MMA Worries Maine

The MMA has received an average of three fines per year from 2004 to 2012. The most serious violations concerned inadequate railroad safety. The deadly derailment on July 6 is the chronicle of a foretold disaster.

The Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway never ceases to surprise us, and worse! The Press today reveals that the company has been fined 28 times in the United States, fines totaling nearly $150,000. Not bad for a company founded in 2002.

Data from the U.S. Department of Transportation puts even more sinister stress on the tragedy of Lac-Mégantic. The MMA has received an average of three fines per year from 2004 to 2012. The most serious violations involved inadequate railroad safety. The deadly derailment on July 6 is the chronicle of a foretold disaster. And it could have very well occurred in Maine rather than in Quebec.

While the votes here still stand to preserve the deregulation policies in the railroad industry or to not act in haste, the Americans march to the front. The Democratic leader of the House of Representatives from Maine, Seth Berry, believes that the despicable MMA assessment justifies a review of safety in railroad transportation, both in Maine and elsewhere in the United States.

Like the New Democratic Party [Canada], which quickly called an emergency meeting for the House of Commons committee on railways, Mr. Berry called a meeting for the Maine Transportation Committee. U.S. politicians will look at the state of their railways in light of the tragedy of Lac-Mégantic.

Under the combined effect of the exploitation of deposits of oil shale in the West and the Obama administration’s policies of energy self-sufficiency, liquid oil convoys will traverse the railways leading to refineries in the East. Elected representatives in Maine do not want a bomb on the railroad to explode in their faces. It is a healthy cautionary reaction, even if it comes a little late.

There is a limit to ignoring alarm signals in the name of capitalism. The free market, without minimum state intervention to set the rules of the game and the safety of communities, is neither more nor less than libertarianism.

The excesses of deregulation policies visibly affected Lac-Mégantic. There are 47 coffins to remind them of the legislators’ intentions on both sides of the border.

Local councilors in the Eastern Townships and in Montérégie were the first to grasp the urgency of action. Now they can count on the support of the American colossus.