Mr. Speaker, I will not be quite as harsh with the hon. member for St. Paul's as my colleagues.
I would like to ask him a couple of direct questions. I am reading from a speech given by the transport minister. That is my big concern. It says U.S. rails have higher labour productivity than Canadian rail, 64 per cent higher actually. I appreciated the comment that we are going to become competitive.
The other excerpt I would like to read is this: "Rail has more than 200 separate kinds of actions or decisions that must be approved by the National Transportation Agency". Then he goes on and says: "In Canada, the approval process for conveyance can take up to six months. In the U.S. approvals are granted in as few as seven days".
How is the Liberal government going to make us competitive with these kinds of hindrances? These have been injected into our system during the last 25 or 30 years. All of a sudden are we going to do it in a six-month period? I have been after the transportation agency to stop the back-tracking. It has been almost a year and we have not been able to stop that yet. What action can we take?