Mr. Speaker, the business and traffic in the port of Saint John was extremely good this past year. The port set a record for total port throughput by handling just under 20 million tonnes of cargo over a 12-month period. As well, total traffic is up 11 per cent over the same period last year.
Yesterday a Canadian Press story from Halifax, Nova Scotia, referred to a senior official from CP who stated that the city of Saint John and the port of Saint John would be negatively affected by his company's bid to take over the CN Rail line and to sell off the rest of its Atlantic operations.
At a time when the port of Saint John is active and many people earn their living at the port, we must not lose our rail infrastructure.
I urge the Prime Minister and his government to ensure that the rail links to and from the port of Saint John are a priority with any of the government's discussions with CP.