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CN Rail: How Do We Sleep Beside an Anaconda?

By Peter Ewart

By Peter Ewart

Should people in Prince George and other towns in the Interior of British Columbia be concerned about the safety of the rail cars that snake through their communities and roll by their lakes, rivers, farms and homes?

In light of what has happened recently, there would certainly seem to be cause for concern. On August 3rd , a CN Rail train went off the tracks near the town of Wabamun, Alberta, spilling over 700,000 litres of heavy fuel oil and leaching hundreds of thousands of litres of thick, black oil into Lake Wabamun, killing fish, wildlife and vegetation, and fouling huge areas of beach and lake frontage with a slick over eight kilometers in length.

Two days later, another CN train derailed and sent a ruptured boxcar with 41,000 litres of highly corrosive sodium hydroxide into the Cheakamus River north of Vancouver. According to witnesses, after the chemical hit the water, the river turned from deep green to brown, instantly killing thousands of fish. It was so toxic that even the algae in the river were killed (Citizen, Aug. 13). The spill happened at a particularly bad time seriously endangering a pink salmon run that only comes every two years, as well as coho, chinook, steelhead, dolly varden, and other wildlife.

Isolated incidents? Hardly. In January of this year, a CN train carrying hazardous materials derailed in Winnipeg causing a temporary evacuation of nearby residents. Later in the spring, other significant derailments happened in Brighton, Ontario and Avola, BC.

And there have been serious incidents at CN’s American operations. In Eastern Michigan last March, a propane car exploded into plumes of flame when a CN freight train derailed. In Detroit, Michigan, hundreds of residents had to flee for their lives because of a chemical spill. And in Tamaroa, Illinois, 850 people had to evacuate their homes because of another chemical fire caused by a derailment.

Closer to home, it was only two years ago that a CN freight engineer and conductor were killed during a derailment near McBride caused by a trestle fire. The Transportation Safety Board “found inspection and maintenance shortcomings contributed to the accident” (Canadian Press, Aug. 10).


In the wake of the Lake Wabamun and Cheakamus derailments, the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (which represents CN engineers) and the Canadian Autoworkers Local 100 (which represents CN shop workers) have sent a letter to Federal Transport Minister Jean Lapierre “asking him to investigate CN’s maintenance, repair and inspection practices.”

For some time now, the rail unions have been warning that, with privatization (CN was privatized in the early 1990s), CN has engaged in massive downsizing (the CAW alone has had half its membership slashed), has significantly increased the weight of the trains, and has lengthened some trains by more than 50%. This has resulted in a deteriorating safety record at the railway.

Mike Melymick, of the United Transportation Union, comments that “It’s absolutely atrocious what’s happened to CN in the last 20 years” and argues that any increase in derailments at CN is due to a “lack of maintenance, a decrease in manpower, and a lack of inspectors” (Edmonton Sun, Aug. 11).

CN dismisses the safety concerns raised by workers, environmentalists and others, by suggesting that “despite privatization and job cuts, new monitoring technology has made it the safest railway in North America”. Company spokesperson Graham Dallas defends CN’s high-tech approach by arguing that “a technological solution provides us a more secure and more effective way of maintaining a safe railway than some of the initiatives in the past using people” (Canadian Press, Aug. 10).

So, arguments aside, is there cause for concern in a community such as, for example, Prince George?

Well, there are major railway yards at several locations in the city, and rail lines coil right next to (or nearby) both the Fraser and Nechako rivers (which intersect at Prince George), as well as cross the Fraser at several points. The city itself has a population of about 80,000 people, and the two rivers are main provincial arteries for fish and wildlife habitat. A chemical spill could pose a hazard as it flowed all the way down the river through the Interior of the province to Vancouver and out into the vast Pacific Ocean.

A huge amount of hazardous material does pass through the city by rail, whether via the East – West CN line or the North – South former BC Rail line (now part of CN). Rail cars bulging with sulphur, caustic soda, acids, bunker fuel, chlorine and a host of other toxic and noxious chemicals, routinely make their way through the community often only a few hundred feet away from other industrial establishments and homes. If there was a derailment, any one of these chemicals could cause massive damage to the fish and wildlife habitat of the rivers, and devastate water treatment and recreational facilities. Other derailments involving explosion and fire or toxic gas release could create a true public safety emergency, affecting thousands of residents.

Given the above, it was not reassuring for Prince George residents to hear two years ago CN challenging the Transportation Safety Board’s conclusions that CN’s safety and inspection practices contributed to the McBride trestle fire. This suggested that CN had learned nothing from the tragedy.

And it is not reassuring today to see how CN is reacting to the Lake Wabamun and Cheakamus derailments.

