It's not two years since a rail accident caused by criminally negligent railroad managers killed 47 innocents in Lac Megantic, but Hunter Harrison is not afraid of accidents.
He's afraid of terrorists!
Yup, those dastardly terror types could blow up a train-load of Bakken crude any time, any place.
True enough. Yet this potential terror threat he sketches out seems to be strictly imaginary. Those 47 dead in Lac Megantic were totally real.
If there were actual terror cells active in North America, one would expect they might have struck by now. Yet, before and after 9/11 they've done exactly nothing. I think it's safe to say that they don't exist.
Sure, we get the regular headlines about the FBI/Homeland Security/CSIS/RCMP busting up some half-brained terror plot or another, but on close inspection these can uniformly be filed under "informers gone wild." You pay informers millions to lure dim-witted Muslim kids, or even more reprehensible, actual home-grown Canadian kids who have fallen through the massive cracks in our mental health-care infrastructure, into talking stupid shit into the ubiquitous police recording instruments, and voilà, you've busted another terror plot!
But Harrison wants rail traffic re-routed around major urban centres, just in case. This will of course be paid for by the public, not by the railroad that Harrison and his hedge fund bosses are busy looting. That will minimize the chances of a terror attack utilizing a "Bakken bomb" in the downtown core of a major city.
Good thinking, Hunter.
But think about this; we send tractor-trailer loads of highly explosive propane and gasoline and myriad other concoctions into urban cores every day, all across North America, with absolutely no security. Never has there been a terror attack on a single one!
What that tells me is that these terror cells we're supposed to be so afraid of simply don't exist.
Nevertheless, that's what Hunter Harrison felt compelled to talk about in his speech to the Canadian Club today, and it sure made good press!... completely took the eye off the fact that CP Rail's recipe for success since the Ackman putsch consists of nothing other than running longer trains faster with fewer employees.
That's a far greater threat to our safety than the imaginary "terrorists" he's waving around.
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