G78 Board member Bruce Campbell recently wrote a commemorative article for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (https://www.policyalternatives.ca/) to mark the 12th anniversary of the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster. “On July 6, 2013, a train carrying 72 tank cars of toxic shale oil derailed and exploded. It killed 47 people, spilling six million litres of oil—obliterating the centre of the historic town of Lac-Mégantic in southern Quebec. It was the worst fatal calamity on Canadian soil in over a century.” The author of a 2018 book on the disaster, Professor Campbell argues that: “Their deaths were collateral damage from the culmination of policy decisions stretching back more than the previous three decades. Mutually reinforcing policies of deregulation, privatization, and fiscal austerity, as well as power relationships that subordinated government’s obligation to protect the public to the private interests of corporations—all aligned that terrible night.” Access the full article here: https://www.policyalternatives.ca/news-research/remembering-the-lac-megantic-rail-disaster/
