WATERLOO'S FIRE CHIEF IS WRONG TO GUARD THIS SECRET

Yesterday's Waterloo Region Record carrys a Community Editorial Board opinion piece by Gary Askin. While I agree with a number of his stated facts, it is his conclusion from them that I vehemently disagree with. The title of his article is "Waterloo fire chief right to guard this secret". Mr. Askin has far more confidence than I in the basic judgement and motives of our various authority figures. He suggests that prior knowledge of the train cars filled with volatile crude oil would not have prevented the horrible tragedy in lac Megantic. Maybe yes and maybe no. We will never know the answer to that one. Mr. Askin also seems accepting of the conditions put upon the dissemination of information from the railroad company to the fire chief. Namely if you make the information public we won't share any further information with you. Really? Then maybe it's hight time these train executives were given a little course in politics and jurisdictions. If they want to ship hazardous materials through residential areas or for that matter any high density areas the onus is on them to do everything imaginable ahead of time to minimize risk. This includes debate and discussion over alternate routes if the human exposure to an accident is too high. This includes being transparent and accountable to the public through whose neighbourhoods you are transporting hazardous materials. This includes publicly defending maintenance programs as well as procedural manuals for parking trains with or without supervision. Transparency is a two way street and can actually cause railroad managers to sit up and pay more attention to safety. That is never a bad thing.