Putting the fine in Persepective...

Friday, December 09, 2005 03:29 AM

by Erle Martz

The CN railroad company was fined $75,000 for "maintenance neglect or negligence" which resulted in the wreck of a train and two deaths to resident employees of PG.

Given the 1.3 billion CN profits of the last year, this "fine" works out to .0000576% of it's years profits

If this was a regular Joe, making $60 thousand a year, that would work out to "three dollars". A fancy coffee.

Also, if it was a regular joe, he could have been charged with criminal negligence causing death and got jail time.

So is this "fine" a deterrent or punishment? Hardly and not in the slightest. Just ask Ken LeQuesne and Art McKay's family, co-workers and friends.

Then there's the Wabanum Lake incident in Alberta and all the derailments in BC, since they took over the BCR.

This has crossed a political and moral line to where our environment and personal safety is being compromised for American shareholder profits.

Being the President / Interim leader of the DR BC provincial party, you might say I've got a political stake here, but I would say to you, Pat, Shirley, and John, let's put all of this aside and do something to protect our environment and our people.

You all put your heads on the chopping block for this railroad sale and this is how CN shows it's gratitude?

It should be obvious by now that this corporation has a total disregard for anything but the final line profits for it's shareholders, so maybe that's where you have to go.

Loyalty, PR and Mr/Mrs nice time is over

Threaten to deny them track useage and bring in bids from other railroads, we still own the tracks don't we? Repeal the sale, Nationalize the railroad, tax them on every tie they cross, all of the above!

Then if you have to, do it. What ever we need to do here, we need to do it.

This will not deter business investments, but it will command the respect due, where it is due.

There's an elephant in the room guys.

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Posted on Friday, December 09, 2005 03:29 AM in Views by 250 News

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Comments

Posted by: acrider54 on December 9 2005 6:17 AM

That'll teach them....Yeah right.

Posted by: Big_B on December 9 2005 9:02 AM

Absolutely deplorable!

You know, when it comes to corporations, which are legally known as a person, laws and rules do not exist. $75,000 for negligent behaviour that cuased two deaths, is ridiculous.

In order to be known as a psychopath, one needs to show no remoarse for wrong doings against another.

Charging people up to $20,000 for access to their own property and $75,000 for two lives.

There's a couple guys sitting in Kngston pen right now named Olson & Bernardo, and they showed no remoarse.

Ask yourself, what makes them different from CN Rail?

Posted by: Chadermando on December 9 2005 9:10 PM

CN Rail has bought off the political establishment in BC and from my perspective the judiciary as well. Their clear insider trading fraud in the 360 Networks engineered bankruptcy, the BC Rail give away, and now this says it all.

IMO the tracks should be nationalized like the highways with a crown corp managing the the tracks and renting out access to any rail operator who will follow the rules, and wishes to compete for freight dollars in BC with access to our ports.