Thank you, Madam Chair.
Minister, I am going to surprise you by saying that I agree with you on one thing, and perhaps even more than one. I, too, am a member of Parliament in Ottawa. I, too, am eager to have a fast train between Montreal and Ottawa. We clearly have a transportation problem. I am one of the enthusiastic people.
It's like Daniel Bélanger's song, Tout est dans la manière: It’s all in the way you do it. You are amending the law specifically for the Alto project. There has been talk of impact assessments, the right to a hearing before a commissioner, and so on. It is clear that this will change the balance of power in the negotiations and that there will be private negotiations. It’s obvious that, by definition, this will change things. It’s also obvious that it will speed up the project; I agree with you.
However, you said something interesting, namely, that because of existing laws, it may no longer be possible to build anything big in this country. So why change the law just for the high-speed rail project? Why didn’t the government simply decide to use the Expropriation Act, as it did for Mirabel, for the Lower Laurentians and for this linear infrastructure corridor? If we are unable to build, why not simply change the law? Doesn’t the fact that the government is not doing so confirm that the current law is highly legitimate?