized loyalty and productivity at the expense of safety.

In August 2005, a derailment dumped over 700,000 litres of bunker C fuel and 88,000 litres of carcinogenic pole oil on the north shore of Lake Wabamun, essentially on top of the summer village of Whitewood Sands. More than 500,000 litres of the chemical entered the lake, with half remaining unrecovered.

Thousands of volunteers walked the shoreline picking up tar balls or rescuing oil-coated birds and wildlife. The shores of the Paul First Nation sacred lands were coated in oil. In the words of the provincial environmental commission struck to assess the government response, the event was a catastrophe for the community and a disaster for the environment. This important recreational lake was closed to swimming, boating, and fishing for a full year.

Who would have thought that in the oil capital of Canada, timely access to either the equipment or expertise to adequately respond to an environmental disaster of this scale, and so close to Edmonton, was completely absent? It was a major wake-up call, but are we fully awakened or ready still?

While the province at least formed a special commission to critique the failed response and recommended improved emergency response efforts, no similar effort was made by the rail regulator, the federal government. The commission identified a complete failed response and a lack of emergency preparedness and made significant calls for reform, including advance resolution of interjurisdictional responsibilities, including over first nation lands and people, and better management of rail transport risk prevention and response.

According the Transportation Safety Board, the cause of the derailment was rails replaced with faulty second-hand equipment. Despite these findings and recommendations, a decade later, another derailment of petroleum crude oil and liquified petroleum gas happened at Gainford, mere kilometres from Lake Wabamun. According to the report by the Transportation Safety Board, the heat from the explosion and fire was so extreme that flames shot across the highway, damaging a home on the other side. The Trans-Canada Highway had to be closed and around 100 residents evacuated. Similar to the findings by the Transportation Safety Board for Wabamun, the cause was attributed to faulty rail, unidentified by transport inspectors or CN inspections. It must be noted that another derailment occurred just two weeks earlier near this same location.

The Conservatives have promised time and again to rectify shortcomings with safety inspections and rail safety compliance measures. They have yet to fully honour that commitment. As my colleague pointed out, successive Liberal and Conservative governments have, in the majority, let companies self-regulate and self-inspect their equipment and rail lines. This approach is just not adequate. Rail traffic is now a major industrial operation.

Despite the growing volume of dangerous rail traffic and despite the related serious derailments, Transport Canada has apparently hired only one additional rail safety inspector, and the Rail Safety Directorate's budget has been cut by almost 20%. We need stronger regulation of this dangerous rail traffic, and we need intensified inspection and enforcement.

Bill C-52 does offer some important reforms to address compensation after a rail disaster occurs, including minimum insurance levels for railways transporting dangerous goods, a disaster relief fund, and greatly expanded authority by the minister, cabinet, and rail safety inspectors. However, these have more to do with the costs and cleanup after the fact. They do nothing to prevent further accidents. What we need is federal action to prevent rail disasters, including full, open, and public review and assessment of all proposals by the rail sector and its clients to construct new facilities or to substantially increase the volume of hazardous goods shipped.

The rail industry is the only major industrial sector almost totally exempted from the application of federal environmental assessment laws. Currently, federal laws bizarrely also completely exempt the rail sector from advance public scrutiny. Regulations under the federal environmental assessment act currently only narrowly confine the rail industry operations to be reviewed to where certain migratory bird sanctuaries are impacted.

The Minister of Environment is empowered to order that rail traffic that could cause adverse environmental effects or public concerns undergo and EIA. To date, she has failed to exercise that power, despite the growing potential threats to life and environment.

The government could also expand the powers of the National Energy Board to ensure that all exports of hazardous petroleum products by pipeline and rail combined, not just exports by pipeline, are reviewed.

An Alberta first nation, the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, has actually called for the National Energy Board to expand its mandate.

I look forward to questions on my speech and action by the government.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. friend from Edmonton—Strathcona for her consistent work on rail safety. I certainly remember, really distinctly, the rail derailment that affected the lake and its impact on her home cottage. I am not going to once again stumble through the name of the lake. I apologize to my friend from Edmonton—Strathcona.

Very specifically, does the member agree that we should be doing much more to identify the most volatile types of cargo carried by rail and not have a definition that puts so many of them in the same category? I hope my question is not too vague, but I trust my friend from Edmonton—Strathcona can make sense of it.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the member makes a good suggestion, that we do a better job of identifying volatile cargo.

