Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi - Date/Photographer unknown.

23 September 2013

CPR Job Cuts Draw Fire from Nenshi

Calgary Alberta - Mayor Naheed Nenshi says it is a shame that 130 jobs with Canadian Pacific Railway have been eliminated in Calgary as a result of its decision to close its Locomotive Reliability Centre at Alyth Yard, accusing the company of being "a bit opportunistic."
 
"Certainly, this is a company laying off 4,000 across the country, also this is a company that has sworn up and down before the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) decision came out that they weren't actually doing any work at night," Nenshi said on Sunday.
 
"So, now to hear that the work they weren't doing at night is so important to their operations that they have to lay off people is a bit much."
 
The CTA last month ordered CPR to move its regular locomotive testing and idling after 11 p.m. and to at least 400 metres southeast of its normal site in the southeast community of Inglewood, from 24th Avenue to 30th Avenue.
 
Nenshi said the company is using the CTA decision as an excuse to get rid of people.
 
However, railway company spokesman Ed Greenberg said the 130 people have not been laid off, their positions in Calgary have been eliminated and transferred to other facilities in the company's network.
 
He said CPR is giving employees the opportunity to transfer to other positions across the country.
 
"CP is responding to the order by the Canadian Transportation Agency which follows more than two years of attempting to work with the local community and city officials in responding to input and discussions with the CTA.
 
This included making operational changes pertaining to locomotive testing at this facility," said Greenberg.
 
"CP feels it was in the best interests of our railway and our customers to transition the work that would be done in Calgary to other facilities across our network."
 
"The CTA order fails to recognize the 24/7 operational requirements of our company and restricts our ability to provide service in Calgary, across Alberta, and throughout North America."
 
"The directive from the CTA proposed restrictions that, following a full productivity and enviromental review, our railway determined we could not do safely at that location."
 
"At which time we advised all parties, including a conversation that took place between CP's president and the mayor prior to the formal announcement, to which there were no questions by the mayor regarding this decision."
 
Nenshi was adamant there was no connection between his hard stance against CPR's work negatively affecting citizens of the community and the layoffs.
 
"None whatsoever," he insisted. "CP wanted to get a ruling from the Canadian Transportation Agency. They never mentioned jobs in their submissions. In fact, during their submissions, they said there wasn't any work going on at night or there certainly wasn't any loud work going on at night. So, if there wasn't any work going on at night, what is it they are stopping? So, no, this is all on CP."
 
Nenshi said the big lesson he hopes will be learned learn from this situation is that if a company works with the community from the beginning, they won't end up in a situation where the regulator has to shut it down.
 
Nenshi has also come down hard on CPR regarding two major accidents in the southeast this year, six CPR cars derailing while crossing the sagging Bonnybrook bridge during the week of the flood crisis in June, and the derailing of a slow-moving train carrying 920,000 litres of natural gasoline, a highly explosive product earlier this month.
 
As a result of the latest incident, 12 businesses and 142 homes were temporarily evacuated and three roads were closed down during the busy rush-hour traffic.
 
The mayor said it has historically been difficult to get a meeting with CPR to express noise and safety concerns but, in the past two weeks, he has had fruitful meetings with CEO Hunter Harrison and COO-president Keith Creel.
 
"I've had the opportunity, unfortunately after two bad accidents, to spend some time with the No. 1 and No. 2 people at CP and particularly just had an excellent meeting with Creel last week in which we really agreed that we would work together, so I'm looking forward to that. We've got a bunch of stuff that we've got to get done. We've got to figure out how best to manage our transportation resources to accommodate their head office at Ogden yards. We have a number of conversations to have around using their right-of-way for better transit in southeast Calgary, as well as continuing to manage quality of life issues for the people who live and work along the tracks. I hope we'll be able to move forward on all of these."
 
One of Nenshi's biggest concerns as a result of the recent derailment is having a more responsive mechanism in place for such accidents involving dangerous goods.
 
He said it is unacceptable that it took an hour and a half for responders to figure out precisely what was in the cars that derailed.
 
"I don't think there was anything malicious going on. The problem is nobody knew," said the Mayor.
 
"We can know from the placard on the side of the train the broad category of what's in there, it is flammable, explosive, and so on. That helps us plan the evacuation. But our first responders need to know precisely what's in there. That's a paper driven approach which requires phone calls to the person who did the shipment to find out the material safety detour sheet and to get that back to the first responder. In this day and age the technology should be there that the first responders can just type in the serial code of the train car on their I-Phone and know exactly what's in there. We've got to get to that point."
 
Daryl Slade.

Vancouver Island
British Columbia
Canada