On the same topic, I want to thank the committee for what I found to be a very enlightening process. There are some emerging technologies which clearly we should never go anywhere near, but there are a lot of emerging technologies that I hadn't even thought about, such as using liquefied natural gas as a fuel, perhaps as a stepping stone to a hydrogen-fuelled vehicle in the future that would be driven by electricity, obviously.
The use of international standards as a mechanism to pick winners and losers in the transportation field was clearly a problem. I think the government now understands that, or at least the members of this committee understand and after you've presented the report the government will understand that those problems that are hampering Canada's advances in the transportation field are problems the government should turn its attention to. That's not necessarily with the idea of spending money, but with the idea of finding ways to make our regulatory systems easier for the transportation sector to use, whether we're talking about safety regulations that are different from country to country or fuel-handling regulations that are different from country to country. You can't cross the border from Canada to the U.S. and vice versa with a propane vehicle because the handling regulations are different.
Those kinds of decisions by the government need to be looked at by the department, I guess. They need to be looked at with a view to making Canada's transportation sector more efficient and effective, to lowering costs for consumers, to lowering costs for government, and to opening up markets for Canadian innovation that we currently don't have in Canada. As Ms. Chow said, all kinds of Canadian innovation goes on in Europe, in China, and in India with Canadian products that can't be sold here because our regulations are such that those products are not permitted to be used here for safety reasons or other reasons.
One of those technologies we studied I would hardly call emerging, because electric trains have been in existence in the U.S. since 1908. They're hardly emerging, but they are emerging in the sense that Canada doesn't have any. We have not kept pace with the rest of the world, and unfortunately the main report doesn't get into any great detail on that. The minority report does suggest that the federal government has a role to play both in the regulatory system in convincing the rail companies that currently have oligopolistic or monopolistic control over their rails that they need to allow for the electrification of passenger rail and eventually of freight rail as well, as is happening in Europe. That's part of what our minority report intends to do, to put forward rationale and purpose for the electrification of some of Canada's rail system in a more efficient way.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.