Just over a year after the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster killed 47 people and destroyed over half of the Quebec town’s downtown, Teamsters Canada has launched a new TV campaign urging the federal government to improve rail standards.
“Let’s get rail safety back on track!” (“Remettons la sécurité ferroviaire sur les rails!”) is the first TV campaign in the labour union’s more than 100-year history, said its Laval, QC-based director of communications, Stéphane Lacroix.
The new 30-second spot from Now Communications, a Vancouver-based agency that specializes in social marketing, union communications and electoral campaigns, shows a cargo train making its way through rural and urban settings.
The ad uses graphic overlays to spotlight some of the volatile materials transported by rail, such as sulphuric acid and ammonia, and informs viewers that there is an accident involving a train carrying these items every 60 hours.
“The federal government needs to do its job,” said the voiceover. “We need tougher safety regulations, more inspectors, more enforcement.” The spot concludes by showing a train passing alongside a residential area, as the voiceover continued, “Because for Canadians, trains are close to home.”
Lacroix said Teamsters has been working with the federal government since the mid-2000s to improve rail safety in the country, but the Lac-Mégantic incident underscored the need for better safety regulations.
“We felt the federal government wasn’t moving fast enough,” said Lacroix. “Not that they didn’t want to implement new regulations or improve the rail industry…but we felt more things needed to be done as fast as possible.”
The Teamsters point to an investigation into the Lac-Mégantic crash by the Transportation Board, which found that it was caused by 18 factors, primarily the employer’s safety violations and Transport Canada’s “inadequate control” of the rail company’s activities.
The 13-week TV campaign began running on NHL telecasts on Sportsnet, TSN, RDS and TVA Sports in the first week of October, and will continue through the first week of December. Hockey is a natural environment for the ads, said Lacroix, since men comprise an estimated 80% of the Teamsters’ 120,000 Canadian members.
“For the moment we are focusing on hockey and maybe in the future if we have another message to send to the government or the population of Canada, we’ll use other kinds of TV shows,” said Lacroix. The union is supporting the ads with sponsorship of closed-captioning announcements.
Lacroix said roughly one third of Canadians live near railway tracks. “It’s important for people to know that the Teamsters union is watching and checking what’s going on in the rail industry, and pushing to improve the health and safety not only of members, but the general public.”
