Mr. Speaker, the motion dealing with rail in Canada has three parts, one being inaction on the part of the government, one being a lack of transparency and one being no vision on high speed rail.
I am not going to offer a lot of solutions as the minister has suggested we do because we are going to deal with the specific points raised by the Bloc in its motion. I am however going to put out several challenges to the minister which I hope he will respond to under questions or comments. If he does not I have to accept that he probably reluctantly agrees with the points I make.
Dealing first with the question of inaction, in some way I support the concept the Bloc is suggesting, that there is inaction on the part of the government. I have to ask why it is surprised at this. The reality is inaction is prevalent throughout all of the departments in the government.
With regard to transport, first we have to look at such things as the Pearson contract and the legislation cancelling it. We asked the minister for a public hearing. We did not say that it was a good deal or a bad deal but simply how can you condemn something that has never been given its proper hearing.
First he refuses to do it and then we get word through the media the minister said that he is strongly considering having a public hearing. Then we have yet another minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, saying there will be no hearing. Lo, there was no hearing.
That was a case where there was a series of actions which produced an inaction and questions of who is really running the transport department.
Then we get into things like the Churchill port and the minutes from Ports Canada that said it is closing down Churchill. That magically disappeared out of the minutes of the meeting that decided that.
It was raised in the House. Was the minister responsible or was it the head of Ports Canada, who was of course a Liberal patronage appointment? The reality is that it was not the minister. It was yet another minister who sits nearby who has more of a concern about this because of his home province and he caused a magic marker to appear over top of those minutes. Again I have to wonder who is running the transport department
and is that some of the reason why we have no real action in that department.
Then we have human resources. Again this is a new concept that the Liberals are raising to a mastery where they produce a series of actions which results in no action at all. In the case of human resources, right at the beginning of the year they raised the unemployment insurance rates. Then through another mastery they reduced their own raise, thus cancelling their own action to say look at the wonderful saving they have made for people. I suggested if they raised the amount 10 times as high and then reduced it, they could have had even greater saving. Obviously the bottom line is no action at all.
Then we have the justice department. The justice department talks of reforms to the criminal justice system but there is nothing forthcoming. There are no concrete proposals. The problems still continue on.
We have the Ministry of Health. The Ministry of Health has not only taken no action but has penalized provinces for trying to implement these actions. It has penalized my own province of British Columbia for one for trying to implement some cost cutting changes that would make the health system healthier and more effective in that province. Instead it gets the transfer payments reduced because it did not march to the beat of the Liberal government.
Then we have the immigration department and the so-called consultations that are going on. I say so-called because people are demanding action and they are making very clear what kind of action they are looking for. They are going out and selling a preconceived government agenda.
Then we have the minister of fisheries, the fisheries department. Again, here is where we are having another study whose only purpose is to provide a scapegoat for the inaction on the part of the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, soon to be the minister of oceans because the fisheries will be destroyed.
We have the finance department with no workable plan, no indication that the goals it has set are obtainable, goals that are too low even if it should somehow magically manage to attain them with its current plan of so-called action.
This is the general level of action of a government that loves to preface many of its statements by calling them action plans. It takes more than hollow words to create real action.
What action has the government taken on rail line abandonment? What changes have taken place? There has been no action whatsoever to resolve the overtrackage problem in the east.
Interestingly enough when CN and CP were talking about rationalization and merging the two rail lines to form the company referred to as Newco, the minister seemed to think that was a wonderful idea. However now that one company wishes to buy out the other that is not a good idea even though it would produce the same general result. In fact it would produce better results because there would still be a vestige of competition under this new proposal.
There is no action to deal with rail line inequitable taxation problems. That is certainly a very large problem and a very large component of the rail industry's problems.
There is no action to deal with the provincial problems concerning such things as labour legislation and property taxation. Not only are they harming the rail lines as they exist right now but they are also among the large impediments in the way of attracting private short line operators to take over these abandoned lines when the big rail companies can no longer make money running them.
There is also no action to deal with harmonizing capital depreciation rules so that they can compete effectively with their American competitors.
The next thing I would like to look at is the lack of transparency on the part of the government with regard to the rail industry. Once again this is something that is prevalent throughout all of the departments.
