Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak to the amendment by my colleague from the NDP and to the support he has received from the Reform Party.
This is an important discussion. I sat on the committee and from my railway experience I can say that this is obviously something that has stacked up against the railways for a number of years. If we are going to have a successful railway industry and a transportation sector which will deliver the services required, there must be a significant balance.
In 1987 when the Tory government brought in the NTA, it brought in some regulatory changes but stacked them on top of each other. Because of that stacking there were some problems with the act which these amendments are trying to change. The rationale is that if we are going to go to a more commercially driven transportation sector, the process must be in place for it to be successful.
Most intriguing is that on the one hand the Reform Party has continually said that governments should not get in the way of free market enterprise and allow companies to make decisions on their own. We all know that commercially fair and reasonable means that agencies are given the objective of making decisions on behalf of two complainants. For instance when a shipper disputes what the railway would like to charge there must be some form of criteria laid out in order for them to make decisions and arrive at a result. The process in the amendment the minister has added which affects all parties is intended to make sure that the parties are relatively successful in Canada.
One thing the opposition has failed to bring forward so far in the discussion but which came forward in committee is that since 1987 the line rates and the cost to the railways have increased 30 per cent. In fact railway companies in this country have had significant problems in making a profit. I know the NDP are suggesting this but I am quite surprised that the Reform Party is in agreement. If they are suggesting that the government bail out the railways every time they do not make a profit, we can then go back to the regulatory system which is in place now.
People would go to the agency only for one reason. The agency would make a decision on whether it is fair and commercially viable for the railway to up its cost per commodity. Under the present system, that has not taken place and therefore, there have been problems with it all along. The intent of these new regulations and changes is to put the balance back where it belongs. It is the same argument with labour-management relations. If there is not a good balance then it does not work. The same thing occurred with the 1987 amendments. Of course, the grain farmers and shippers in
western Canada are opposed to this. There will be stronger, businesslike discussions and debate which will go on before they go to the agency.
I reiterate that when I was in committee not everybody agreed that this was a bad thing as the member who spoke previous to me suggested. There were different groups of thought. If we go to a commercially based industry and system and if the government stops subsidizing the railway industry, it would have to have the means and the capability to be successful. That is what this rebalancing does.
The amendment the government has proposed will prove over the years that this is good for Canada in the long run. It is not going to be successful if we use the short term arguments of the opposition. We will be revisiting this as we did in the 1920s, in the 1940s and in the 1970s and bailing out railway industries because we have not allowed them the tools to be successful. That is why this amendment is so important to the overall viability of the industry itself and of course to all of us who need to get our products to market.