August 20, 2014
The Editors
The Globe and Mail
444 Front St
Toronto, Ontario
Dear Sir/Madam
Re: How the Regulators Failed to Crack Down - August 20. While inadequate enforcement was undoubtly a significant factor in the Lac-Megantic disaster, the tragedy represented a wider catastropic reguatory failure on the part of Transport Canada, which begs much larger questions about the agency's approach to rail safety regulation. The role of the effectively self-regulatory 'safety management system' model, deserves particularly close attention in this context. The Transportation Safety Board, for its part, while providing an excellent technical analysis of the disaster, has avoided delving into these broader issues with respect to Transport Canada's role and approach to its public safety mandate. Indeed, these are the kinds of questions that an only be effectively investigated through a judicial inquiry into the disaster. The federal government's refusal to establish such an inquiry, which the scale and significance of the tragedy alone would warrant, suggests that it is more interested in blame avoidance than developing a full understanding of the causes of the disaster and the steps that need to be taken to prevent similar occurances in the future.
Yours sincerely
Mark S. Winfield, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Associate Professor