Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Witnesses, thank you very much for being here today. Thanks for your testimony so far.
I want to go back and recap something I brought up with the minister when she appeared recently, just to remind Canadians of what has been happening at Transport Canada.
Using fiscal years 2011-12 and 2012-13, aviation safety has been cut 11%, from $222 million to $198.6 million. Marine safety has been cut 25%, from $75.6 million to $56.5 million. Road safety has been cut 5.5%, from $23.8 million to $22.5 million. I acknowledge that there has been a paltry and nominal increase of $1.5 million a year for rail safety.
I think that's important for us to remember as we continue our discussion about SMS writ large.
It's also important for Canadians to remember that at the very least, the conservative estimates—the small c conservative estimates—for the costs for the cleanup and decontamination around Lac-Mégantic are a minimum of probably $250 million.
On top of that, we're seeing massive increases in the shipping of oil by rail, longer trains, more cars, heavier weight, and more risk. We're seeing our railway companies invest heavily in this regard, of course, because by 2025, even if every pipeline project in this country is approved, we're still going to see a million barrels a day of surplus oil that's going to have to be shipped somehow.
When I looked at these SMS plans, picking up on what my colleague from the NDP asked about public access to the information inherent in an SMS, I wanted to find out more about who is consulted. In your briefing you say, “We are working closely with employees, industry, labour unions and key interested parties...”, so let me ask you this. When you come to ground on an SMS that is being implemented, are urban governments, municipal governments, which are most at risk, according to Mayor Nenshi.... He doesn't even agree with the government's recent announcement about releasing “yearly aggregate information, presented by quarter, on the nature and volume of dangerous goods” that the company is transporting through municipalities.
I can't for the life of me figure out why we're not revealing this prospectively, as opposed to retrospectively. I don't know why fire and first responders don't want to know in advance what's coming through their city, as opposed to six months ago.
I want to find out who's consulted. Are municipal governments consulted? Are environmental NGOs consulted? For the river in play in Lac-Mégantic, we have no idea of what that's going to cost in terms of its cleanup, and we have no idea of what the long-term cost will be.
Who in fact is called in to help craft these SMS?