In Wabamun, the huge spill has been a disaster for the community. Yet residents quickly became concerned that CN had a “blasé” attitude about the cleanup of the huge spill, and was not aggressively taking measures to contain it. Criticizing the railway company’s priorities, one cabin owner complained, “there’s an army of CN vehicles here with equipment to fix the track, and yet we’re fending on our own here” (Citizen, Aug. 6). Taking things into there own hands, residents and their families waded into the lake to try to save birds and other wildlife that were being smothered by the toxic oil. Three days after the spill, over 100 residents, fed up with what they perceived to be serious foot dragging by CN, organized a blockade of the railway.

But worse was yet to come. The Alberta Environment Ministry was told by CN that the spill only involved the relatively less toxic fuel oil. As a result, the Ministry issued statements indicating that residents could continue to drink and wash with the lake water; so they did for a number of days after the incident. Then an alert Ministry official noticed pools of a green liquid by the derailed train leaking into the lake. Further investigation showed that the green liquid was highly toxic pole treating oil, and that a boxcar with 90,000 litres had also ruptured and leaked into the lake. CN appeared to have sat on this information for a number of days, even though it had to have been aware that residents were drinking the water and participating in the cleanup. It initially appeared to shift responsibility onto the shipper, Imperial Oil, claiming that Imperial Oil had not provided information that the pole treating oil was toxic and cancer-causing. This statement was later retracted when it was shown that Imperial Oil had, indeed, provided the information in question, but that CN had not released it until five days after the derailment.

Alberta’s Environment Minister Guy Boutilier has pledged that CN will face the “full extent of the law” if it finds that CN officials misled the government about the toxic nature of the pole treating oil. In an uncharacteristically blunt statement, Boutilier commented that he was “damn well pissed off” (CBC News, Aug. 10) about the whole affair.

The result of all this has been a public relations disaster for CN, and has raised concern in communities and regions all over Western Canada about the sincerity of CN’s claims and its will and capacity to handle hazardous material accidents and spills.

The Cheakamus spill was similar to the one in Wabamun in that both involved long trains (each almost two miles in length), a pristine water area, and what some feel was a slow response time on the part of CN and the government. Residents and vacationers around the fast-moving Cheakamus River complained that “it took up to 12 hours before they received official word of a train derailment … that spilled more than 40,000 liters” of sodium hydroxide into the river (Vancouver Sun, Aug. 8). The North Shore medical officer has since come out and said, “the risk to public health was extremely small”. However, this was small consolation to those who witnessed the thousands of dead fish floating belly up in the river.

Undoubtedly, there will be investigations going on for years into both disasters, and there will be recommendations made on how to make things work better in the future. But can we expect the same governments at the federal and provincial level who sold off CN and BC Rail to private interests, at what many feel were bargain basement prices, to effectively police these same private interests? In any case, does not all this tinkering with the system just beg the question: Can a large private monopoly, with ownership based in the U.S., be trusted to look after such a vital public interest as the main railway system in North Western Canada and one of the two main ones in the country as a whole?

CN, a crown corporation, was sold off by the federal government in the 1990s to largely American interests. Since then it has evolved into a rail giant that stretches across Canada and the U.S. from the Atlantic to the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico. In 2003, it became even larger when the British Columbian government, in a highly controversial move, sold off BC Rail to CN. This giant monopoly has hundreds of communities, thousands of workers, and tens of thousands of small, medium and large businesses throughout Canada that depend on it.

Some say that a monopoly like CN is no different than any small or medium private business, i.e., they are all businesses. But others argue that monopolies are a breed of a different sort due to their sheer size, lack of allegiance to community or even country, and close interconnection with banks and high finance. Unlike smaller capitalist enterprises, monopolies, by their very nature strive to eliminate free competition, often gobbling up locally-based small and medium businesses or pushing them to the wall with predatory tactics.

Transportation and utility companies can be especially powerful monopolies because often they are “the only game in town”, holding to ransom other sectors of industry that depend on shipping and energy. Politically, they have enormous clout. Although the owners of these private monopolies are a tiny sector of the population, their sheer power dwarfs any other sector. And that is why so many government officials and politicians pussyfoot around them. Comparing a small business to a monopoly such as CN is like comparing a garter snake to an anaconda.

When key sectors of the economy like rail are controlled by monopolies, public interest and community safety continually risk being trumped by private interest. With the unprecedented monopolization that is taking place in all industries across North America, expect more scandals and expect more disasters like those at Wabamun Lake and Cheakamus River.

How do we sleep beside an anaconda? With great care. Whatever we do, we should not close our eyes.

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