Tri-City civic politicians are traveling to Winnipeg this week for the Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference and we hope it won't be all glad-handing, dining and posting grip-and-grin photos on Facebook.
Travelling on the taxpayers' dime, these councillors had better be doing some important work.
One of the more significant resolutions that will be debated — and this one is a no-brainer — is a Port Coquitlam resolution to get the government to make rail shippers of hazardous goods pay a fee for an independent emergency response program.
It shouldn't be up to local emergency responders to clean up a mess from a rail spill, and as the disaster at Lac-Mégantic proved, some disasters are out of scale to what services cities can provide.
An independent system is now in place for the oil industry and marine shippers, who pay to run the Western Canada Marine Response Corporation, which has 500 trained responders ready to deal with an oil spill.
At the very least, a similarly funded system for rail shipping will acknowledge the role that industry must play in preventing rail disasters.
