Mr. Speaker, I welcome the decision by the Minister of Transport to turn down the offer by CP Rail to purchase the CNR east of Winnipeg.
I want to suggest to the minister that what he should do now as a second step is abandon his plans to privatize or commercialize the CNR in some way and rather turn his attention to how to create a larger policy environment in which railways can once again thrive in this country.
We need to do things about the tax system. We need to look at ways in which the costs that the railways incur are incurred by them directly in a way that other transportation modes do not have to do similarly.
There are a lot of things that the minister could look at to return railways to the prominent place that they once had, not for the sake of a romantic vision of the past but for the sake of the environment, for the sake of the future.
I believe that rail is the transportation mode of the future. I would ask the minister to consider ways in which he could strengthen CN and railways in general in this country.