Too Critical to Fail: How Canada Manages Threats to Critical Infrastructure

In the summer of 2013, just as a small town in Quebec was decimated due to a train derailment, heavy rainfall prompted thirty Alberta communities to declare a state of emergency. Whereas a SWAT team surrounded train conductor Thomas Harding and brought him to court where he was charged with the deaths of forty-seven in Quebec, Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi emerged from the Alberta crisis as a folk hero.

As the Lac-Mégantic train derailment and the flood in Alberta demonstrate, political, econo...