Of course we have in transport such things as the Pearson contract. When Bill C-22 was brought in we tried to introduce an aspect of transparency. Had the government agreed to do that we would have supported that bill. All we wanted was the claims and the resultant payments going out to flow through the all-party transport committee. In that way the claims and the resulting payments would be known and transparent and there could be no under the table deals. It was refused as an amendment at the committee stage and was refused as an amendment at third reading.
Then there was the wonderful deal that was cut behind closed doors by the Minister of Transport with Air Canada dealing with the route to Osaka. The minister rose in this House and denied directly to me that there was any private backroom deal. He continued to deny that for two days after which he admitted that in fact he had cut a deal with Air Canada. Transparency? Not a chance.
In the human resources department again patronage appointments are absolutely rampant, even in my little rural riding in southeastern British Columbia. There was a one year delay in getting anyone to sit as chairman of the board of referees because the government attempted to put in someone totally unqualified by way of a patronage appointment. When that was exposed the government sat on the real appointment for over a
year. It was a tremendous hardship for people in my riding having problems with UIC. It is another example of lack of transparency on the part of the government.
The health department is currently undergoing a $12 million study. This is not to learn but rather to sell preconceived government notions and agenda. This is not transparent and it is not acceptable.
The immigration department has its own hidden agenda in its review board. On the Vancouver immigration and refugee review board a member who was appointed by the previous government has had a 38 per cent acceptance rate of those who appealed through him. In the last four years there have been only three appeals to his decisions, two of which were heard. Only one was overturned and that was because of a mistake made in the translation of the information supplied to him from the appellant. It changed the meaning of what he was told. That one single case was reversed, no others.
Now the minister has implemented a priority goal of a 75 per cent acceptance rate. Why is there a goal? There should only be acceptance of those who are proper and true immigrants to this country. If that is 10 per cent, it is 10 per cent. If it is 90 per cent, it is 90 per cent. How can there possibly be a goal if there is not some hidden agenda? The other side of it again brings into question the transparency of what the government is doing.
It is the very fact in this case that if one of the two people viewing these appeals accepts the application, it is accepted. If it is accepted no report has to be written, but if it is rejected a lengthy report has to be written. It places a tremendous emphasis on accepting, whether or not it is for the good of Canada.
The fisheries department transparency. It is studying a serious, perhaps catastrophic problem of the salmon fisheries on the west coast in house instead of holding a public inquiry. The problem was created in house by the minister. How can he study himself and come up with an objective answer?
In the finance department again we are looking for transparency. There is an absolute refusal to make a commitment on the question of a carbon tax or taxation of RRSPs.
Justice department is an interesting case where there is the opposite of transparency. There is excruciating transparency when dealing with such things as the proposed firearms legislation. The minister has publicly stated he will not make legislation based on head count, but he will in fact do what is good for the people, which can be translated into: "I do not care what the people want, I know better than they do".
Now we deal with transport and the transparency there. Well, the CN task force has already been mentioned. Do we have a problem with that? Is that a transparent, viable thing? Of course it is not. There is absolutely no reason that the questions being raised by the CN task force could not have flown through the transport committee, have had a vestige of all-party input and then it would have had some credibility. It certainly would have had some transparency.
We know that on a recent task force struck under transport dealing with the seaway there was a dissenting report. It could not do to have somebody offering a different opinion. Even though my party did not happen to agree with that dissenting opinion it was nonetheless the right of the people in this House to make it. This is what an all Liberal CN task force manages to block.
When looking at what is happening with CN and the offer from CP there are three scenarios that could come up, but I believe the report they are to make is already written.
First, they could come back and say the CP offer is good. That releases the minister from responsibility. He can now claim that his people went out across the country and they got this endorsed and so away they go. It comes back to what we talked about previously on other bills where the government consults and that is supposed to mean the solution it comes up with is okay. The very fact that there is consultation does not mean there was anything whatsoever in the final report that had anything to do with what people said during the consultation. It does no good to have consultations if you do not listen to what people say.
