Vol. 80/No. 38 October 10, 2016
Trial set for unionists framed up in Quebec rail disaster
Locomotive engineer Harding and train controller Richard Labrie face frame-up charges of criminal negligence causing death in relation to the July 2013 Lac-Mégantic rail disaster. At a hearing here Sept. 13, Quebec Superior Court Justice Gaétan Dumas set their trial date for Sept. 11, 2017.
The two unionists, members of United Steelworkers Local 1976, are being scapegoated for the derailment and explosion of a runaway Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway oil train that killed 47 people and destroyed downtown Lac-Mégantic. If convicted they could face life in prison.
Former company official Jean Demaitre and Montreal, Maine and Atlantic, which is now an officially bankrupt corporate entity, have also been charged.
The English-language daily Globe and Mail and the Transportation Safety Board’s official report have documented how the cost-cutting profit drive of the rail bosses, with the complicity of Ottawa’s Transport Canada agency, was at the root of the disaster.
Walsh questioned why the defunct railroad, which “has no assets and can’t be fined or jailed,” has been charged and not its former owner, Edward Burkhardt, who today runs the railway management company Rail World.
Among those who attended the hearing to show solidarity with Harding and Labrie was Robert Bellefleur, a Lac-Mégantic resident and activist with the Citizen and Groups Coalition for Rail Safety, which has been fighting to force Ottawa to build a rail bypass around the town of 6,000. “A majority of people in Lac-Mégantic consider that those really responsible for the tragedy are those who asked for and authorized the deregulation of the rail system across Canada,” he told the Militant.
That’s who allowed the railroad to “operate an oil train over several years with one engineer, with minimal oversight” while “accumulating safety violation warnings,” Bellefleur continued. “But the courts prefer to charge simple workers rather than the MMA bosses or the top Transport Canada officials.”
Before the hearing Bellefleur and retired Washington, D.C., locomotive engineer Fritz Edler held a banner in front of the courthouse calling on the prosecutor to drop the charges against Harding and Labrie.
Following the hearing Edler, an activist with Railroad Workers United, a lobby group of rail unionists in the U.S. and Canada, gave the prosecutor’s office a petition signed by more than 2,200 people calling for the charges to be dropped. Several rail union locals in Quebec and Ontario have publicized the online petition.
We have to “show that we will not stand aside and let our fellow brothers fall for a crime they did not commit,” Chris Yeandel, a Canadian Pacific locomotive engineer and chair of Teamsters Canada Rail Conference Local 689 in Montreal, told the Militant the week before the hearing. “Safety was compromised in order to reap profits.”
Solidarity messages and donations can be sent to USW Local 1976 / Section locale 1976, 2360 De Lasalle, Suite 202, Montreal, QC H1V 2L1. Email: info@1976usw.ca. Copies to: Thomas Walsh, 165 Rue Wellington N., Suite 310, Sherbrooke, QC Canada J1H 5B9. Email: thomaspwalsh@hotmail.com.
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On the Picket Line
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