Mr. Speaker, on October 25, 2013, I asked the Minister of Transport a question about the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report condemning the shortage of inspectors in the transportation of dangerous goods division. In 2009, there was one inspector per 14 tank cars. Now there is one per 4,000 tank cars. The report also pointed out that some trains are over three kilometres long and weigh over 18,000 tonnes. This issue is of vital importance to the riding of Saint-Jean and especially to Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, because the MMA line goes right through the downtown.
MMA, for those who do not know, is a repeat offender that logged 272 accidents, including 111 derailments, between 2003 and 2013.
Interestingly, the parliamentary secretary said two things in his answer. He said, first, that the minister had been taking action and, second, that we should let the authorities continue their investigation and that Transport Canada would not hesitate to act on recommendations. Three months later, Canadians want to know exactly what action the minister took.
I would remind the House that, since 2001, it has been a Transport Canada requirement that all railway companies have a safety management system. Unfortunately, the changes that were made to the Railway Safety Act in 2012 and came into effect in May 2013, two months before the Lac-Mégantic tragedy, did not prevent the deaths of 47 innocent people. Why? Because all the new requirements in those regulations were voluntary. That is as absurd as asking students to grade themselves.
Thus, it is the culture itself that needs to change, because current thinking—that private companies will put human safety ahead of profitability—simply does not work. At least the Lac-Mégantic tragedy has served to demonstrate that the Conservative philosophy does not work in the real world. The first mission of any government is to physically protect the population, but this Conservative government failed to protect the lives of its citizens.
I would like to come back for a moment to the shortage of inspectors, which is addressed in a report that calls MMA “a ‘bad apple’ that ignored its own directives”. Transport Canada currently has only 35 inspectors in its transportation of dangerous goods division to cover all transportation modes. While the volume of oil transportation by rail has skyrocketed, the Conservative budgets of 2010-11 to 2013-14 have cut the budget for rail safety by 19%. Over the same four years, Transport Canada also shaved its transportation of dangerous goods budget from $14 million to $13 million.
In its throne speech, the government stated that it will require railways to carry additional insurance. That shows the difference between the Conservatives and the NDP. While the Conservatives propose increased compensation for the victims of disasters, we in the NDP want to ensure that such disasters never happen, by introducing controls by independent inspectors, increasing the number of inspectors and making it mandatory to ensure that train cars are safe.
I ask the question again here this evening: exactly what did the minister do to improve the safety of rail transportation of dangerous goods? The truth is, we all know the answer: nothing.
