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NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair suggests the rail disaster that killed 47 people in the Quebec town of Lac-Megantic last month may have resulted from years of industry deregulation.

In a speech before members of the United Food and Commercial Workers International union in Chicago — home of the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic railway’s parent company and board chairman Ed Burkhardt — Mulcair laced into Conservatives on both sides of the border who say organized labour is a thing of the past and that the economy is best served when left to its own devices.

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Just as cuts to food safety led to the “largest beef recall in Canadian history” last year, he said in prepared remarks, “years of loosening environmental protections” led to a massive oil spill from a Michigan pipeline into the Kalamazoo River.

“Across the board, conservative governments are gutting the rules meant to protect the public and imposing industry self-regulation instead,” he argued. “Experts from the Transportation Safety Board and Transport Canada are still investigating the role decades of deregulation played in the tragedy of Lac-Megantic.”