Burnaby Coun. Nick Volkow says after-the-fact reporting about dangerous goods traveling through city tracks is not good enough.
In a Transport Canada announcement on Nov. 20, Lisa Raitt, Minister of Transport, directed railway companies to share information with municipalities in yearly and quarterly reports about the dangerous goods on board.
“I kind of give the federal government a backhanded compliment,” Volkow told the Burnaby NOW. “I’m happy they’re finally starting to realize the importance of the issue across all the cities across the country. What they propose is just the first attempt by the federal government.”
Volkow said quarterly reports already occur for some municipalities, such as New Westminster, when the dangerous goods have already chugged through the city.
“There’s a real need to get some strict protocols in sharing of information,” he said. “As I say, if you can’t have a level of trust, sharing information with first responders in any community – then we have a bigger problem than I expected.”
Volkow said municipal first responders need the information in order to do their job more effectively and safely when dealing with the chaos of an emergency.
“If there’s a derailment of some sort within Burnaby city limits, they would like to know what they’re dealing with as they’re approaching the scene, as opposed to arriving on scene with all kinds of mayhem going on.”
According to a federal government media release, maintaining safe railway transportation in Canada is a top priority.
“Our government remains committed to two-way dialogue and information exchange with key transportation stakeholders in communities across Canada,” Raitt said in the release.
The protective direction laid down by Raitt requires that Canadian class one railway companies transporting dangerous goods must provide municipalities with yearly aggregate information, presented quarterly, on the nature and volume transported through the municipality. For anyone else who transports dangerous goods via rail, but is not a railway company, must notify the municipality with the same information yearly.
The decision was made in response to a Federation of Canadian Municipalities request for more information on dangerous goods being transported through their homes.
“Today’s announcement is welcome news for Canadian communities,” said Claude Dauphin, the federation’s president, in a media release. “It sends a clear message that the Government of Canada fully agrees that local governments need to know basic information about dangerous goods being transported through their communities.”
Earlier this month, Burnaby council released a report regarding railway companies transporting dangerous good. It called for heavier regulation and more information sharing from railway companies to first responders.
As for Volkow, he says more needs to be done.
“The conversation has been started,” he said. “But the railway companies really think John A. MacDonald still operates the government, and in their own right really don’t have to liaise and share information with local governments at the level local governments think they should.”
