The Lac‐Mégantic Derailment, Corporate Regulation, and Neoliberal Sovereignty

Abstract

On July 6, 2013, Montreal, Maine, and Atlantic railcar 5017 hauling 72 tanker cars of Bakken crude oil derailed over the town of Lac-Mégantic, Quebec. The town erupted in a fiery inferno as 5,560,000 liters of highly flammable Bakken crude oil exploded over the town, killing 47 people and contaminating 558,000 tons of soil and local waterways. While Montreal, Maine, and Atlantic Rail Chairman Edward Burkhardt initially blamed the derailment on the lone engineer and local firefighters, this study shows how Transport Canada and the rail industry undermined regulatory and safety measures for several years before the derailment. This study uses a Foucauldian theoretical perspective to conceptualize and explain a new political mentality that transfers existing state regulatory authority to the corporate sector. This new mentality, neoliberal sovereignty, is composed of sovereign and neoliberal logics that monopolize "correct" trajectories of human economic development. This absolute market mentality merges with state sovereignty and eliminates existing safety and regulation frameworks to pursue unregulated corporate profits. Le 6 juillet 2013, un train de 72 wagons-citernes transportant du pétrole brute Bakken a déraillé de la ligne de chemin de fer de la Montréal, Maine et Atlantique, dans la ville de Lac-Mégantic au Québec. La ville c'est transformé en véritable enfer, alors que 5 560 000 litre de pétrole brute Bakken très inflammable ont fait explosé la ville, tuant quarante-sept personnes et contaminant 558 000 tonnes d'eaux et du sol de Lac-Mégantic et ses environs. Alors que le président de la MMA, Edward Burkhart, a d'abord blâmé l'ingénieur et le service d'incendie local, les études montrent que Transport Canada et l'industrie ferroviaire ont amoindrit les mesures de réglementation et de sécurité plusieurs années avant le déraillement. Cette étude utilise une perspective théorique foucauldienne pour conceptualiser et expliquer une nouvelle mentalité politique qui transfère l'autorité de régulations gouvernementales existantes au secteur des entreprises. Cette nouvelle mentalité, souveraines et néo-libérale, est composé de logique souveraines et néo-libérales qui monopolise les trajectoires « respectables » de développement économique humain. Cette mentalité de marché absolu fusionne avec la souveraineté de l'État et élimine les cadres de sécurité et les réglementations existantes pour les bénéfices des entreprises non réglementaires.

Environmental disasters and the elusiveness of prevention

“…As argued by Park (2022) the origin of many environmental disasters begins with policies of sovereign states that permit and support extractive and polluting industries. The risk of such "endogenous" environmental disasters can be exacerbated by deregulation, declining safety standards, agency capture, limited corporate liability and "neoliberal sovereignty" (Dunford, 2017), along with other root causesfor example, Giddens (1990), Oliver-Smith (2003, Vera-Cortes and Macias-Medrano (2020), Wisner et al (2012), Jarvis (2007). Other causal factors include regulatory and enforcement failures, inaction or epic mistakes (the Guadalupe Dunes oil leak, the Dust Bowl, the salinization of the Salton Sea); cost-cutting or sub-standard equipment (the Exxon Valdez tanker spill); overconfidence in engineered safety systems (nuclear disasters); experiments gone awry (the Chernobyl nuclear accident); financial pressures of a production ethos in extractive economies (the Mount Polley and Mariana Dam collapses); failure of relatively simple safety mechanisms in chemical plants along with more fundamental problems (the Bhopal and Seveso chemical releases); "confluence of events" or "cascade of failure" (the Fukushima Daichi nuclear accident) and policy mistakes (Love Canal toxic exposure).…”

“…In many cases, as seen in Table 1, avoidance interventions could have been made at various stages of environmental disaster incubation processes. In many cases cost-cutting measures precluded adequate allocations of human and other resources, resulting in untimely accidents; this was arguably a key factor in, for example, the Bhopal chemical leak (Vallero and Letcher, 2013), the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (Hoffman and Devereaux-Jennings, 2011), the Lac Megantic train derailment (Dunford, 2017) or the Seveso chemical release (Vallero and Letcher, 2013). Cost-cutting and inadequacies in resources applied toward environmental protection, in turn, are reflective of neoliberalism.…”