Bill C-46 (Historical)

Railway Continuation Act, 2007

An Act to provide for the resumption and continuation of railway operations

This enactment provides for the resumption and continuation of railway operations and imposes a final offer selection process to resolve matters remaining in dispute between the parties.

Railway continuation Act, 2007

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have been in the House for quite some time and I understand the difference between relevance and irrelevance when it comes to debate.

I can recall, if members do not mind me regaling with an anecdote of a very competent colleague of mine who, when we were opposition, had this very intense issue with which he was completely seized. It was about turning to ethanol fuels. Every debate in which he engaged was about nothing except ethanol and ethanol fuels. One day we were talking about banking and he stood and said, “Mr. Speaker, my colleague, who is responsible for finance, knows everything you need to know about banking and I will let her speak. Let me talk to you about ethanol”.

This reminds me of my colleague from Burnaby who is on the transport committee with me. I do not think I heard him say one thing about labour relations, which is what the bill is supposed to be about. He talked about safety.

I look forward to having a debate later on about safety and the railways as we attack the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities. I am delighted that the member for Burnaby—New Westminster has decided that will be our target for today. Like him, I look forward to doing that.

However, I want to ask him if he will acknowledge that what he did was introduce an entirely different element. When I make an intervention, I guess I will speak about how we work for working families because I did not hear how he will do that under the bill.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, that is where the hon. member and I differ. We are hitting the exact issue that is most fundamental to this whole discussion.

We have had 18 months now of CN employees saying that we must improve safety standards and CN management saying no way, that it will not do that. CN management has been stonewalling. We now have a piece of paper in front of us, Bill C-46, that gives CN management the right to impose whatever final agreement they want to see.

Labour relations have been poisoned at CN because CN management refuses to deal with the fundamental issue, which is the issue of safety.

Broader than this is the fact that most Canadians are also concerned about the safety issues. We see rail shutdowns, people dying, environments devastated and communities threatened because CN safety practices have, to say the least, declined. To say the most, they have probably been gutted because the American corporation just does not understand that things must be balanced more appropriately rather than always thinking of executive bonuses and the million dollars a week they want to pay to the CEOs.

Most Canadians are actually concerned about safety. Most Canadians want to see a safer rail system. Most Canadians in British Columbia where I come from are concerned about the accidents and the loss of lives that we are seeing because CN is not being a responsible corporate citizen. Instead, we have this legislation which, instead of labour relations, imposes through CN management a blank cheque to do whatever they want to do in the coming months, which is why this is bad policy and bad politics. It is bad public service and that is why the NDP is voting against this bad legislation.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I was fascinated to hear in my hon. colleague's speech earlier about the $56 million a year that the CEO gets and then, on top of that, that fact that the government is now giving him a blank cheque in order to impose his agreement on CN.

I guess the question in the simple street vernacular of the time could be: Who is your daddy? What a situation we have here. We have an industry that has been running itself into the ground beside the tracks because of its accident rate. We have had workers asking again and again for some standards on safety and we have a CEO making $56 million a year. The government, with support from the Liberals and their friends in the Bloc, are forcing closure on any of the issues around safety and allowing CN a blank cheque to write a new contract.

What does my colleague make of this?

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, in short, this is bad. Simply put, no member of Parliament, if they are responsible, should be voting for this legislation. If they are thinking about the needs of their communities, the needs of the shippers and about the loss of life that comes from this escalating accident rate, no member of Parliament should be voting for the legislation.

I am perplexed, as I am sure the hon. member is, as to why the Bloc supported closure to push this thing through and why the Liberals are supporting the legislation when Canadians are concerned about safety and when the employees have said that we need to deal with safety as a Parliament.

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank all hon. members for clarifying the issues. The issues are divided into two parts. One, of course, is the safety issue, which has nothing to do with the bill but we will address it and I want to address it, especially because it was raised by my colleague on the committee. The other one, of course, is the economic package. The economic package is subdivided into two parts: one that deals with the specific situation, and that is CN workers and CN itself; and the other one is the implications of that economic package on the rest of the economy.

Since my hon. colleague from Burnaby—New Westminster wanted to address the issue of whether or not shippers would agree, I have a list of about 20 of them who approached me in my office about what we ought to do. While we have a labour relations situation, negotiations have been collapsing with CN and their workers. I will not comment on why negotiations have collapsed but they have collapsed.

