Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege and a pleasure to speak to the motion of the official opposition. I agree with their motion when it says there is a lack of action of the Liberal government. I somewhat disagree when it says there is a lack of transparency. There is a lot of transparency and I do not like what I see.
When I look at the transportation policy of the present Liberal government it reminds me very much of a continuation of the Liberal transportation policy of the seventies. I see very little difference between that transportation policy and what I have seen brought forward to the House.
In the 1970s the general Liberal philosophy was: "If it ain't working, close it. Don't try fixing it because somebody else will fix it". I remember very vividly in the 1970s the pressure that was put on for the abandonment of some of the inefficient railway branch lines. The public was forced to accept these. The communities where these branch lines were abandoned were promised at that time that money would be saved by abandoning these rail lines and that money would be put into infrastructure in the road system.
It is with great sadness that I report that we have seen none of those infrastructure improvements on the road systems. We are still waiting. When one comes to the rural communities of Manitoba these days, when one wants to drive through the countryside in the end of June after the highway department people have filled in the potholes with some more asphalt-to make sure there would not be a pothole they have put in a little extra so there is a bump-and when the restrictions come off the highways so that we can haul our regular load and farmers get to moving their grain, one will see dozens of farm trucks doing the bunny hop from one pothole bump to the next pothole bump.
We have done this now for 20 years and farmers are getting tired of this type of infrastructure. When the Liberal government proposed the new infrastructure program that is going to cost the general taxpayer about $6 billion, among the first comments I heard from my constituents was: "Jake, make sure that we get something done to our road system. We were promised this in the seventies and we are still waiting".
It is sad, Mr. Speaker, to inform you that we are still waiting. Just recently I checked the infrastructure programs that have been approved in Manitoba. I can tell the House that the rural communities have about one-half of what Winnipeg South Centre constituency received. I do not see any elevator systems or big highways. All I see in that area are projects for new community centres, new swimming pools and that type of a sports luxury infrastructure.
It amazes me when I hear the hon. member on the Liberal side saying that we have a rail system that binds the country together. I must say to him that those rail ties, those pieces of steel do not exist any more in our communities. Those rail ties now line miles and miles of fence line holding up four strands of barbed wire or supporting the boards on a corral fence to keep the cattle separate.
If that is what this government means by binding the country together, by abandoning more of these railways instead of making them efficient, I do not think I want that kind of unity.
The minister asked for input this morning on how to solve some of these problems. I think it was made very clear to the transport minister and also to the agriculture minister in May of this year when the subcommittee on rail car allocations suggested that the grain transportation agency should be done away with. It was causing more of a problem than a help in car allocation.
It was also suggested very strongly by every member on the subcommittee and the agriculture standing committee that we should finally do something about the backtracking. We are wasting millions of dollars by backtracking grain, disrupting the grain handling system. There is a very simple solution and I would like to read a couple of comments out of yesterday's Quorum :
The National Transportation Agency estimates 1.1 million tonnes of grain last year that landed in Thunder Bay was backtracked to Winnipeg, Canadian Pacific Ltd.'s gateway into the U.S. and to Fort Francis, Ont., Canadian National's link to the U.S.
These cars are being held up by backtracking and it is costing us money. It is a very simple problem to solve.
"It's ludicrous," says Tad Cawkwell, a barley grower in Nut Mountain, Sask. "You don't head north if you want to go south".
It amazes me that our railway system and our grain handling elevators decide when they get to Winnipeg instead of making a 90 degree turn into the U.S. to go south they have to go another 700 kilometres east then come back to Winnipeg and take a left turn south.
What is the result of this? The result is that roughly 13,000 hopper cars filled with Canadian wheat, barley and oats destined for the U.S. each year take a scenic route that is 1,400 kilometres longer than any direct route.
What does the agriculture minister say to a problem like this? It almost surprised me when I saw it in the paper. It really is a bit of a fluke in the system that goes back many years. It simply squanders some of the limited resources we have to overall pay the costs. Is that the type of Liberal government we have that condones that type of policy? I am surprised that we still have a transportation system at all if that is our philosophy of a good transportation system.
I was very pleased this morning when I heard the transportation minister quote a speech from Winnipeg on October 6. I would like to quote a few other stats that he brought forward in that speech. I thought he had a very good handle on what the problems really are and I thought he addressed them very well. I would like to bring them to this House this afternoon.
As he pointed out in one of the first statements, U.S. railways have higher labour productivity than Canadian railways, 64 per cent higher to be exact. The minister does know what one of the problems is. U.S. tonnes per mile are about 66 per cent higher than in Canada. Why is the government acknowledging that this is the case but is not doing anything about it?
Simply, my answer to these questions is that we have grain companies, we have railways that are lobbying very hard not to change the system because it benefits their pockets and they do not really care about what happens to the farmers' pockets. As long as the farmer grows the grain they know they have to ship it and they will continue to bleed us dry for as much as they possibly can.
The transport minister went on to explain that this is a bleak picture, everyone shares in the problem, not just in the failure to respond to changing technology or economic conditions. Other problems were created by governments through excessive regulation and taxation, by railway management, through top heavy structures and by labour, through low productivity and complicated work rules.
When I see the GTA coming out with figures that tell us that for every month during the summer a thousand railway cars or a thousand hopper cars were put into sidings and then taken out empty, I am beginning to wonder who is really looking after the system and how qualified they are to run that system.
When the committee made the recommendation to do away with the grain transportation agency that was one of the wisest recommendations that committee has probably ever made, and it has been followed up on.
The survival of the rail industry is critical to Canada, the minister continued, but it cannot be a survival at any cost. The industry must reinvent itself. How can the industry reinvent itself when we have had increased technology over the last 30 years that never has been really used or has had any effect on increasing the efficiency of this transportation system?
How can this railway system reinvent itself when it costs the railways $6,000 to $7,000 more in just fuel taxes from Toronto to Vancouver than it would take for the same distance in the United States? The government needs these funds and I do not think it is willing to sacrifice them to become more efficient in the rail system. It will have to take place somehow.
What the minister means by reinventing the system is not very clear to me. That is one place where we need transparency. I do not think we can run hopper cars without wheels and make them more efficient.
The other thing I would like to stress, and it was a very important point that the minister brought forward, is that rail has more than 200 separate kinds of actions or decisions that must be approved by the National Transportation Agency. Why are those regulations there? Why has government allowed them to be put in place. It was mostly through lobbying of provincial governments, special interest groups and not by farmers I can guarantee that.
He goes on to say on the following page, and it is almost unbelievable that one would know about these things and not do anything, that in Canada the approval process for conveyance can take up to six months. In the United States approvals are granted in a few days.
I think the minister and the government do know what is happening in the transportation system and they do know what the answers or the solutions are, but the political will has not been shown. It amazes me when I see some of the provinces leading the way in some of this reregulation or deregulation of the transportation system.
Manitoba and Nova Scotia have already taken off some of the property taxes and fuel taxes to the railways to help the system become more efficient and productive. Why can the federal government not make simple legislation in this House to help along some of the provincial initiatives?
Regarding the port of Churchill, when we read about the fumbling and the bungling of the issue of Churchill it always amazes me why there is a port there at all. Here we have a salt water port that would be the envy of the world and every government since the 1970s has either tried to destroy it or somehow put it in a light indicating that it is not effective or efficient.
I hope my input into this question is encouraging this government somewhat to take some action. Inaction is definitely there and transparency can be taken as clear or unclear.
