Mr. Speaker, support for the high speed train connection in the Quebec-Windsor corridor has been received from people who held very different views, people like Mr. Marc Lefrançois, president of VIA Rail who said: "In terms of plans that stir people into action, it is difficult to find a better one". It also promotes the expertise of a company like Bombardier which is a domestic company and holds rights to the technology required to carry out this project.
The HST project also received support from the Young Liberal Federation in Quebec who, while not being known as sovereigntists nonetheless saw in this project an opportunity to stimulate job creation for young people, whether engineers and
technicians or linemen. In other words, this is a job-creation project.
At Bombardier, they are not a bunch of incompetent people. They are the ones who manufactured in La Pocatière, in my riding, the railway cars now in service in the tunnel across the Channel between England and France, two sovereign nations that nonetheless saw fit to be linked by such a means of communication. The British did not refuse to contribute because the French were going to benefit from the tunnel. They asked themselves: "Will we benefit from this?" And came to the conclusion that they would.
I think that, whatever the constitutional context, Quebec and Canada stand to benefit from developing this link, particularly since it would be the first of the sort in North America and the technology could be applied in 19 other sites over the continent. You go nowhere with a rule like: no government money shall be invested in this project; we must wait for the private sector to take on the project. If that rule had been applied strictly, we would still ride on gravel roads and we would not have the transportation network we enjoy today.
I think we must have a modern-day attitude and the HST is definitely modern. In fact, it is the most environmentally friendly mode of transportation of all. It is a lot less polluting than cars or planes.
The question we have to ask ourselves is this: is it going to be cost-effective to build a high-speed train in the Quebec City-Windsor corridor? In fact, as Mr. Rémy Bujolt, chairman of the GPC Consortium and consultant for VIA Rail on this matter, was saying: "To succeed, we will have to attract as many passengers as possible; if not this project will become a money pit. For this project to be cost-effective, the high-speed train must capture 40 per cent of the market between Montreal and Toronto compared to 13 per cent today".
But the answer to this question is in the efficiency of the high-speed train. This train would link Quebec City and Montreal in 85 minutes; Montreal and Ottawa in 45 minutes and Montreal and Toronto in 140 minutes, at 50 per cent of the cost of a plane ticket. It would also serve Quebec City, Trois-Rivières, Montreal, Ottawa, Kingston, Belleville, Toronto, London and Windsor.
Do you not think that with such a fare, the HST will easily replace many air carriers? That probably explains in part why the project is stalling so inexplicably. Is the airline lobby holding up the project? With all the support it received, there is no reason why anyone should oppose it.
I discovered this afternoon there might be a new reason: it might be the fear of displeasing the Reform Party because they see no advantage in that project since it encourages development on a north to south axis in North America; that in itself is not a bad thing and there would certainly be similar projects to be developed in the west.
We believe the HST project is highly mobilizing and job creating since it would generate 80,000 direct jobs and 120,000 indirect ones. Compared to other projects, it would be much cheaper because of the taxes that governments would collect on the income of a whole generation that would be put to work. Right now in Quebec, there are 4,000 engineers without work. Don't you think that such a project would be welcomed by those people who are looking for jobs, who studied at university and who have nothing because no interesting development project is proposed to them.
Therefore, the high-speed train project appears to be an interesting way of developing the economy of the Quebec-Windsor corridor, but it is also very interesting for the Bombardier company. For instance, in La Pocatière, in my riding, Bombardier has a plant that built the cars used to cross the English Channel and those of the New York subway. The economic cycle in that plant is often the reverse of the cycle of the whole economy. While the economy is taking off again, employment declines in the plant. Conversely, in an economic downturn, more jobs are created at the plant.
Such a project could perhaps balance production and increase employability to ensure that the region does not experience ups and downs like going from 1,000 to 250 or 300 jobs. Such a project could stabilize job creation in the region and ensure that expertise stays where it is.
Now, every time the economic cycle hurts our businesses, technicians and engineers go elsewhere. They must move on to other jobs, so that our businesses lose this expertise and have to start from scratch every time.
A project such as the high-speed train would create jobs to put young people to work and help build a corridor between Quebec City and Windsor which, in the end, would benefit all elements of society between Quebec and Ontario and towards the United States. And, if the decision is made quickly enough in case Quebec City is chosen to host the 2002 Winter Olympics, it would certainly be a very interesting means of transportation for which we would have planned in time, for once.
I think we have all the elements we need to succeed. I was a little disappointed when the Prime Minister, replying in jest to a question from the Leader of the Opposition, asked whether the high-speed train should be stopped at the border between Quebec and Ontario. I think that it is much more important than that and that it deserves serious answers dealing with the substantive issue.
Studies have already been carried out. What is needed now is the political courage to go ahead with the project. The economic conditions are such that we are sure the high-speed train is not another Hibernia project. If we could take the money that Quebec has thrown away with Hibernia and stop the Hibernia project and put that money into the high-speed train, we could
contribute Quebec's share directly to this project and maximize job creation in doing the work.
Creating a new rail line creates jobs that will make good use of skilled workers and line workers, namely people with high-school education who can do all kinds of support work to install the line; at the same time, it takes technological expertise that would surely make Quebec and Canada leaders in this field.
We can bet that in 15 or 20 years, there will be maybe 10 or 15 high-speed rail lines in North America. Then we will know if we have missed the train or if we seized our opportunity to be leaders in such projects and to make Canada and Quebec experts in developing this kind of transportation link which is what we need in a continent like North America.