The second scenario is that they could come back to CP and say: "We like the idea of you offering to buy out a portion of CN except we want you to increase the offer and buy out the whole thing". That is unacceptable because it will remove the vestige of competition that still remains under the current CP offer.
The final thing they could do is come back and say: "No, we do not want to sell part of it. We want to privatize the entire thing and sell it as a total unit". That also is unacceptable because it does absolutely nothing to deal with the problem of overtrackage in eastern Canada.
I suppose in one respect there is a fourth option which is to do absolutely nothing at all. This seems to be a very popular option on the part of the Liberals, but I would hope that at least they realize it is not a workable solution in this case.
We could go on just on the vestige of the CP rail offer alone, but I would say one thing to this House. I believe the concept of the CP rail offer to CN is a good one. I remind the minister it is not considerably different from the concept that he has already endorsed which is that of the two companies merging together, only in that case there would be an absolute loss of competition. In the case of this offer there is not.
I would like to touch on VIA Rail because that was mentioned in the hon. member's motion. VIA Rail in a word should be privatized. An example of an operation that was run by VIA Rail in British Columbia and into Alberta is the Rocky Mountain Rail Tours. VIA ran this with huge subsidies for a number of years and still managed to lose money.
Rocky Mountaineer Railtours was sold to the Great Canadian Railtour Company which ran it in virtually the same context as it was being run by VIA, but of course with the aspect of private enterprise introduced to it. It must get a return on the investment made to VIA. Great Canadian Railtour has fought considerable roadblocks put up by the very company that sold it this line and has had to fight in court. In spite of all that it has made an unsubsidized profit.
Can the private sector do better than crown corporations? You bet it can. We believe the only subsidies that should take place for rail transportation in terms of passenger transportation are for remote operations only and only then when there is a demonstrated need.
It is all well and good to be nostalgic and remember back to the days when the rail linked and tied this country together. We have to recognize that for all the improvements in technology the locomotives may pull more weight than they pulled in the old days, they may pull it a bit faster and certainly they may be safer, but the general concept of moving people by rail has not changed dramatically in terms of the years that have gone by.
If we think back to when rail transportation was originally introduced alternative methods were not available. Rail started before there was any widespread concept of any alternative transportation except by horse. There were no aeroplanes, there were no buses, there were no passenger cars. As technology has moved in other areas the genuine need for rail transportation has to be modified.
Many of the areas can be handled by private enterprise, making a profit without government subsidies where there are sufficient passengers to move. That will also resolve traffic problems. In remote areas where there are alternatives they are probably going to have to look at those alternatives. If there are no alternatives that is the only situation in which we should be looking at government subsidies.
Finally I would like to touch on high speed rail. This has been brought up before. The answer now is exactly the same as it was then. A $7 billion or $8 billion high speed rail system is not in our foreseeable future, not if half of the money is going to come from empty federal tax coffers. We have no money for the things that are here now.
The other side of the House is talking about the need for cuts and we endorse that. We know there have to be cuts. Why at a time when we are talking about the need for cuts are we talking about spending $7 billion or $8 billion on a high speed rail system? It is not a national high speed rail system, it is only for one single corridor.
It has been suggested that half of that money must come out of the government tax coffers. If it is a profitable venture as the people proposing this would have us believe, why would they want the government, which has a history of losing money at everything it turns its hand to, as a partner? On the other hand if it is in fact a loser, why would the government associate itself with another tax drain?
There are solutions. The government will not find them if it does not start taking some action on the known solutions. It will not find them if it hides everything behind hidden agendas, if there is no transparency, if it does not openly and honestly involve others and then use solutions provided by these people instead of trying to use them to create a justification for its own agenda.
There will be many opportunities for the minister to hear our proposals. Unfortunately in the past whenever the government takes a Reform policy proposal, which we are happy to see it do, it only takes it piecemeal. It manages to mess it up so bad that we are almost reluctant to help the government, unless it lets us guide it all the way. I might add we are totally prepared to do that.
I leave it to the government. If it wishes to refute anything I have said, I would be happy to hear it. Failing that I would ask the government to become more transparent and start taking action to consult with those of us on this side of the House who do have solutions. There is no point in our throwing them out if the government intends not to use them.