Now we have the Grain Growers of Canada, which employs some 70,000 people, and all their members have asked for a resumption of service. Otherwise, those 70,000 employees will be put at great disadvantage and may be out of a job.

For example, Canfor Pulp and Paper, which is in my colleague's province, would employ some 7,300 people and about another 2,200 independent contractors. It will be completely out of business if it does not get access to the service that CN is supposed to provide. I will say more on that in a moment.

Millar Western Forest Products Limited, with a mere 275 employees, which is not as important as the 2,800 at CN, but its employees have families that they too must support.

For example, Maple Leaf Foods has come forward and said that this collective agreement is not just about CN and its employees, that it is about its workers as well. Some 24,000 families depend on each and every one of its workers and if this collective agreement is of import to the people at CN and its workers, then it is important, as my colleague said, to everybody else that works for Maple Leaf Foods.

Let us talk about the Forest Products Association, 20 associated members around the country, many of whom rely exclusively on CN to get their product to market. They came forward and said that they need that service. They said that they cannot be held hostage by the differences between the management and the employees of CN. They demanded that the Government of Canada, which included all the parliamentarians, the Parliament of Canada, come forward and take care of Canada's collective interests which includes all of them.

The Canadian Wheat Board is not next door to my riding but it claims to represent some 65,000 to 70,000 growers, farmers and their families. It cannot get its product to market because CN employers and CN employees cannot come to an agreement. What does the Wheat Board do? It turns to the Parliament of Canada, to the Government of Canada and asks that we get those people back to work and that we have them find a solution that is consistent with the best interests of all Canadians.

If we are talking about shippers, about other employees or about other employers who are dependent on this service, then we need to keep those people in mind as well. We should keep in mind, for example, the Western Canadian Shippers Coalition, a coalition just in western Canada that has 280,000 people who depend on the activity of all of those shippers. It is saying that if we cannot get that service that it will not be able to provide work for its people.

What do we tell all of those families? Do we tell them that we will not be involved or do we tell them some airy fairy story about the way that relationships are going? We are in fact saying, and this is a collective “we” in this instance, that there are various ways to achieve a negotiated settlement, one being final offer selection because they have not been able to reach a decision on their own.

A final offer selection means that one side gives us its best and the other side gives its best and our arbitrator will pick the one that he or she considers to be the most appropriate.

Will it necessarily mean that it is going to be appropriate to choose the union model or the management model? We do not know. They have not been presented yet. I think it is a little bit of a red herring to talk about the salary of the CEO of Canadian National, because of course everybody is offended when they hear that somebody is making $56 million. I do not think there is a parliamentarian here who makes more than $150,000, other than cabinet ministers. I do not want to begrudge anyone what they earn, but it does not come close to $56 million.

Does the man deserve it? Does he merit it? I do not know, but that is not the issue. The issue is whether we will allow all these hundreds of thousands of people who work in the economy of Canada and other industries the opportunity to continue to work as a result of the solving of a problem that is resident in Canadian National and its employees' union.

What caused that collapse? I really do not know. I know that they have turned down a series of offers as they have gone through this. I think every parliamentarian understands that when parties get into negotiations there are some things upon which they can agree and some things upon which they do not agree, and when there is a final decision and they vote, they turn it down.

My colleagues in the NDP are constantly speaking about the auto industry. By the way, as a little bit of an aside, I was pleased to be the minister responsible for putting together a $500 million auto package. It was the very first time in 20 years that the Canadian government entered into an agreement to ensure that there was an investment with the auto industry to keep jobs in Canada. It was worth $500 million and it tied the province of Ontario to doing a similar investment, so that was $1 billion.

Therefore, I am putting that forward because I think that makes me perfectly qualified to be able to talk about, for example, the Ford Motor Company. It came forward and said on February 23 that it had already had to shut down its car plant because of the strike at Canadian National and it could not continue to delay parts shipments across the boarder.

It asked us what we wanted it to do. Did we want it to tell its head office that it could locate assembly plants south of the border because it could get access to the parts and to the final product? Or did we want to ask the government to make sure that everybody addresses their labour issues in a fashion that is consistent not only with their personal interest, legitimate as it may be, but with the interests of all Canadians?

I am really quite surprised that the Conservative government has actually finally moved on this.

Mr. Speaker, I know that might offend you, but it is nothing personal.