Frankly, I think we need to go much further. I find it astounding that this major industrial sector of Canada, a highly profitable sector, sadly for the most part now American-owned, is completely exempt from advanced environmental impact assessments to identify potential threats to health or environment.

I think what the member is calling for could be a part of that overall review. Let us remember that we built our rail lines right along our lakes and rivers because we originally needed that water to cool the engines. It is time to look at the potentially impacted communities or potentially impacted waterways. I think it is high time we actually open up the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and take a close look at the possibilities for closely scrutinizing the impacts of this sector in advance, instead of simply trying to compensate after the fact.

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the legislation is indeed extremely important. However, the government's main responsibility is to enforce it. My colleague touched on that in her speech and I hope she will elaborate on it.

What we are passing today is fine. However, given that budgets have been reduced considerably and that only one inspector has been hired since the Lac-Mégantic disaster, how exactly does the government intend to ensure Canadians' safety with respect to rail transportation if it does not allocate the resources needed and implement very significant measures to enforce the law?

Providing reassurance is fine, but first and foremost we want to prevent accidents. We do not just want to address the problems caused by accidents. I would like my colleague to speak about this issue.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is absolutely critical that we have a much bigger review, not just of the personnel who are available on the government side to be inspecting and issuing orders for the protection of the public, given this increased traffic in hazardous materials. It is absolutely important that the federal government step up to the plate and deliver the kind of review that the Alberta government did, way back in 2004.

We would be well advised, certainly the members of the committee would be when they start looking at this bill, to look at the abject failure by all the federal agencies to respond to that spill, in their obligations to protect the fishery in Lake Wabamun and to respond in a timely way to the first nations, which they absolutely did not do, and also to get a handle on the fact that if even in Alberta, the oil capital of Canada, we were not prepared to respond to a spill of this nature, how on earth are we going to be capable of responding to that kind of spill of hazardous substances in any other place in Canada?

We need a much bigger review, and not one just tied to these narrow pieces of legislation that are tabled. It is time for a thorough review of our readiness to actually respond and prevent these kinds of disasters.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as always it is a great honour to rise and speak for the people of Timmins—James Bay. I am very proud to be speaking to Bill C-52, a piece of legislation that is very important for this House. I would like to put in editorial parentheses that it is nice for a change to be debating legislation that has something of value to the Canadian public, as opposed to the so many bizarre hot-button sideshows we have been dealing with. The issue of rail safety is a serious concern. The government needs to respond.

We saw the horrific disaster in Lac-Mégantic, where so many lives were needlessly lost. However, we are also dealing with a huge increase in the transport traffic coming out of Alberta and Saskatchewan in terms of the carrying of unprocessed oil, crude, bitumen. We saw in the Lac-Mégantic spill the oil that was coming out of the Bakken fields that is very combustible. These are issues that have to be taken seriously.

As I say that, it is not just the oil industry that is involved. Many of our industrial sectors have an important role to play in their connections with the railways. I live literally across the street from the Ontario Northland and every day the huge sulphuric acid tanker cars come down from the smelter in Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec. We have had spills, and those are catastrophic spills.

However, the kinds of spills that we have been seeing with increasing regularity as the increase of traffic is coming, particularly in the oil sector, have raised many issues about safety. In my own region, we have had in the last few months three derailments: one at Hornepayne and two at Gogama. One spilled heavy crude into the Mattagami River right at the site that I have been led to understand is fish-spawning grounds. There has been so much work done on that section of Mattagami River to build a better ecosystem for fisheries. To see heavy crude burning in the Mattagami River is a travesty, and it is an economic and environmental tragedy for the people who live along the river and in fact for all the people who live in my part of northern Ontario because the Mattagami is such a large river system.

There is not a lot of comfort from the promises of CN or Transport Canada that they will suddenly make this all better again. The minister said they will restore it 99.99%. I find that rather hard to fathom, how crude spilling into fish-spawning grounds can be remediated that easily. We look at what happened in Kalamazoo, Michigan when the Enbridge pipeline burst. For 18 hours after the alarm started sounding in Edmonton that there was a problem, no action had been taken. That blowout destroyed a large section of the Kalamazoo River. Five years later, the water is still damaged and it has cost over $1 billion in repairing the environment. These are serious issues.

