Thank you, gentlemen. I'm sorry I missed part of your presentation, but I did have a chance to read the written submission and I followed the discussion.
Mr. Gow, I'm going to the sheet that you handed out. You spoke to the four points of your concern. I note that in the third bullet down, you state that “the new Act reaffirms established principles and embraces new ones—notably the environment—[that strike] us as needlessly restrictive”. You would suggest that perhaps there be a reference to sustainable development.
Most of the acts and legislation that I've seen at local, provincial, and even federal levels may make reference to sustainable development. They may also include the environment separately. There's a specific reference to that. Sustainability is the broader package, and I heard Mr. Benson talking about looking at the bigger picture.
Certainly the environment has risen as a major concern in the public's mind, in the railworkers' minds, and in the environmentalists' minds, as we look at the effects of derailments that we've seen, particularly the CN derailments that we'll be dealing with in a motion later this afternoon. We've had disastrous spills in Alberta and British Columbia that have had a significant environmental effect.
So I would suggest to you that the reference to the environment is there for a reason. The world is changing. It wouldn't have been there ten years ago, maybe, in the way that it is now.
I'll make my points, and then I'll let you come back. Finally, in your fourth reference, you talked about the issues of noise complaints, again something Mr. Benson made reference to. You said decibel levels would cause problems. I'm well aware of that as a former municipal politician.
The noise bylaws that municipalities have relate to decibels measured at the property line, but they also deal with noises that are not consistent, that are intermittent. Where you can't effectively measure a continual decibel level, they refer to it as nuisance noise, because it can be short bursts.
I've had people phone me, both in my former life as mayor and as MP, at two in the morning and hold the phone up and tell me to listen. I've had them play tape recordings that they've made, showing 2 a.m., 3 a.m., 4 a.m., with the shunting. It's not so much the squealing of rail, because this is a shunting yard in north Vancouver.