We wish that we had not come to this and that the government had given an indication much earlier. To its credit, the government did that about four weeks ago, and so here we are, but the macroeconomic indicators are the ones that we have to deal with. The mining industry, the forestry industry, the automotive industry, the chemical sectors and the farming industry all predict slowdowns and closings if their rail service is not restored. We need to have it restored. It must be restored.

As an example and only as an example, in eastern Canada industries rely almost exclusively on CN for any rail service to access their market. Their only other choice, of course, is trucking.

I have already given the House a list of the people in western Canada who say they cannot get their goods and products to market unless CN comes back to deliver that service. In an environment where there is a shortage of some 30,000 long haul truck drivers in this country, eligible, qualified and capable truck drivers, they do not have another option. If we want to get our products to market, we need to have that service continued.

If we want to guarantee the jobs to Canadians everywhere in this country we need to make sure that service is provided. For a party, and it does not matter whether it is on the left or right of a spectrum, or whether it is sane or insane, to suggest that the rest of the country can be held hostage by one particular company and its employees is absolutely shameful.

It is equally shameful to expect that a company can get people at the last minute, whether they are management or not, to fill the jobs of qualified employees and provide a service that is safe. It is unconscionable. We are not talking about people moving checkers across a checkerboard. We are talking about employees who must have training that is absolutely and completely perfect to ensure the safety of both people and product. We are not getting that now.

That is why earlier on in the day I had a reluctant compliment for my colleague, the Minister of Labour, because he at least tried to approach this in a dispassionate fashion. He wanted to deal with this on the labour side. I said that was fine.

We in the Liberal Party believe in negotiated settlements. We believe in negotiation, in the collective bargaining system, but we also believe in responsibility. If this represents a responsible approach, and we are not predicting which side of the final offer solution the arbitrator is going to come to, what we do need is something to go forward. That is what has happened. We have started to talk about safety issues and infrastructure. Transportation infrastructure has been absolutely crucial to the building of this country.

Mr. Speaker, I know you are always attentive on history lessons. I am not going to begin one, but if it were not for transportation issues and the way they have been addressed by governments in the past, including my own government of the past, we would not have had the building of this country. The new government is fond of saying that for 13 years the Liberals did not do anything while it has done everything in the last 13 months. It appears that it has not done anything in 13 months. In fact, we are now up to this situation.

I know that my colleague from Burnaby says CN has three accidents per day. I think the actual figures are that every third day there is an accident on a primary line, and it is not something that is acceptable. Is this part of the collective agreement and the collapse of the collective agreement? While it may be part of the negotiations, those were not the ones that I heard were voted down.

We should be talking about the Minister of Transport who is not even in the discussions about what to do to maintain the viability of our transportation infrastructure in this country.

When I gave an indication a moment ago about eastern Canada's almost complete reliance on CN and its system, I could have said the same thing about many other parts of Canada. For instance, B.C. Rail was bought out by CN and now we have the predominance of CN in that particular market as well.

If we cannot ensure that the rail infrastructure provides a competitive and efficient system of delivery for all of our shippers, then we are putting the jobs of hundreds of thousands of Canadians in jeopardy. There are 320 communities around the country that rely almost exclusively on the industries that are dependent on Canadian National for delivery of product to market.

So when the NDP asks what we would do when those communities are in jeopardy, there is only one thing that we on the Liberal side can say and do. Every one of those 320 communities and every one of the families in those communities is as valid and as viable a Canadian as any other. We have a commitment and a legal obligation as parliamentarians to ensure that the lifeblood of a thriving economy is part and parcel of their lives as well.

I do not want to address the standard of living and quality of life issues. I am just talking about actually having a job to go to so that people can make decisions on a daily basis about how to care for their families, how to keep their communities growing, and how to keep that bond, the glue, that makes Canadians Canadian, that makes Canada a viable entity and a country that is first in the world.

When we talk about infrastructure and transportation, we also need to address the issues that, to the credit of some members, have been raised here, and yes, they have to do with safety.

It is absolutely shameful that the Minister of Transport has over the course of the last several months completely ignored the exhortations of members of the committee to appear before the committee and address the safety issues, especially as they relate to CN. They have nothing to do with the collective bargaining process that has been ongoing for several months, but they have everything to do with the responsibility of good government and management on the government side for a minister who is responsible for the maintenance of the infrastructure and who is absolutely responsible, legally responsible, for the safety of rail travel in this country.

