Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I imagine that the members of the committee probably are aware of this, but if they aren't, there are two substantial chunks of the passenger rail system in Canada, those being Victoria to Courtenay and along the Gaspé, that recently have been closed to passenger rail traffic, not because of a lack of demand or a lack of carriages or engines, but because the infrastructure itself, the rail line, has become unsafe. It's unsafe to run passenger cars and freight along it. We'll get to that in due course.
The principal purpose behind the motion is to suggest to the Conservative government that they place an allocation in the 2012-13 budget to repair this infrastructure in such a way that it can continue to be used for passenger rail traffic. The demand is there.
Mr. Garrison will speak further to the Victoria to Courtenay situation.
In the Gaspé situation, this line closed fairly suddenly, within the last three months. Unfortunately, Mr. Toone, who is the member for that region, cannot be here today. He's in the Magdalen Islands dealing with the natural disaster there.
The Gaspé region—I'll speak a little to this—has a significant number of bridges as well as other infrastructure.The line is actually not owned by the rail companies. It's owned by a local firm—the Société du chemin de fer de la Gaspésie, which is essentially a co-op of the communities in the area.
They have discovered that the infrastructure they've inherited needs a lot of work, which would cost far more money than local communities could ever raise on their own. Those communities are I think prepared to do routine maintenance on the infrastructure, but rather significant and rather large bills have come due, and nobody with deep pockets is sitting at the ready to do this. They have now turned to the federal government.
I'll ask my colleague from Quebec to speak further to that. Those are the two significant pieces of infrastructure that we are aware of. There are probably other pieces of infrastructure in the country. I'm aware that the government has set aside some funding to repair some infrastructure in southern Ontario. That's a federal government undertaking; it's not a local undertaking.
I'm also mindful of the fact that since Confederation it has always been a federal responsibility to put in rail infrastructure in the first place and to help keep it up. Sir John A. Macdonald was one of the first to do so, although we're not suggesting that you follow completely in his footsteps. I think he had a little trouble over some rail goings-on.
We are hopeful that the government, in this coming budget, will pay serious attention to what is a calamity in those regions as far as public transit is concerned, and in particular in rail infrastructure for passenger cars.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.