Emile Therien joins the growing number of critics speaking out against Ottawa’s rail system. Following the recent fatal derailment in the southwest of Ontario, many have spoken out against the current infrastructure.
The former president of the Canadian Safety Council is of the opinion that Ottawa has handed over its regulatory control functions to individual companies, thereby making it unsafe to travel on Ottawa’s trains.
Therien said: “Transport Canada is no longer in the game of being a regulator.” He claims that the rail agency effectively ceded responsibility 13 years ago when the Railway Safety Act was amended, putting the responsibility of monitoring themselves into the hands of the railway companies.
Therien’s remarks came after a Via Rail passenger train left the tracks near Burlington recently, when it was approaching a switch point. The train’s first six cars overturned and hit a building, and the rest of the train was left lying zigzagged across the railway line. Two engineers and a trainee were fatally injured in the accident, the cause of which is, as yet, unknown. Forty-six other passengers were injured, some seriously.
Investigators have not yet determined the cause of the accident. These types of accident are fairly uncommon in the Canadian passenger train service. According to the transportation safety board there were more than 1,000 train accidents in 2010, but most of them involved freight trains.
Therien is happy to concede that the accident that occurred at the end of February is not an everyday occurrence for Via Rail but he is, nevertheless, of the opinion that what happened uncovered a problem in the monitoring systems of Canada’s railroads.
Transport Canada started to set up regulations for Railway Safety Management Systems in 2001, an arrangement that requires employees of the rail company to evaluate safety systems on a daily basis. The agency says the aim of this is to bring about a reduction in the number of injuries, deaths and damage to infrastructure, by establishing an environment where everyone accepts responsibility for safety.
The logic behind this way of thinking is that an employee of the railway company is in a better position to spot a dangerous situation than Federal inspectors who do not carry out daily inspections. These employees are then expected to report the concerns, which will in turn be passed up the ranks.
Transport Canada is adamant that the self-regulating system does not mean it is shirking its responsibility. The organisation says that infrastructure inspections and safety audits still occur regularly.
A statement on the agency’s website reads that: “SMS is not self-regulation and the railway’s SMS regulations do not replace any regulations, rules or standards.”
One has to say, however, that the Railway Association of Canada has been defending the self-monitoring system for many years. Canadian Pacific, CN and Via Rail all belong to the group with its 50-plus members.
In Therien’s eyes, however, the self-monitoring guidelines have allowed Transport Canada to shirk its responsibility and pass it on to the railway companies.