Those committee members and I, as a member of that committee, have been demanding that he appear and address those issues. In fact, colleagues on both sides of this House will recall that I raised this issue in debate about a month and a half ago.

As for the person who responded when I said that we have been looking for the audit on CN, which was conducted by the government, to be made public and to be made available to the committee for study, and which a national television program aired, that person said the minister could not and would not give it because the company, CN, forbade him to.

It is absolutely ludicrous. Let us imagine that a minister of the Crown puts forward moneys and a mandate for an inquiry and then will not release it because the company that is under investigation says no, he cannot do it. I asked the company why it was putting this constraint on the minister and it said it was not.

I raised it in the House. Not the Minister of Transport but the Minister of Labour leaned forward and, to paraphrase, said, “The hon. member is the first one who has raised this. Why does he not ask the Minister of Transport?”

Two days later, the report appeared on the website. It is available for everybody. Here is what it said. After that first inquiry, which was available to the minister in spring of last year in draft format, transport officials sat down with CN officials and they went through a list of incidents, accidents and contraventions of the code and asked what CN was going to do to change that. CN committed to a series of changes.

Six months later, there was an audit to see the extent to which CN had complied with that report to which it had signed off. The minister refused to release that audit. I did not see the NDP ask for it.

We got it. If people were to read that audit today, they would see damning evidence that CN management has created a climate, a culture, of non-compliance with the agreement that it had already struck.

So if my hon. colleague wants to address an issue of collective bargaining in that context, let us do it and let us put the Minister of Transport on the carpet, but let us leave this issue for what it is. It is a collective bargaining situation that has enormous impact on the rest of Canada and which we need to ensure gets resolved so that the millions of Canadians who are dependent on this agreement, whenever it is struck, can continue with their lives.

Let us not forget as well that the Parliament of Canada and the Government of Canada are not imposing a solution on either side. Through its arbitrator CN will pick the better of the two offers when they are put forward. We have a right and an obligation to ensure that process continues while the benefit to the commonwealth of all Canadians is taken care of.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I had the fortune, or misfortune, of being at the not so recent Liberal leadership convention and there was not as much emotion or energy put forward by many of the speakers there as has been encapsulated in the last 20 minutes. I lament the fact that the octaves used, the approach and the passion on this one issue, never mind the ambition toward the leadership, was absent. It is too bad that the delegates and Canadians watching missed that type of performance. It was Parliament on the Thames. It was remarkable in terms of the depth and misinformation which was wrapped in the deep worry for the children and orphans as was almost alluded to in my hon. colleague's speech.

There are two important questions.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Tiny Tim.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

We will not reference Tiny Tim yet, but it might come later in his answer to my question.

The important issue being raised by the CN workers that live in my riding in northwestern British Columbia, CN being one of the main rail lines and an increasingly important one, has been consistently in respect of safety. The member talked about what came forward from the report that had been sat on and not addressed by the current government and the issues we raised in the last Parliament when his party was in government. Consistently we were hearing from the ground, from the drivers and engineers, that this was a problem and that there would be consequences to these cutbacks in safety, not just consequences in terms of the environmental and human costs but also consequences economically.

The shippers in my region have consistently and with growing concern raised the issue of inconsistent rail service. Freight traffic is delayed. The member talked about the auto industry. One of the leading complaints from the auto industry with respect to rail to this point is that it just cannot get good service as the profits for this company have soared over the last number of years and the personal profits of its CEO have certainly soared to some $50 million a year.

My hon. colleague clearly cares deeply and passionately for the workers, their families, their children, their children to be and generations past and forward, but if one of the issues being raised by workers is that the safety standards have fallen so low, as has been reported, then clearly that is the issue they have raised at this moment with the government. Instead, his party has chosen to support railroading and bulldozing them and saying, “Those just simply do not matter. Figure it out. We will talk about it later”.

How can he reconcile these two absolutely opposite views of the need to have a safe and dependable rail service in this country both for our economy and the families that depend on that economy?

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I suppose that when one is in an environment where the word “adversarial” approaches commonplace, one takes compliments however they appear, backhanded or not.

I am glad that the colleague opposite attended a Liberal convention and that he has now been impressed with the passion of the commitment of Liberals, those who succeeded in leadership and those who succeeded in supporting leadership. I guess he was so successfully influenced by that that he is wearing red today. He probably has a Freudian desire to be part of a party, a nation-building organization that actually has some objectives that are nationwide. It must have come as a complete surprise to him to actually see people debate things that are of interest to all Canadians. It is good for him; it is a maturing environment and I suppose he will be happy to be part of that process.

