This is something I feel very passionate about, as you can tell.
I gather we have about 30 to 35 major railroads in Canada. We have about 25 to 30 provincial railroads. I'm thinking of BCR, as an example.
How many inspectors do we have? I'm not talking about people who are in Ottawa. I'm talking about people out in the field who are there, able to go out and investigate these incidents, which seem to be occurring with increasing frequency. There was another derailment just the other day. We've had some really serious ones in British Columbia, and we obviously had some in Lake Wabamun, Alberta. In some cases there's been death involved, in some cases environmental disaster, and in other cases there has been risk to neighbouring communities. In every instance there is the delay in the movement of the freight goods that are important to the economy of Canada.
Increasingly, rail is a method of transporting hazardous goods. It is considered to be one of the safest ways of transporting hazardous goods. But if we have a risk of derailment and accident--I realize that's likely not as risky as maybe trucking or other methods of transporting hazardous goods--we need to be able to assure Canadians that it's as safe as possible. In my community we've got a chlorine plant, and railways go through that everyday.
I would appreciate your comments.