Tank cars of crude oil, chlorine, and other dangerous chemicals will continue to secretly roll through Canadian cities, as Transportation Minister Lisa Raitt says she will take no further action to force the public disclosure of hazardous train contents.

“The stakeholders are satisfied with where we are right now,” she said at a press conference Friday. “They’re satisfied with the level of information that they’re receiving.”

Since a train carrying volatile Bakken oil derailed and exploded in Lac-Mégantic, Que., last July, killing 47, a chorus of citizens groups and politicians has been calling for rail companies to tell the public what potentially dangerous materials are chugging through their communities.

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Last November, the federal government began requiring rail companies to share information on hazardous goods with municipalities. CN, CP, and Via Rail now have to give quarterly reports to city officials on what kinds, and what quantities, of dangerous materials have passed through their boundaries in the previous months. But cities remain forbidden from publicizing that data — it’s mainly for the use of emergency first responders in case of spills.

Many say this isn’t enough. Raitt’s decision “reflects a failure to respond to the levels of public and municipal concern over the movement of dangerous goods by rail through urban areas,” said York University professor Mark Winfield.

Ajax Mayor Steve Parish has also called for hazardous cargo information to be made public, as has Toronto Councillor Josh Matlow, whose Ward 22 is adjacent to a Canadian Pacific track.

“Residents want to know what hazardous materials — and how much — are going through their neighbourhoods where they’re raising their kids,” Matlow said. “They feel like all this information is behind a veil of secrecy, without any reasonable explanation from government about why this is so.”

Transporting crude oil by rail has become much more common in Canada recently, spiking from 500 carloads in 2009 to 140,000 in 2013. In the last five years, meanwhile, there have been almost 300 train derailments in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. The number of tank cars carrying oil along the CP track that cuts through Toronto’s Junction neighbourhood has also increased.

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Fred Millar, a U.S.-based rail transport consultant, says that making hazardous cargo public can help citizens pressure corporations to make their trains safer.

“The main thing is to have the public and media informed,” he said, “so they can put pressure on the rail companies to reduce risk.”

Still, Raitt said the recent regulations providing information to cities and first responders were enough.

“There’s lots of communities in Canada, so I tend to like to work with the larger stakeholders like the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs, and where we are now is satisfactory.”

Raitt also announced the harmonization of symbols on the sides of trucks and trains used to identify hazardous cargo. The placards will now be the same across Canada and the U.S.

With files from Jessica McDiarmid

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