Let me address the substance of whatever kernel of question there might have been in his intervention. I am assuming he really does think that the collective bargaining that collapsed had everything to do with rail safety and nothing else, and that those 2,800 employees at CN were concerned with rail safety and nothing else. I am assuming, because I want to attribute positive motive to what he said, that those 2,800 employees were concerned about the impact of railways on the environment through which they travel and nothing else. I have to assume as well that he and his merry friends are also only concerned about the environmental impacts and nothing else. Then I guess I would also be living in the fairyland which they call home.

The truth of the matter is that the collective bargaining struck an impasse because the entire package was not to the liking of the membership.

Do we as parliamentarians support the principle of collective bargaining in order to achieve a negotiated settlement between management and employees? Of course we do. Do we as parliamentarians support the right of all Canadians to benefit from the economic activity of others, directly and indirectly? Of course we do. That is why we are here, but perhaps the colleague opposite has yet to grasp that concept and continues to adhere to a position that is inconsistent with the reality of today.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for his informative speech. It is very important that we as parliamentarians share our insight and our knowledge about the sensitivities that have to be taken into account, particularly as I think we all share a common view that there must be respect for the collective bargaining process and that there is a balance that has to be struck.

I do not for a moment think that parliamentarians are going to be swayed by rants about how much somebody makes in a particular position. I do not believe it is relevant to the debate. There have been questions from a couple of members relating to the safety of the rail system and obviously its impact not only on the workers but on the public and certainly the best interests of other stakeholders.

I wonder if the member could comment for other parliamentarians and Canadians at large about the processes that take place within the rail industry that are regulated to ensure that proper maintenance, monitoring and reparations are made as necessary to ensure that the rail system is safe if it is operating.

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I do not want to alarm my colleague or any Canadians following the debate about some of the things that need to be done in order to ensure that rail safety complies with the expectations of all Canadians, whether they are shippers or whether they are travellers.

The fact of the matter is that the Government of Canada, through the Minister of Transport, has the legal obligation to ensure that safety measures are complied with and that safety measures are observed and imposed. The Parliament of Canada through its transport committee is considering a particular bill that has more to do with aviation but we have brought into the picture the issue of transportation via the railway system.

The hon. member ought to be comforted by the fact that at least Parliament is being vigilant to ensure that the Minister of Transport abides by his legal obligations to ensure that Canadians have a safe network of rail travel. There are difficulties and the committee is trying to keep the minister's feet to the fire, so to speak, to ensure that he meets those obligations.

My hon. colleague from Mississauga will remember the time when there was a derailment in Mississauga with some rather hazardous material on board. The minister at the time took measures to ensure that we would have appropriate train transportation that would safeguard rural communities.

I might end off with this as well. We still need to take a look at the interests of all employees, whether they work for CN or they work for someplace else. The port of Vancouver, people at the port of Prince Rupert, the organizations in Richmond, all came before members of committee, and I am sure before the government, and said that those shippers in British Columbia--

[Brian Fitzpatrick, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

What about the workers in Canada?

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

--and I am sure the member from Skeena probably has them in his riding, cannot access those eastern markets. The--

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

We are going to have to move on. The hon. member for Timmins--James Bay on debate.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to this very important issue. It speaks to a number of areas of vital importance for Canadians.

At the outset, I was quite surprised to hear the Liberal Party say that the CEO of CN made $56 million a year. That is completely irrelevant to this discussion. In fact, it cheapens the debate to talk about how much is made at the top. What it signals clearly is how much is being paid out in dividends and how much people are making off the CN line, while the issue of safety is relegated to one of those dead-end tracks. For New Democrats to talk about this incredible disparity and gap is somehow beneath the discussion, but it is very pertinent to the discussion.

I am going to speak about four areas with respect to the bill. There is the issue of safety, which we as New Democrats have raised consistently in this debate. There is a discussion of the need for an infrastructure plan that addresses our industrial capacity and how one part of the country can work with another. There is the question of accountability, both at CN and the government. Then there is the issue of the fundamental right of collective bargaining and how that has to be respected.

I and many Canadians are very close to the whole idea of railways. There is something in our psyche where the sound of the rail hearkens us back to something. I will talk about my family's background in the rails. My mother and father's families either worked in the mines or on the rail lines.

