Washington District of Columbia USA - To add insult to injury, a protest filing at the STB by Robert J. Keach, the Estate Representative (the Trustee) of the post-effective date estate of Montreal Maine & Atlantic Railway Ltd. (MMA) could be a fly in the ointment for CP acquisition of CMQ.
 
At 287 pages, Keach goes through chapter and verse to support his argument that CP's acquisition of CMQ in the US should be put on hold until there is a resolution of 4 lawsuits brought by Keach and others against Soo Line subsidiary.
 
There is much discussion of CP's recent string of crude oil train wrecks along with depositions of CP's Vice President Safety Environment & Regulatory Glen Wilson, CP's Hazmat Program Manager Darlene Nagy, and Director Hazardous Materials Dangerous Goods James Kozey.
 
Excerpts:
 
The Trustee contends that any approval of the change of control of CMQ (together with Soo Line, the Applicants) should, at a minimum, be conditioned upon measures designed to change the safety culture at CP and Soo Line, given the risk to the public and the environment from the continued transport of crude by rail.
 
However, precisely what changes are needed will likely be determined by the outcome of the pending litigations.
 
Accordingly, approval should be withheld until those litigations conclude.
 
Based on what the Trustee understands to be the current schedules, all four cases should come to judgment in 2020.
 
The Trustee and other parties in interest have alleged these concerns in the four lawsuits pending in the United States and Canada, seeking to hold Soo Line, CP, and certain affiliates (collectively, the CP Entities) responsible for their roles in causing the explosion and the resulting death and devastation stemming from the derailment of a crude hauling, CP originated train, in Lake Megantic in 2013.
 
Indeed, Soo Line and CP are the only entities identified by the Trustee as potentially responsible for the Lake Megantic disaster to not have settled and contributed to a fund established to compensate the victims of the Lake Megantic derailment.
 
Worse, recent derailments (and accompanying explosions and fires) in Saskatchewan involving CP controlled trains, including trains using the supposedly safer tank cars, potentially raise new concerns about CP's safety culture and the overall safety of crude by rail.
 
The investigations into those incidents have just begun.
 
Rather than permitting the web of road that the CP Entities control to grow by virtue of the Transaction, the Board should exercise its authority to consider the public interest and decline to approve the Application at this time.
 
The Board should delay approval of the Transaction until there has been a final resolution in all currently pending actions against the CP Entities and the investigations into the most recent incidents in Canada have concluded.
 
John Barlow.