New West councillor worried about local train safety after damning report

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VANCOUVER (NEWS113) – A lack of train safety enforcement means people living in Metro Vancouver cannot know for sure if they are safe according to a New Westminster Councillor.

It comes after a new Transportation Safety Board report on the Lac Megantic disaster where 47 people were killed when train cars loaded with crude oil went out of control down a hill last year.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada says many factors contributed to the derailment including lax safety measures at the company that owned the runaway train.

The agency is also pointing a finger in its final report at Transport Canada, saying the department did not audit MMA often and thoroughly enough to ensure it was effectively managing the risks in its operations.

New Westminster Councillor Jaimie McEvoy says there is no accountability so communities have no way of knowing if they are safe.

“I think it would worry every city in Canada to read that system audits are being conducted but they’re not adequate and what’s even worse is that there is no follow up to the audits that occurred,” he says. “And in fact Transport Canada is saying the audits were not sufficient to address what was really going on at the company.”

McEvoy says changes need to be made including a more hands on approach from Transport Canada.

“We’re seeing a safety culture in British Columbia where we have inspections followed by disasters. We saw it at the Babine sawmill, we saw it with the recent mine disaster, and we saw it at Lac Megantic where there is this undermining of a culture of safety that goes on so that it becomes almost a kind of formality.”

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