My great-grandfather, John P. McNeil, worked on the Sydney Flyer, bringing the train back into Cape Breton. John P. was apparently quite the man in his day. He claimed he could always tell someone who was bringing booze into Sydney because a man who carried alcohol in his bag put that bag down with just a bit more care than if it were full of underwear. In fact, my grandfather picked up on that. When he would go on a trip, my grandmother would ask him how long he would be away. If he said he was getting a one bottle satchel, that was for one night. If it was a two bottle satchel, that was for the weekend. If it was a four bottle satchel, he was going home to Cape Breton.

My grandfather, like so many men of his generation, left Cape Breton on the CPR. In fact I still have his card. When he was age 17, he travelled on a CPR card to work in the mines of Porcupine. The mines were opened by another railway, the TNO, the time is no option railway, which is now the ONR line. When it was founded, it was built in a very interesting manner. It was built to stop the francophone settlement in northern Ontario. The good burghers of Upper Canada were afraid of all the francophone Catholics coming over the upper part of Lake Témiscaming and had to put some English settlers there. When they hit mileage 103 of the railway line north of North Bay, they hit the largest discovery of silver in North American history, and that opened the mining camps of the north. That is just a side issue, but it shows how much our history is tied up in the railway.

I live at mileage 104. If any people watching TV want to visit me, I am up the street on the rail line from the largest discovery of silver in North American history. Every night the train goes past my house. It carries the sulphuric acid which come from the Rouyn-Noranda smelter and the Kidd Creek smelter. We can hear that train coming it seems like hours in advance of its passing because it is hundreds of cars long.

This leads me to the issue of safety. When a train that long is carrying sulphuric acid, we need to ensure the proper working people on that line to ensure safety. If that train goes over, it is a very serious issue. We just had a spill in the Ontario Northland line this past week and a half on the Blanche River. A sulphuric acid train went over spilling into the Blanche River, causing great concern because it is right in the middle of our dairy farming belt.

Therefore, the issue of safety, when we talk about trains travelling across such a massive distance, is very crucial. It is crucial in terms of this debate because we have to talk about a management philosophy, the philosophy of reinvesting in the infrastructure, which is the second point of my whole discussion today. The management philosophy about safety is important.

I do not want to mix apples and oranges for the folks back home. The sulphuric acid spill accident, about which I spoke, was on the Ontario Northland line, which is not a CN line, but I spoke about it in terms of the issue of safety. When we look at the CN lines and the cars that run on them, some of these trains are two kilometres long, carrying everything from hydrochloric acid, chlorine, sulphuric acid. When we think of all our little towns across the Prairies where the trains run right behind people's backyards, safety has to be number one. These are in a sense two kilometre long missiles carrying these kinds of gases and acids.

When I speak about my number one concern, and that is the issue of safety, we can look at the safety audit that was done on CN Rail. It said that there were numerous problems with safety inspections and with CN's safety management practices. Again, we are getting back to the whole issue of a corporate philosophy.

The auditors found a “significantly high rate of safety defects”, in the order of 54% on the locomotives they inspected, with problems ranging from freight gear defects to too much oil accumulated on locomotive and tanks.

The auditors identified issues relating to rail defects, ranging from damaged rail to rail where there were numerous cases of missing bolts and cracked splice bars.

Train crossings in the audit were another major problem, with 26% of the crossings inspected had inadequate sight-lines. The majority were unprotected crossings. They found major problems all along.

The second phase of the report saw that many front line employees said they felt pressured to get the job done. The audit said that current practices allowed locomotives with safety defects to continue in service.

This leads me to the number three issue that I will speak about, which is accountability. The issue of safety has been raised and the threat that it poses. Since 2000, we have seen a massive escalation in the number of rail accidents on the CN lines. We are not talking about an accident here or an accident there. Any accident of these rail cars with what some of them carry is serious enough. However, when there is incident after incident it goes back to the whole issue of a corporate culture that has to be addressed.

I bring this up today because these are the issues about which the rail workers have spoken. They are concerned about this. I would venture to guess this is part of the problem of the breakdown in relations between management and workers at CN. People on the front line are growing increasingly concerned about the corporate culture, in terms of safety, from the U.S. corporation that is running CN.

Let me talk about the last two months or so.

On January 8, 24 cars of a 122 car freight train derailed at Montmagny, Quebec, 60 kilometres east of Quebec City.

