Marc Cassivi: It’s rare that we talk about the poster of a TV series, especially documentaries, but this image of wagons with a fuse, as if they were sticks of dynamite, sums up the series quite well, I think.
Philippe Falardeau: I really like that because it was an idea that allowed us both to not put a spectacular image of fire, and at the same time to have something visceral. A stick of dynamite in the shape of a train is a concept that is not too intellectual. There is something that comes to get us in the guts. And that made it possible to arrive with this subtitle which I loved and which I had a little more difficulty in selling, because there were fears that it looked like a camouflaged accusation. No one is named. I wanted to set the table for discussion, and with “ceci n’est pas une accident”, we immediately have material to start a conversation.
IMAGE PROVIDED BY TRUE
poster of Lac-Mégantic – this is not an accident
CM: And it refers to a sentence that shocked me in the documentary, when [le ministre des Transports de l’époque] Denis Lebel arrives in Lac-Mégantic shortly after the tragedy and declares, with very little empathy, that “an accident is an accident”. It really is completely trivializing what happened.
PF: This is something that shocked me too. After that, he continues and he says: “We will treat what happened like all the other accidents. It’s not like any other accident. It’s very different, and it needs to be handled very, very differently. At that time, his role was to stretch the time a bit because he already knew that he was about to leave his ministry a few days later. And the other thing is that he knew that it was under his ministry and under his mandate that the practice of the single driver in the trains had been approved.
M. C. : Ce que tu mets en lumière dans la série, c’est la complaisance de Transports Canada et des ministres qui n’ont pas voulu te parler face à une industrie qui s’autorégule, qui décide elle-même de ses normes de sécurité, qui prend le contrôle du lieu d’un sinistre, fait ses propres enquêtes lorsqu’il y a des morts, et en tire ses propres conclusions…
P. F. : On le devine que ce sont des compagnies qui ont un pouvoir énorme de lobbying, mais aussi une espèce de droit ancestral qui leur donne une arrogance qui n’existe pas dans d’autres secteurs, parce qu’elles ont bâti le pays.
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, ARCHIVES LA PRESSE
Philippe Falardeau, entouré de Nancy Guerin, coscénariste et productrice au contenu, et d’Annie Sirois, productrice
M. C. : C’est presque un État dans l’État…
P. F. : Exactement. Dans le quatrième épisode, il y a un mécanicien de locomotive dans l’Ouest qui a eu le courage de nous parler, et qui dit : « Quand je conduis ma locomotive, je regarde sur les côtés et c’est le Canada. Mais quand je regarde entre les deux rails, c’est le Royaume du Canadien Pacifique. Son président est le roi et c’est un monarque. Et les membres du conseil d’administration sont des barons et des baronnes. »
Ils ont une arme virtuelle qu’ils peuvent pointer sur les ministres et qui est la menace de l’économie.
Philippe Faladeau
Ils savent très bien que si l’économie se met à aller mal du jour au lendemain parce que les trains sont au ralenti ou sont arrêtés, ce sont les politiciens qui vont finir par en payer le prix. L’électeur va au plus petit dénominateur commun : c’est la faute du gouvernement. Je pense qu’une des solutions serait de séparer les mandats de la promotion de l’économie via le transport et la surveillance de ces compagnies-là, comme c’est le cas dans l’aviation. Parce que les citoyens sont dans les avions, alors que ce sont surtout des marchandises qui sont dans les trains.
M. C. : J’ai l’impression que le laxisme dont il est question dans la série, c’est le laxisme d’à peu près tout le monde. Il y a un avocat à Lac-Mégantic qui dit qu’on a peut-être été laxiste dans sa ville parce que le train fait rouler l’économie. Il y a un laxisme, évidemment, de la part de Montreal Maine & Atlantic [la société ferroviaire] and the federal government.
PF: I’m happy that [cet avocat] Daniel Larochelle said: “We too, at Mégantic, need to look each other in the eye. Everyone knew a little, but no one dared to speak. This is even more true at the Department of Transportation and the Transportation Safety Board (BTS). In Western Canada, when there was a tragedy in Field, the lead TSB investigator said that it should be referred to the RCMP. The next day, he was removed from the investigation. CP was sending legal letters to the TSB. He wanted to talk to us, arranged to meet us at a hotel in Calgary, but in the end, he let us down. He was too scared. It was like a spy movie.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY REAL
The Lac-Mégantic tragedy claimed 47 lives.
CM: The series reminds us that disasters like that of Lac-Mégantic, there can be others and in the heart of downtown Calgary, Montreal or Toronto, where the deaths will be counted in the hundreds or thousands. The federal government says it wants to protect citizens, but encourages the industry to make trains longer and faster, to the detriment of citizen safety, in a way.
PF: The entire safety system is based on the fact that the companies make their own rules, and Transport Canada assesses the implementation of these rules. Then the oil producers put the pressure on, the grain producers and the agricultural producers put the pressure on, and so on. There are 40 companies that were sued by the class action of the citizens of Lac-Mégantic. Quickly, these 40 companies offered compensation in exchange for a legal release. Which means they contributed tens of millions to the compensation fund to get immunity.
CM: Anne-Marie Saint-Cerny [dont le livre a servi de base au documentaire] is correct that companies knowingly accept that there will be deaths. But not just businesses…
PF: A former employee of the office of [l’ancien ministre des Transports] Marc Garneau told me that these people know that in the long term, there is a cost-benefit analysis of lives that is done because it represents too much money. Some companies prefer to live with a risk and pay the premiums if ever there are “accidental” deaths. This will always be more profitable than slowing down production.
CM: The dead are perceived as the collateral victims of a business that cannot do otherwise.
PF: Exactly. One of my favorite scenes is when I’m with [l’ancien contrôleur ferroviaire de la MMA] Richard Labrie, and that I ask him: “Parking an oil train on the main track on a slope without derailleurs, was that known to Transport Canada? Approved by Transport Canada? We feel that he is relieved to be able to answer yes, without any hesitation. It was a key moment for me. I realized it was much bigger than I thought.
Lac-Mégantic – this is not an accident is available on the Vrai platform this Tuesday.