Great--through our chair.
I wonder if I can turn to Minister Merrifield for just a moment on VIA Rail, because you highlighted it, and I noted that while you're a proud spokesman for VIA Rail, you didn't talk about projects down the road in terms of rail transportation.
The hot issue of the day, of course, is whether we'll go into high-speed train travel and the kind of investment we would want to make. Without going into the budget, the action plan, but still sticking to supplementary estimates, the line for VIA Rail has $335 million, which is an increase of about 52% over 2007.
I'm one of those people who believes that yes, we should build more rail, so don't think I'm going after you, but I am concerned about what we get for our money.
Thinking in terms of the billions of dollars that Minister Baird said we are going to expend for infrastructure and stimulus spending--more about that later--it comes out to about 130,000 jobs for every billion dollars of expenditures, each job being valued at about $75,000 including benefits. But with VIA Rail, since you've expressed such positive views on it, I'm looking at their last report, which goes to the end of 2007, and it has a passenger capacity of only about 55% usage. With government input of an additional roughly $135 million--roughly, I say, because it might be off by about a couple of million--what are we getting (a) in terms of jobs, (b) in terms of efficiency, and (c) in terms of making the system more workable? What kind of construction are you putting into place or have you authorized to justify that kind of expenditure for VIA Rail?