Thank you very much for the question.
The British North America Act is a complicated document. Where transportation fits is something that has been an object of discussion and debate, but we also know that in Canada's history, there have been times when we revisited the extent to which ideas about provincial and federal jurisdiction work. I think that in this case, with this particular form of transportation, it seems fairly clear that the idea of bus transportation can be easily met with provincial jurisdiction doesn't go very far.
A national carrier offered, however imperfectly, the capacity to buy one ticket with one carrier to travel between provinces. The shift from that to the current patchwork, which is both imperfect within the context where it exists and also extraordinarily difficult to access and to coordinate, is a real problem. Manitoba makes that clear, in the sense that there are connections with Ontario Northland to the east but extremely limited connections now with our provincial neighbours to the west, running literally once a week and leaving after midnight.
What we see there is the limit of the presumption that provincial jurisdiction can work to offer people the sorts of services they need, not simply to access resources and services within a provincial context but to maintain ties with friends and family, to pursue opportunities for work and to have a community that may exist beyond provincial borders.
These borders are not necessarily the most relevant ones in any given context. In a context in which the question is the possibility of a national bus service, I think we can really see that kind of service acting as a social, economic and environmental good. It's one that requires us to think about policy and practice beyond profitability as a generator—