Thank you very much.
I'm in an awkward position. We can't talk about what happened in the subcommittee, even though most of the people in the room on that side were at that meeting anyway.
I have a level of discomfort with spending more time or having witnesses in to talk in general about rail safety. The reason for that discomfort is that this committee and many other committees struck by Transport Canada have already done extensive reviews and have already identified problems with rail safety.
As a result of those previous reviews, two of the topics I raised have been identified as areas requiring more expedited action. That was why I came forward with the specific topics. Yes, they fall under rail safety, but I am not favourable to bringing in a number of witnesses to talk to us vaguely about railway safety. That's what troubles me.
I'm glad that Mr. Hardie likes the general area of the topics, and that's encouraging. I have looked at reports that have been done previously, including the ACRS report, and I have heard from the teamsters. I did provide copies—in fact, I have additional copies here in French and English—and I think Mr. Hardie might also have had a chance to meet with the teamsters on their concern with the automated movement of locomotives.
It troubles me because we now know that the estimates have been referred to us. We are hopeful that the Emerson report will be tabled sooner rather than later, and we think that possibly some of the budget may well come to us, probably a fair bit, if we get infrastructure referred to us. My concern is that further and further down the line those issues, which have been brought to my attention by concerned Canadians, are not going to be acted on quickly.
If I could have the confidence that the members, after voting on this motion, will move expeditiously to look at other specific motions that we have sent around, and if we could vote on whether or not we will move forward and which of those we will review quickly, I'd be willing to remove that part of my amendment and simply keep the last part of the amendment, which we seem to have some unanimity with on this side.
I want to be clear about my level of discomfort in the need to move forward. There have already been many general studies on rail safety that identified the critical issues. I don't think we'd be well advised to start all over on that again and start examining what the issues might be.
We'll wait and hear what the other members have to say, but if that's the case, I'd be amenable, after we vote on this motion to move into the specifics, to deleting that part of my amendment.