Transport Canada proposes tougher protections for rail tanker cars

OTTAWA – Proposed new federal regulations will give shippers until 2025 to upgrade rail tank cars to a higher safety standard, a transition that would come almost 30 years after serious deficiencies in the fleet were first identified – and as oil-by-rail accidents continue to pile up.

The safety upgrade would build on new standards voluntarily adopted by the industry in 2011 and will require shippers to make tank cars more resistant to punctures and valve failures in the case of derailment or collisions.

The news comes amid a spate of fiery oil train derailments on both sides of the border that have proven the latest tank car design remains inadequate.

Talks between Canada and the United States on harmonized tank car safety are ongoing, and it was not clear Thursday whether Transport Canada’s timetable for retooling or retiring North America’s 147,000 older cars used for shipping flammable liquids can be met unilaterally.

“You can’t just stop the cars in Sarnia, (Ont.), or wherever and switch cars” at the Canada-U.S. border, Larry Miller, the Conservative chairman of the Commons transport committee, said at a news conference.

“It doesn’t happen like that.”

Transport Canada noted on its website that “a harmonized standard is essential” while laying out the new Canadian safety timetable.

Transport Minister Lisa Raitt also indicated at a separate event Thursday that negotiations with American officials over a proposed new braking system for tank cars had failed to find consensus, and were dropped from the proposed Canadian rail car standards.

The new safety standards and timetable for implementation were posted online Wednesday without fanfare.

They came hours before the Commons transport committee tabled its report on the transportation of dangerous goods and Canada’s safety regime.

Miller, in delivering the report, noted the changes all flow from the deadly crash of an unmanned oil train in Lac-Megantic, Que., in July 2013 that claimed 47 lives and incinerated the town’s downtown core.

But concerns over the old DOT111 tank car – the workhorse of the North American fleet – date back to at least 1996, when the Transportation Safety Board of Canada recommended the government “take immediate action to further reduce the potential for the accidental release of the most toxic and volatile dangerous goods transported in Class 111A tank cars.”

Three years later, the safety board observed that, “In general, Class 111A tank cars do not have sufficient protection against punctures, even in a low-speed impact, due to the thinness of the tank shell and the absence of a head shield.”

A booming oil-by-rail business has compounded the danger over the last five years.

In the last month alone, four trains carrying crude oil have derailed in Canada and the U.S., sparking major fires, polluting waterways and forcing some evacuations.

There have been three recent CN Rail derailments in northern Ontario, including two along a 40-kilometre stretch of track about an hour south of Timmins, near the village of Gogama.

A CN train also derailed Wednesday evening near the Manitoba community of Gregg, about 50 kilometres east of Brandon. CN spokesman Brent Kossey said there were no reports of injuries but provided no information on what cargo was in the derailed cars.

NDP critic Hoang Mai said the safety recommendations of the Conservative majority on the transport committee don’t go far enough, adding a lack of oversight by Transport Canada means “self-inspection, self-regulation is not going in the right direction” for the rail industry.