Canada Can Move Faster than U.S. on Oil Rail Cars

Canada has the ability to move faster than the United States in eliminating older oil tanker rail cars that are more dangerous in accidents, Transport Minister Lisa Raitt said on Friday.

"It really is about making sure that we have an effort that makes sense on a North American basis, understanding what the timeline is in the United States, which is longer than ours. We have the ability to move more quickly in Canada by virtue of our system, and we don't have a prescribed method of rule-making that they do in the United States," Raitt told reporters.

She did not make clear whether she was talking about mandating an earlier phase-out of the older DOT-111 cars than in the United States or allowing and encouraging rail and oil companies to take steps to discourage their use.

(Reporting by Allison Martell, writing by Randall Palmer)