We have to go back a bit to give people some historical explanation. Before we had this huge increase in tanker traffic, there was a belief, pushed by the Liberal government of the day, that if we allow self-regulation everything will be better. It is a blind belief that capital suddenly somehow had a sense of public duty, that if we pulled out the inspectors, if we pulled out the inspectors from the meat industry, if we pulled out the inspectors assuring health and safety, if we pulled out the inspectors of the railway lines and allowed the companies to self-regulate, people would make more money and somehow that would be a social good.

The Transportation Safety Board has talked about the weak safety culture that has existed both at Transport Canada and within the companies. Serious issues have been raised to the point where, after the latest Gogama spill, the Centre for Biological Diversity said, and I do not think it is that unfair to say, that the oil and railway industries are playing Russian roulette with people's lives and our environment given the fact that the transport of these goods cut through the centre of so many communities in our country.

That being said, we have to ask ourselves what the long-term solution is here. One of the arguments we always hear from the Conservatives is this. If there is a rail derailment, some kind of accident or any issue about the transport of oil, the Conservatives will immediately jump up and say that we need pipelines, that the New Democrats need to stand up and support pipelines. That is a bizarre, false argument but I am not surprised that the Conservatives say it because they are so much the puppets of the large oil interests.

I have been noticing that more and more my colleagues in the Liberal Party use that argument time and time again. I was actually shocked that yesterday when we were talking about rail safety, my colleague from Trinity—Spadina was talking about pipelines. I do not think he understands that we do not have to have either-or, what we have to have is public safety. We are a nation of transporting of resources. However one chooses to transport goods, it has to be done where safety is put ahead of expediency.

For my colleague in Trinity—Spadina who believes that the NDP is wrong on our concern about pipelines, we are saying that the issue of pipelines is the same as the issue with rail transport. What are the public protections that are in place if we are going to be moving raw bitumen through 40-year-old pipelines? That is a question that the public needs to have answered.

Whether they are concerned about Line 9 in the city of Toronto, whether they are concerned about the pipeline planned through the mountains of B.C., the issue is safety. Where are the shut-off valves? What kind of oversight is there going to be? What kinds of remediation measures could be put in place to stop a blowout? If there is a blowout in the B.C. mountain ranges, how are we going to remediate that? We know that would be impossible. If Line 9 blows out in Toronto, how could we assure the safety of the community?

It is a false argument to say the New Democrats have to choose between pipelines or rail. We say that whatever method is going to be used to move the nation's natural resources, the issue of safety to the public has to be part of the discussion from day one. There is a larger long-term issue in terms of safety with Canada's oil industry that needs to be looked at. What kind of nation has a vision for economic development that takes raw resources and ships them thousands of kilometres to put them on ships in the St. Lawrence to ship them to China to be processed? That is a bizarre, short-sighted view of economic development.

We have enormous resources in this country and we have to look at value added because when we do value added we are not only creating jobs, but we are also ensuring that the transport would be safer because we are not dealing with the unstable, unprocessed Bakken oil being transported. We would process it in Alberta or Saskatchewan and then move it.

The issue of transporting bitumen as we have seen from the Kalamazoo River catastrophe is that bitumen is very different for cleaning up than oil. This needs to be balanced and the best way to deal with that would be to have the upgrading and the processing at source. This is a long-term vision issue that needs to be addressed.

With regard to my colleagues in the Conservative Party and the Prime Minister who is going to create this energy superpower, we have seen after eight years of this hyperbolic talk that it has not come to pass because there has not been the necessary equal commitment to environment. We have become more and more of an international outlier on these issues. If we are going to develop non-renewable resources, we have to show that we do actually care about the environment.

President Obama turned down Keystone XL, much to the chagrin of the leader of the Liberal Party and the Prime Minister. We look at what the EPA said about Keystone XL, that it was not in America's interests and that the effect of Keystone XL would be to add another 1.37 billion metric tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The United States was looking at the Canadian government and saying for all its blunder and bluff on its energy economy, what has it done to ensure that it is balanced with the long-term environmental vision. The government had nothing to offer except more blunder and bluff and that it is not taking no for an answer from Mr. Obama. Well, President Obama and the Democrats' response is “talk to the hand”. If we are not going to balance environment and long-term security, they are not going to partner with us.

In our transport of oil and our natural resources, which we have been abundantly blessed with, what we are saying is that we have to balance environment, sustainability and public safety, that we cannot shortchange public safety because we simply cannot tolerate it and the Canadian public will not tolerate another tragedy like Lac-Mégantic.

Therefore, I support the bill. I think it is a first step, but we have a long way to go in addressing this issue.