The Lac Mégantic Tragedy

Lac Mégantic is a small town located near the border between the province of Québec, Canada, and the state of Maine, United States; it has a population of about 6,000 people. From Montreal, it’s roughly a three-and-a-half hour drive. My father was born and raised there and my mother also spent an important part of her youth there.

My mother, the other day, took advantage of the fact that my cousin, who lives in Australia, and I (I live in Mexico), were in Montreal to organize a family dinner. The topic of Lac Mégantic took a little longer than I thought to make its way into the conversation, but when it finally did, one of my cousins (not the one who lives in Australia, but her sister) said the following, striking thing: “The other day, I was talking with some friends, recalling when we were in high school and the teachers were telling us about people who take drugs, or commit suicide, and so on. Now that I am a grown up, I’ve had friends who got deep into drugs, a friend of mine committed suicide and... my parents’ town just blew up!”

During the night of June 5-6 2013, for a mysterious reason, a train without driver started to advance and to move away from a train station in Nante, a small town at a little more than 10 kilometers from Lac Mégantic. Nante is 514 meters above the sea level and Lac Mégantic's altitude is 415, which means that the the train trip between both locations is a slight but continuous descent. The train started going slowly, but it went increasingly faster until it reached approximately 100 kilometers per hour.

Let me reiterate: a 72-wagon train loaded with crude oil was descending towards Lac Mégantic, without a driver, at 100 kilometers per hour.

On its way, the train did not encounter any significant curve that could have reduced its speed. The only important curve is located right before arriving in downtown Lac Mégantic. It was too late. The speed was too high. The train derailed. Four of its wagons exploded. 47 people died.

After the tragedy, the media began evaluating the politicians' behavior. They essentially had two criteria: their presence with the victims on site and the quality of their speeches, which was analyzed in the perspective of marketing strategies and public relations management evaluation. As if image and speeches were the only responsibility that the politicians had towards the victims.

Now, I am no expert on the matter, but in my humble opinion, the role that the politicians, the state and the legislative bodies must play in such situations is not so hard to evaluate. Firstly, justice must be rendered for the victims and their families, which means that they must receive compensations that may be in direct proportion to the damage they suffered. Secondly, qualify information is required, which means that an independent investigation must be conducted, during which the highest amount of knowledge on the event must be gathered in order to subsequently determine what went wrong, if someone is responsible and, the case being, who these people are, so they can be brought to justice.

After that, politicians must implement measures that will reduce the risks of such a tragedy repeating itself, as much as possible. In this case, Québec Solidaire, which is considered a left-wing political party in Québec, referred to what happened in Lac Mégantic as a sign that showed us the necessity of shifting to green energies. I am aware that what I’m proposing does not totally go against what that party proposed, though it seems it would have been more appropriate for them to approach the topic with a more realistic perspective of what was feasible at that moment.

The management of ethanol, biofuels, wind energy and the like have proven that any green energy – nay, any form energy - left in the hands of people who put profit as their main priority may have a devastating impact on the environment and human life. In this category, oil is perhaps the undisputed champion. However, it is very unlikely that a small nation of 7 million people, sandwiched between two different batches of British settlers in countries that were practically born from their eagerness to profiteer off of oil, will be the first to carry out a quick and comprehensive shift from oil to green energy. Such a transition can be compared to alcohol prohibition: almost all of human kind is oilaholic.

Meanwhile, we have to accept the fact that the Lac Mégantic tragedy demonstrated once again that in such quantities, oil, its derivatives, as well as any other explosive, flammable and/or toxic substance must be handled with the same cautions as if handling an atomic bomb cargo. Is it possible that people who put profit before the common good will handle such substances with the required caution? When one has profit as his main goal, he will choose – or be forced to choose - not to invest in maintaining his railway, or not to have security on-site 24 hours a day. It is also unlikely that he will choose safer wagons if they are more expensive.

In our imperfect societies, theoretically, the imperfect states are the ones who are supposed to be in charge of protecting the common good. Despite of their imperfection, the institutions of the state cannot (at least openly) put profit as their main priority.

The maintaining, production, distribution and transportation of substances that have the capacity to eliminate a small city's downtown core if four wagons loaded with it explode are not currently in the hands of institutions that have the common good as their main priority. Instead, the handling of such substances is in the hand of entities that indeed have profit as their main concern. As long as the government of Québec and the Prime Minister do not implement policies that may transform that dangerous business into a service to the population, intending to manage the substances according to the greater good, they will not be doing anything. Their speeches, image, their presence on site and their willingness to reach out to the victims and their families will not mean anything. After all that, we will still have the duty of taking big money out of politics.

It might look like the Parti Québécois’ attempts to revive the project of Quebec's sovereingty through a “Charter of Values” is meant to protect Quebecers' fragile cultural situation. Nevertheless, they may be forgetting the true meaning of a sovereign state: the total amount of particular interests is supposed to constitute the collective interest. For being the guarantor of those interests, the state is sovereign. Therefore, it cannot afford itself to leave the responsibility of maintaining something that can be compared to an atomic bomb in the hands of institutions that operate according to their particular interest – profit, in this case – instead of the common good. Such situation goes against the sovereignty of the state and has already made much more victims than the Islamic veil their charter ‘mea«ns to protect people from’. Instead of using the fictitious fear of others to push their project through, why don't the sovereignists propose a project that would be based on defending the population's common good from the real danger of particular actors using their power to penetrate the state and submit it to their profiteering goals?