By John French
Reporter

It is fairly apparent CN just doesn’t get it.

As many of us rubbed the sleep from our eyes Thursday morning, we learned that the rail company put another eight rail cars off the tracks in the Sunset Beach area just north of Horseshoe Bay.

The timing couldn’t be worse for the huge corporation. Just two days earlier senior vice president Peter Marshall met with provincial politicians to report steps were being taken to prevent derailments like the killer August spill in the Cheakamus River and then the Oct. 24 derailment a short distance from the summer spill.

Marshall told MLA Joan McIntyre, environment minister Barry Penner and transportation minister Kevin Falcon on Tuesday that his company was taking immediate steps to reduce the risk of trains leaving the tracks on the former B.C. Rail line.

Fast-forward to Thursday morning and suddenly it is almost impossible to believe anything coming from CN.

If this company were truly serious about keeping its trains on the tracks in the Squamish area the company would embrace the policies used by B.C. Rail in determining how many rail cars to put on the tracks.

It is completely unacceptable that the new operator on the line once used by B.C. Rail would have three derailments in our area in the span of four months.

The derailment incidents in the last few weeks indicate a change is needed because the status quo just isn’t working. In each derailment case the train was made up of more than 100 cars. B.C. Rail reportedly kept its trains to less than 100 cars. The B.C. Rail formula worked much better than the CN policies. In my nearly two decades of covering news in this community I cannot recall B.C. Rail being involved in this many derailments in this short time span.

Marshall talked a good talk with the government leaders this week but the derailment two days later proves it is just talk.

Along with CN taking real steps to prevent trains from falling off the track, the federal government needs to get behind the attempt by MP John Reynolds to modernize the badly out of date Railway Act.

A stronger and more modern Railway Act can be used as a tool to ensure CN, and other railroad corporations, keep human safety and environmental protection as core values.

If you want to get in on the effort to keep CN accountable, when the federal election is called you can encourage the candidates in our riding to support the move to modernize the legislation.

© The Whistler Question 2005