01) LAC-MEGANTIC: A TRAGEDY CAUSED BY PROFIT AND AUSTERITY

Central Executive Committee, Communist Party of Canada, July 22, 2013

            The July 6 derailment of crude oil tank cars in the center of Lac‑Mégantic was a terrible disaster, causing the deaths of nearly fifty people, as well as extensive property and environmental damage. The Communist Party of Canada and the Communist Party of Québec express their condolences to the families and the people of Lac‑Mégantic suffering from this tragedy.

            Amidst the sadness and distress, a deep sense of anger has quickly arisen against those responsible ‑ the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway (MMA) and the Transport Canada, and their policies of profit and austerity.

            MMA operates 820 km of railway passing through cities in Québec and Maine, and is one of several subsidiaries of Rail World, an Illinois‑based transnational, which manages and invests in railways worldwide including Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, and the Netherlands. Rail World's stated purpose is "to promote the privatization of the rail industry by bringing together government agencies wishing to sell their interests to investment capital and management expertise."

            Rail World purchased MMA in 2003 for $50 million, with nearly $15 million invested by the Caisse de dépot du Québec, and has subsequently received tens of millions of dollars in loans and grants under  government infrastructure programs.

            MMA is known for its aggressive practices to reduce operating costs: reducing staff, neglecting the maintenance of its network, using worn‑out equipment and using type 111 tank wagons, which are recognized as inappropriate for the transportation of oil. Between 2003 and 2010, the company laid off 35% of its staff and imposed a wage reduction of 15%.

            Last year, Transport Canada provided MMA with an exemption from safety rules, to allow the company to operate trains with only one engineer on board. At the same time, the Conservative government has imposed deep spending cuts at Transport Canada, as part of its ongoing austerity measures that have gutted many public services. As of May 2013, nearly 500 Transport Canada employees had received termination notices. These kinds of attacks on public services directly compromise the public's right to consistent and reliable safety inspections and enforcement.

            Parallel to austerity measures, the Conservative government is accelerating its drive to privatize many public services. The Conservatives and their predecessors have encouraged and facilitated privatizations, with generous subsidies for corporate purchases and reductions in minimum safety rules to increase profit margins. For a dozen years Québec has had a law requiring railways to provide municipalities with the list of dangerous products transported through their territory. However, this law has never been implemented because government regulation that would enforce the rules was never adopted.

            Another part of the backdrop to the Lac‑Mégantic tragedy is the frantic drive toward the development and mass export of hydrocarbons, including oil from the Alberta tar sands. A product of this policy has been a dramatic increase in oil transportation by train. Canadian National, for example, has seen an increase from 5000 cars tanks per year in 2010 to about 30,000 cars in 2012. For MMA and Rail World, the skyrocketing transport of oil is a profit opportunity to which the corporation is committed, full speed, despite its inadequate and unsafe infrastructure. These developments dramatically increase the risk of more accidents and threats to the environment, particularly in the context of Transport Canada cutbacks and deregulation.

            Oil corporations and the governments that parrot them will use the disaster in Lac‑Mégantic as an argument for the development of pipelines. Within one day of the tragedy, the Globe and Mail argued that "Québec tragedy reminds us pipelines are safest way to transport oil", and that "it is time to speed up the approval of new pipeline construction in North America."

            Such opportunistic comments, which prey on tragedy to further maximize profit, are shameful and must be condemned. What is urgently needed, on the other hand, is a comprehensive public discussion about economic policy, and how it connects with other public interests such as safety, environmental security, employment, and social needs. As Amir Khadir, deputy of Québec Solidaire, stated, "the tragedy of Lac‑Mégantic must, I believe, lead us to reflect on the place that oil has in our economy." The tar sands are themselves an ecological disaster. It is necessary to change from a private energy industry that is focused on non-renewable resources, to a publicly owned and democratically controlled industry that is committed to developing renewable energy.

            The ongoing investigation into the Lac‑Mégantic tragedy will focus on the chain of events that led to the derailment of the train, and it may determine some individual responsibilities. But focusing only on the immediate causes and the actors directly involved in the derailment will not identify the root causes of the disaster and prevent such events from happening again.

            The problem is much broader and is found in the logic of capitalism itself ‑ to the pursuit of profit above all, to the drive for massive privatization and deregulation in recent decades. As we struggle to rebuild Lac‑Mégantic and for improvements to rail safety, we must also struggle for a system that places people's needs before corporate greed, for socialism.

            The Communist Party calls for:

- The immediate strengthening and enforcement of rail safety regulations;

- Nationalization of rail transport, to place it under public ownership and democratic control, and the immediate repair and upgrade to the rail network and infrastructure;

- Nationalization of all natural, energy and other resources, to form the basis of an economy that will prioritize needs and interests of the people and the environment before those of corporations.

(The above article is from the August 1-31, 2013, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)