Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you to the witnesses for coming today.
I think this is a really good study for the committee to be undertaking right now, especially considering that we do have a joint study going on between the provinces of Ontario and Quebec and the Government of Canada.
I just have a couple of questions.
A couple of people made the point that it's really tough to compete with an entity backed by the crown. I would actually concur with that. Certainly, Jim Devlin of Coach Canada in Peterborough has talked to me many times about how they sometimes have a hard time competing with VIA Rail in VIA's core, because sometimes VIA will put on a special that Coach Canada can't compete with on a profitable level. I do believe it's inherently unfair when we are actually subsidizing one industry to the harm of another. I know the airlines may take issue with that, but airports wouldn't be built if governments didn't build them, and everybody operates on infrastructure that's built by the government.
That said, here's my question. Can a high-speed rail system run cash positive? That's what we're talking about. Could you, as a P3, run cash positive? For example, could Greyhound operate a high-speed rail system? It has to be integrated. I think this is something that people need to understand for any kind of transportation system, and I don't care if it's air, buses, or subways.
That's one of the major problems at Pearson. We don't have a good integrated transit solution around Pearson. I'd be happy to talk to Mr. Galimberti about that. But in your opinion, could you run this cash positive if the infrastructure is built?