Vol. 79/No. 43 November 30, 2015
Quebec: Framed-up rail workers plead ‘not guilty’
MONTREAL — Framed-up locomotive engineer Tom Harding and train controller Richard Labrie, members of the United Steelworkers union, pled not guilty in a Lac-Mégantic courtroom Nov. 12 to federal charges filed last June by Canadian government agencies Transport Canada and Environment Canada under the Railway Safety Act and the Fisheries Act. These charges are part of the effort by the government and rail bosses to blame the workers for the July 6, 2013, derailment and explosion of an unmanned 72-car Montreal, Maine and Atlantic oil train in Lac-Mégantic that killed 47 people.
Transport Canada claims that Harding, the train’s only crew member, who had finished his work hours earlier, and Labrie failed to properly carry out their duties. Environment Canada charges that this caused crude oil that leaked from the wreckage to spill into Lake Mégantic and the Chaudière River. Also listed as defendants under the charges is the now defunct Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway and five of its former officials. The penalties under these charges range from fines up to $1 million and six months in jail.
Harding and Labrie already face frame-up charges of 47 counts of criminal negligence causing death laid by federal prosecutors in Quebec — charges that could bring life imprisonment. Former company manager Jean Demaitre faces the same charges.
“There is a conflict of interest here,” Thomas Walsh, Tom Harding’s lawyer, told the Militant in a Nov. 12 phone interview after the hearing. “Transport Canada has laid charges. But TC officials were the decision makers behind permission for the MMA to run trains with just one locomotive engineer to reduce costs. It is they who looked the other way at the MMA’s disastrous safety record. They remain nameless, but TC officials are responsible for rail safety in Canada. They share a good part of the responsibility for the tragedy.”
Government prosecutors have never explained why they have brought charges against Labrie.
The train was parked on a slope in Nantes, seven miles from Lac-Mégantic. It could have been parked safely on an adjacent siding that was protected by a derailer, but Montreal, Maine and Atlantic bosses chose to store empty boxcars there.
Harding had finished his run and 12-hour shift, left the lead engine running and the air brakes engaged and set hand brakes on seven cars, and went to Lac-Mégantic to sleep. As instructed by MMA bosses, he turned the other four engines off to save money.
Because of poor company maintenance a fire broke out on the engine. The local fire crew shut the engine down. When the company called Harding and told him about the fire, he volunteered to go back, but was told he shouldn’t worry about it, they were sending someone else. The track manager they sent wasn’t familiar with train engines, did nothing and reported everything was OK. Because no engine was running, air pressure for the brakes ran down and the train began rolling into the city, exploded and burst into fire, leveling much of downtown and leaking oil into the soil, lake and river.
A year before the disaster, Transport Canada approved an application from Montreal, Maine and Atlantic bosses to cut train crews to one person to reduce costs and boost profits.
Most people in Lac-Mégantic, a small town of 6,000 where most everyone knew someone who was killed in the disaster, don’t hold the workers responsible for what happened. They believe the company and government should be on trial.
The workers’ union also backs Harding and Labrie and has raised some $206,000 for their legal defense. “These workers should not be pilloried for negligent management practices of a company like MMA or the federal government’s lax regulation,” Steelworkers District 5 Director Daniel Roy said last year.
More derailments inevitable
Transport of oil from the North Dakota Bakken oil fields to refineries on the East Coast, including the Irving Oil refinery in New Brunswick where Harding’s train was headed, surged beginning in 2010. Production by hydraulic fracking and the lack of pipelines opened the door to profits for rail bosses hauling oil. But today oil prices have tumbled to less than half of what they were.Feeling the crunch, rail bosses have disregarded safety and track maintenance. Government enablers in both Ottawa and Washington have been complicit. Continuing derailments have been the result.
An eastbound Canadian Pacific Railway oil train derailed in Watertown, Wisconsin, Nov. 8, with 13 cars piled up on the tracks, many leaking oil. “We so could have been another Lac-Mégantic,” Sarah Zarling, who lives there with her husband and kids, told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
The day before, a Burlington Northern and Santa Fe freight train derailed near Alma, Wisconsin, spilling 18,000 gallons of ethanol near the Mississippi River.
In the U.S., the Federal Railroad Administration reported that some 910 derailments were reported in the first eight months of this year, close to a 5 percent increase over last year.
New studies of train derailments in the U.S. have shown that oil trains with more than 100 cars weighing a cumulative 19,000 tons — used by the rail bosses to transport crude oil more cheaply — wreak havoc with rail tracks. The U.S. government reports that the majority of recent derailments are caused by track degradation. More Lac-Mégantics are inevitable.
“What is the purpose of these charges against Harding?” said Walsh to Radio-Canada television reporters after the court hearing. “They have the same content as the more serious charges of criminal negligence. Tom Harding is being tried for the same thing twice. Is he to be found guilty or not guilty twice?”
A court hearing is scheduled for Dec. 1 in Lac-Mégantic to set the date and location of the trial on the criminal negligence charges.
Solidarity messages for the Tom Harding and Richard Labrie defense should be sent to their union, USW 1976 / Section locale 1976, 2360 De Lasalle, Suite 202, Montreal, QC H1V 2L1.
Contributions can be sent in Canada to Syndicat des Métallos, 565, boulevard Crémazie Est, bureau 5100, Montreal, QC H2M 2V8. In the U.S. checks can be sent to Tom Harding Defense Fund, First Niagara Bank, 25 McClellan Drive, Nassau, NY 12123.
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