Conservatives are so 'in love' (for decades) with their provincial Con$ervative Party for everything OIL, they would have no remorses if the entire planet was to be polluted to no end as long as they wouldn't have to pay more taxes!

but after the whole CP bridge incident in Calgary after the floods, who knows what the quality of that inspection was.

Reading some of the comments after these articles, more than one person mentioned all these train derailments being possible corporate sabotage to promote the Keystone XL and Northern Gateway pipelines. Not sure I'm ready to go there yet - the old saying about attributing to malice what is more likely stupidity or whatever the quote is....

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I worked for 3-1/2 years for CP rail as a "maintainer" - that's as a mechanic (of which I was the ONLY one trained and licenced out of 40 in my area) that repairs the machines that maintain the tracks.

As a maintainer I was stationed to work on the "gangs" in the spring to fall time, "gangs" being men out on the track camps where the repairs/maintenance were happening on the tracks - so I spent a fair bit of time on the rails.

Our best tracks at the time could barely handle 50mph - many tracks operated on "safe" speed of only 15 - 20mph - anything faster than that was dangerous.

We will never have high speed rail like China, Japan, and some European countries - our tracks are just plain too shoddy.

When CP rail was "born" - tough negotiations for the CP Rail land they now own outright included a caveat that CP Rail would provide passenger service for at least 100 years, gov't figured it would be no problem to renegotiate renewal at that time.

WRONG - exactly 100 years later, CP Rail discontinued passenger service.

In my short career at CP - I quickly became the Health and Safety Coordinator on the Employee side - and believe me, it was a battle to get CP Rail to follow their OWN safety regulations, and an even harder battle to get CP Rail to comply with our Labor laws.

I watched and heard as fellow employees got injured, even killed as a result of lax safety regulation compliance, all to save a buck.

I even attended one ceremony where a fellow employee got an AWARD for his action on a live track, strictly against the regulations - because his action kept the track from being closed - BUT HIS ACTION WAS STRICTLY AGAINST CP's OWN RULES!

"Emergency" on CP Rails tracks was not a man injured, - it was when a freight train might have to stop or slow down because track repair was not on schedule.

"Emergency" was/is a drop in profits,

not men's lives nor safety.

Sad that.

CC

for the USA to embrace the accident-proof XL pipeline. A boon-to-oil-companies boondoggle that'll create a couple dozen jobs in the long run to provide gasoline and diesel for far off lands. Lands where they get the "fills" and we get the spills. What a great country we endure.

delivers all that free heat to them and they got the nerve to bitch about it.