Mr. Speaker, on March 24, 1994, I questioned the Minister of Transport on the rationalization of VIA Rail operations. The minister gave me the following answer:
If there is no dramatic improvement in VIA Rail's ability to provide service within the budgets allocated by the federal government, then some major changes will certainly be made.
I urge the minister to consider the November 1989 report of the federal Liberal task force on VIA Rail, whose members included over 15 Liberal members now sitting in this House and which made recommendations on what VIA Rail should do and on what could be done to make it profitable and efficient. One of the conclusions was this: "We must however show foresight by immediately introducing a program of expenditures-they were not talking about cutbacks or rationalization-of investments aimed at upgrading the whole VIA Rail network".
This report signed by more than 20 federal Liberal members shows how they felt about all this. The Minister of Transport would be well advised to consider it and perhaps to make it his policy to ensure that VIA Rail becomes profitable and efficient in the future, so that we in Eastern Quebec can stop working desperately to keep our rail service, as we have been doing for at least 10 years.
I urge the federal government to assume its responsibilities in this area before dealing with education and other issues. It is always advisable to look at the consequences of our actions to see if we did the right thing. I am thinking in particular of the hon. member for Bonaventure-Îles-de-la-Madeleine who has a major responsibility in this area because rail service in his region is cast in doubt year after year. The whole line that goes as far as the Maritimes is also called into question year after year.
One would think that, when federal parties go from being in opposition to forming the government, their vocabulary suddenly changes and they start defending regional underdevelopment, when we could turn rail line development into an important tool to provide our regions with the basic transport infrastructure needed for the development of small and medium-sized businesses in our communities, thus contributing to local growth, instead of always being on the defensive and only seeing the little cuts that can be made here and there.
What I found rather surprising is that when the Liberal Party of Canada was in opposition, their recommendations were, for example, to improve the equipment and infrastructure; to upgrade and introduce high-speed trains-they settled for low speed instead; to revive track-guided buses; to make fares and schedules more flexible; to involve the public.
In this sense, we think it is important to impose a moratorium on the elimination of rail service in Eastern Canada, as was done in Western Canada. Especially since we know that, in a 1989 report written in the last Parliament when it was in opposition, the government advocated involving the public in the future of VIA Rail. I would ask the current government why it does not honour the commitments it made when it was in opposition. We are not talking about independent members but about an official report of the national Liberal caucus, several members of which are now ministers who should make appropriate representations to the Cabinet.
I hope the hon. member for Bonaventure-Îles-de-la-Madeleine will convince his government to stand firm and honour the commitments it made in the report of the national Liberal caucus.