New federal rules force companies shipping dangerous goods by rail through Canada’s towns and cities to tell local emergency responders about it.
But that information will only be shared after the fact, with a select few officials sworn to confidentiality.
For those who live along the railway lines, what is trundling past their homes remains secret.
“The information is to be shared with emergency planners and first responders,” said Transport Canada spokesperson Roxane Marchand in an email. “For reasons including security of the transportation system, the information is not intended to be shared with the general public.”
Fred Millar, a U.S. consultant on chemical safety and railroad transportation, called that reasoning “complete nonsense.”
Tank cars are already marked to show what they’re carrying, allowing “any half-assed terrorist” to find out what goods are going through a community, said Millar, a long-time proponent of communities’ right to know risks posed by dangerous goods in their midst.
“Trying to keep this secret is like elephants tiptoeing through the tulips,” said Millar. “It just infuriates me because it’s a completely phony excuse.”
Transport Minister Lisa Raitt announced the “protective direction” on Nov. 20, more than four months after a train carrying crude oil barrelled into the Quebec town of Lac-Mégantic, where it derailed and exploded. The blast killed 47 people and flattened the town’s core.
That train had travelled through the GTA on its ill-fated journey from the Bakken oilfields of North Dakota, en route to the Irving Refinery in New Brunswick.
Crude oil transport has increased dramatically in Canada, from 500 carloads in 2009 to an estimated 140,000 this year. There have been nearly 300 train derailments in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area in the past five years, with 117 of those in Toronto. While most were minor, the accidents have prompted municipalities to call for more information on dangerous goods — like toxic chemicals, ammunition, acids, propane and gasoline — passing through.
Under the new rules, Canada’s Class 1 railways — Canadian National, Canadian Pacific and Via Rail — must tell communities what dangerous goods, and in what amounts, have moved through them. The information will be provided once a year, broken down into three-month periods, according to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, which lobbied for the change in the wake of the Lac-Mégantic tragedy.
All other companies must provide yearly totals.
The information on what dangerous products are going through municipalities is vital for emergency responders to prepare for disaster, said FCM president Claude Dauphin.
“We’ve been asking for many years to have that information and we never got a result,” said Dauphin. “Now, it’s a different dynamic and we can tell, we feel like a real partner now, which was not the case before.”
But Dauphin said the organization didn’t push for the information to be publicly available.
“As long as the local first responders get the information, it will be all right,” said Dauphin. “You never know what could happen in terms of security.”
Millar argues communities have a right to know worst-case scenarios that could befall them, should something go horribly wrong.
For example, in the event of a chlorine gas leak, the evacuation zone could be kilometres wide — an entire small town, or a sizable swath of a city.
It was the threat of a chlorine leak that forced the 1979 evacuation of Mississauga after a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed. The 200,000 people forced to flee represent the largest peacetime evacuation in North America.
Rex Beatty, president of Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, said he’s concerned that information provided is historical, not real-time.
“The reason for this is clearly evident — that is the ability to react should a derailment occur while moving through a community,” said Beatty. “What benefit does historical data provide?”
Ali Asgary, a professor in York University’s emergency management program, said the direction is an important step. But he likened it to receiving yearly weather data versus an accurate forecast.
“Hopefully this continues to become real-time information,” said Asgary.
The emergency management expert agreed that it’s safer to limit who can access the data.
“But it works only if this information is translated to the population, in terms of knowing generally what all these trains are carrying and how much they’re carrying and what they should know . . . about different types of hazard.”
Municipalities are likely not equipped to deal with some of the worst-case scenarios that could arise, nor would they have the resources for special equipment and training required, Asgary cautioned.
“It puts them into a really difficult situation,” he said. “There has to be some form of support.”
Ajax Mayor Steve Parish said the rules simply download a federal responsibility onto municipalities.
“The federal government has totally abandoned and abrogated its responsibility to effectively police an industry that is almost exclusively under their jurisdiction,” said Parish, who represents the community of 110,000 just east of Toronto.
“It’s all well and good to say municipalities are the front-line agencies that have responsibility for the health and safety of their residents but . . . this is a federal responsibility. We can’t regulate that industry and we can’t fund the huge load there.”
Parish argued that people do have a right to know what’s being moved through their community.
“I think if you ask the people of Lac-Mégantic, they’d say yes. And I think if you ask the people of any municipality, they’d say yes,” said Parish. “If there are dangerous, hazardous materials going through our municipality, we have the right to know.”