Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister, for joining us this evening.
I'll start fairly generally.
It does seem as though this bill is mostly based on the economic needs of the supply chain and on the need to address some of the challenges we saw during the pandemic. It's certainly understandable that it speaks to some of the recommendations from the fairly prescribed legislative reviews that took place many years ago. However, there have also been very strong concerns from communities and people who are affected by the supply chain as they look to your government for more protection and more accountability.
Part of that work was this committee's study on rail safety, in which we heard from communities, unions and rail workers about their concerns. The picture they painted, as well as the picture the Auditor General has painted and the chair of the Transportation Safety Board painted, is a pretty bleak one. It leaves us with a lot of concern about the state of rail safety the tenth anniversary of the Lac-Mégantic disaster. Yet of the 33 recommendations in this committee's report, Bill C-33 addresses none.
Maybe my question for you is this: How can this committee understand this as anything other than an insult to the work we've done? The recommendations in the committee's study came from the people who've been deeply impacted by the supply chain. They want changes. They want your government to have their backs. Yet the bill we see in front of us doesn't have any of that. Why is that?