A Canadian Pacific freight train went off the rails on Friday, February 6 near Ottawa, scattering over twenty railcars beside the tracks.
A spokesman for the Teamsters local that represents CP maintenance workers said that the union had reported disrepair on the line only days before to Transport Canada.
“For the last couple of years Canadian railroads have gone downhill on infrastructure and maintenance,” said Bill Brehl, president of the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, Maintenance of Way Employees Division.
Brehl, who is also a member of Transport Canada’s Advisory Council on Railway Safety, told the Hook in a weekend phone interview that the Friday derailment may well have been avoidable.
“Derailments on CP Rail tracks are spiking this winter, just weeks after the company began cutting track and equipment maintenance staff,” Brehl told the Hook. “We think the company has to follow regulations and run a safe railroad. They can’t keep on relying on luck and gravity to keep the trains on track.”
Brehl said that CP has experienced three major and twelve minor derailments in the past two weeks, including one outside Canmore Alberta on January 25 that led to a partial evacuation of the town because of concern about toxic glycol and butane spillage and another outside Kenora on February 1.
Mark Seland, who speaks for Canadian Pacific, told the Globe and Mail that his firm had not received any notice from the union about safety concerns on the line where the February 6 derailment occurred. He also accused the Teamsters of making irresponsible claims, saying that the cause of the most recent derailment had not yet been determined. Seland said that CP did admit that derailments had occurred recently, but said they were no more frequent than usual.
“Canadian Pacific is the safest railway in North America and it has been for the 10 of the past 12 years,” he said in the Globe's report, referring to a designation by the U.S.-based Federal Railroad Administration. “Canadian Pacific has the lowest frequency of train incidents per year in all of North America.”
“If this is usual, we should all be scared," said the Teamsters’ Brehl. "CP shouldn’t be so cavalier about these incidents.”
Tom Sandborn is a regular contributor to the Tyee and the Hook.
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MaintenanceofWay
3 years ago
Clarification
The article states that "Brehl said that CP has experienced three major and twelve minor derailments in the past two weeks."
For the sake of accuracy, it needs to be made clear that while CP has had three major derailments, the twelve minor derailments refer to all railways in Canada not just CP.
Bill Brehl