Hello and thank you for this opportunity to speak to you about such an important topic.
The railway is an important part of the myth of how the modern nation of Canada was built. As you know, with the British North America Act, Canada is the country whose founding documents talk about railways more than any other country in the world.
And yet for the last 50 years, the railway has been relegated to a means of freight transport owing to budget cuts, chronic underfunding, poor technology choices and poor project choices.
This can also be attributed to Canadians raising valid questions about the relevance of the railway. Is it truly a Canadian undertaking? If the train goes through my town once or twice per week, does that service really make me less dependent on my car? The answer is no.
If we want to support an undertaking such as HFT or HST and want Canadians to support it, not only do we need to revitalize rail service in eastern Canada, but we must also support a link between Calgary and Edmonton in the west, as well as links between Vancouver and the United States and Toronto and the United States. Other rail services also have to be revitalized.
If we want to revitalize rail service in Canada, we have to remember that many people do not consider rail travel very relevant or relevant at all. We also have to remember that it is because of gaps in public policy that the importance of rail has decreased and driven people to that conclusion.