Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, gentlemen, for being here.
First of all, I want to tell you that I do take the train. I have ridden high-speed rail both in Europe and Japan and have had very favourable experiences on both.
I want to correct the record for something that was said earlier. It was said earlier in the discussion that this was the first time that we've been introduced to the Cascadia concept. I would just like to remind the committee that for those of us who did go to Washington and were participants in those discussions, we were introduced to the Cascadia train and the concept out there.
They told us down there that although high-speed rail was the verbiage that has been used by the Obama administration, the U.S. is talking about higher-speed rail, not high-speed rail. They said the cost of high-speed rail for the United States in the seven corridors that they were looking at would be about $50 billion. At this point in time the Obama administration is prepared to put in $8 billion.
This means we are talking about two very different animals. We're talking about high-speed rail in Canada, dedicated corridors, all of the attributes that high-speed rail has, which is not the animal that the United States is talking about. They are talking about increasing their margins to 123 miles per hour. In that discussion they very clearly told us that they would only be moving to six-car trains that they would then put on their track, and a shared track at that.
That's just to correct the record, first of all, because some members did not attend. I think they have some different concepts.
I have a couple of questions. First of all, this is not a new study for you, Mr. Cruickshank. You've been at this for a while, I'm sure.