On January 14, there was a derailment near Minisinakwa Lake in northern Ontario, dumping more than 30 cars, one containing paint supplies, into the water.

On February 28, hydrochloric acid spilled from cars on the CP Rail line that went off the tracks in the Kicking Horse Pass canyon.

On March 1, a CN freight train derailment in Pickering disrupted VIA service on the Toronto-Montreal-Ottawa corridor and commuter service into Toronto.

On March 4, grain was spilled near Blue River, British Columbia, two hours north of Kamloops, when 27 cars in the westbound train fell off the track.

On March 10, rail traffic along CN's main freight line through central New Brunswick was disrupted until the next day by a 17 car derailment in the Plaster Rock area.

On March 12, 3,000 VIA passengers had to board buses on the first day of the March break after train service in the Toronto-Montreal-Ottawa corridor was disrupted after a CN freight train derailed near the station in Kingston.

That is quite a sorry little record in the space of only a few short months.

When we ask about accountability of CN management, we have the CEO getting paid $56 million a year. Obviously, the investors think he is doing a good job, which leads us to the growing gap between management and workers at CN because questions of safety have been raised. The question of having adequate staff along the lines has been raised. Yet we see a massive increase in accidents. Therefore, we have to speak about what kind of corporate culture exists in CN where one man gets paid $56 million a year while the workers have to deal with trains that jump off the tracks at an alarming rate.

That is the issue of safety.

There is also the issue of accountability with government. We have seen very little in terms of a government response to growing concerns of public safety. I do not want to speculate about the threat of a major derailment with chlorine gas in an urban area, but we have to start realizing that if something is not done, something could happen.

We are not seeing any action from government. The Transportation Safety Board review rates of accidents are shockingly low. Yet when we talk about what is at stake, we would expect that any of these accidents would involve major inquiries and an examination at every step along the way to ensure that these things did not happen again, but it is not happening.

What we have in this situation is a growing gap of discontent between the people who are on the front lines, the people who are literally risking their lives, and members of upper management, who are paid $56 million a year.

The Liberal Party tells us that a CEO makes $56 million a year is irrelevant. The average Canadian should not bother themselves about that. The little peasant peons that make up the Canadian public should not worry about how these mandarins live in their upper echelon chambers with their $56 million a year payout. I am not speaking about this man in particular, but if any of these CEOs really botch it in particular, they are guaranteed a golden parachute. The average Joe and Josephine citizen back home does not get a golden parachute if they botch it at work. If they botch it at work, they are gone. They are down the road. Of course they are not getting $56 million a year, but then they are also not responsible for safety records like we see at CN.

The second issue about we have to talk about is the need for an industrial infrastructure plan for our country so we look at transportation as a whole.

The hon. member for Eglinton—Lawrence talked about how we were competing against truck driving. That is true. He said that there was a shortage of 30,000 truckers in the country. I live in a part of the country where many families are fed by truckers. Many of my neighbours are truckers. It is interesting, this race to the bottom that we see in the trucking industry. I have truckers telling me that they are having to compete against workers now who are being brought in on HRD projects. Trucking companies do not want to pay a proper rate to haul trucks. Now, suddenly, there is a shortage. Is there a shortage of truckers or is there a shortage of truckers who are willing to drop the price down below what Canadians would do it?

That is the time we see Conservatives intervening in the economy. They do not intervene to help build an economy. They think that is all kind of socialist mishmash. However, when it comes to driving the rates down by bringing in truckers to work at lower rates than an average Canadian could afford, that is a good use of our taxpayers dollars, according to the Conservatives. Bringing these workers in on work contracts is good.

A good friend of mine, who a truckers trying to make a living, applied for a job in a trucking company. It offered him the kilometre rate. He said that he would love to work for the trucking company, but he already had a mortgage on his house. He would have had to take out a second mortgage just so he could work for it. That is unsustainable.

So rail is having to compete against trucking and the trucking rates are being subsidized and driven down with cheap labour. The question is how can we ensure a proper transportation infrastructure when rail with its fixed costs has to compete against trucking continually? We end up with nickel and diming. Rail transportation has to nickel and dime continually in order to meet this race to the bottom against trucking. That is simply not sustainable.

I do not see why we have HRD projects to bring in truckers to compete against our own truckers. We do not have a shortage of truckers in this country. A lot of young people want to get into trucking and they should be paid the going rate.