Cowford wrote:Again, just to be clear about the investigation: The TSB did not investigate the Dryden crash as it was not in existence at the time, and the TSB does not report into TC.
Exactly right on both accounts. The reason I have brought forth this information, at this time, is because of what was said, after the accident in Dryden, about the less than adequate job Transport Canada was doing with the mission it was charged with regarding airline safety issues, and how more recent similar actions by Transport Canada, regarding railroad safety issues, and safety rules oversight, might turn out to have been a factor, to some level, in what happened at Lac Megantic.
At the time of the Dryden air crash, Transport Canada was tasked by the Canadian govt with the job of making the rules for the Canadian aviation industry, and overseeing them, and ensuring that the rules, especially involving safety issues, were being followed.
Here is a paragraph from a book on airline disasters by Macarthur Job, who has exhaustively studied this subject for many years, and has written extensively on the subject. .........."
An investigation ensued by the Canadian Aviation Safety Board. ........"19 days after the crash, responsibility for the investigation was taken FROM the hands of the safety board, and the Privy Council of Canada appointed a "special investigation" led by commissioner Peter Moshansky, with an impressive team of legal and technical advisors. This was done specifically because: The tragic nature of this accident, the anomalies coming to light in the airline and even its 'operational surveillance' by Transport Canada!"........
A story written in AvStop.com, in 1993, 4 yrs after Dryden said this: ........
The accident was all the more tragic because just seven weeks earlier, warnings within the regulatory authority Transport Canada had been leaked to the press. In part the leaked memo said, "Air carrier inspection is no longer capable of meeting even minimum requirements necessary to ensure safety. In fact, it is no longer able to assure the Minister of the safety of large air carrier commercial air services in Canada"......... and also: .......
The routine accident investigation was subsumed into a judicial inquiry under the Honorable Virgil P. Moshansky. His report clearly shows that competitive pressures caused by commercial deregulation cut into safety standards. Moreover the regulatory authority was aware of this but could not counter it because the government was cutting regulatory resources.......
AvStop.com article:
http://avstop.com/news/airontario.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
It is interesting to note that immediately after Lac Megantic Transport Canada and the Canadian government came in for heavy criticism due to the ongoing deregulation of Canadian railroad industry, and the govt cutback of money that made this situation even worse. Much of that sounds more than a little bit like the quotes I have included above, regarding the Dryden accident. In fact in 2007 Judge Moshansky, the Dryden Investigator, in response to Ottawa's move to to give Canada's air carriers greater responsibility to oversee the safety of their operations told the Commons transport committee this:
"Today, 18 years after Dryden, history is repeating itself, only worse."
Judge Moshansky quote story:
http://fairwhistleblower.ca/issues/air_ ... ryden.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Many of the "regulatory system" problems are long-standing issues that have been previously flagged, dating back a dozen years to when the federal government adopted a new rail safety regime called Safety Management System, or SMS.
The SMS program relies on Ottawa doing in-depth safety audits to ensure rail operators are complying with whole-system safety protocols, rather than just spot checks for ad hoc deficiencies. But you can see, from the report I quoted regarding the "lack of audits", published just a week before the Lac Megantic disaster, that this SMS program was working way less that what was originally desired. No audits were done of MMA thus there was no way for Transport Canada to tell if the railroad was following the safety rules........or not. Clearly, by doing this, the government "regulators" "abdicated their responsibility" to public safety, to more than a considerable extent.
By using the Safety Management System, for some years, Transport Canada has become increasingly reliant,
upon the railroads themselves being more and more responsible for ensuring that the safety rules were being followed, as outlined by the government, thus (the railroads) were essentially "regulating themselves". I think it is probably quite safe to say that in any vastly competetive market like railroads, allowing this kind of thing to happen, will ultimately result in corners being cut, and safety compromised, as the bottom line becomes the main objective. Anyone who knows me knows that I am not a big fan of government, but that being said, there are places that government can do an important job. Regulating the operations of transportation entities, and making rules for safe operation, and providing adequate oversight to see that those rules are being followed is extremely important for the safety of the public!
Whatever comes out of the Lac Megantic disaster investigation will involve much more than who set, or didn't set, what brakes, or how many. Just like when the airline crash took place at Dryden Ontario, 24 yrs ago, the transportation regulatory system in effect at the time of Lac Megantic, may well end up being one piece, of many, that allowed this disaster to happen.
SRM
