Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity afforded by the motion standing in the name of the hon. member for Joliette to repeat what I said in this House on March 22. To emerge from its economic doldrums, our country needs a large-scale collective project, one that will generate our enthusiasm and mobilize us.
Such a project exists. I am referring to the HST, the high-speed train between Quebec City and Windsor, which could also be run on a loop connecting Mirabel and Dorval. Several studies have already concluded that this project would be economically viable.
A high-speed train running through a densely populated corridor with high ridership potential answers a need. The train, as other countries have already realized, is not a relic of the past. In its modern version, when certain distances must be covered and the ridership is there, it is the way of the future.
According to a study conducted by Bombardier, HST per capita transportation costs will be competitive with those of other competing modes. Furthermore, the benefits of control and speed are obvious.
I may add that the HST would be a welcome solution to the problem of transportation to and from Mirabel and Dorval. It would be necessary to add to the main line a loop where the train would run only at certain times. It would take 18 minutes to get from airport to airport, and in the airports would also be linked directly by rail to Quebec and Ontario.
Another point is that trains are more environmentally friendly than any other means of transportation. Running at a speed of 300 kilometres per hour, the HST uses half as much energy per passenger as a car and one-quarter as much as a plane. Pollution has a price, a financial cost which we tend to forget in our calculations and which should be added when comparing various transportation modes with highway and air transportation.
Electrification, which is the rule in Europe, would have the double advantage of being environmentally acceptable, since there would be no emissions into the atmosphere, and of consuming energy that is abundant in Ontario as well as Quebec, a province that is trying to export surplus energy.
And now for the burning issue of unemployment. Construction on the HST would create 80,000 jobs annually. In addition, 40,000 jobs would be created in sectors related to the project, plus 1,250 permanent jobs in maintenance and management of the network. The HST would ideally take up the slack and hire workers who might be laid off following the merger between CN and CP.
Yes, but look at the cost! According to the proposed investment strategy, and if we take the average strategy of 300 kilometres per hour, it would cost $7.1 billion in 1990 dollars. According to this hypothesis, during the construction period tax revenues would be generated totalling $1.8 billion. For the government, the HST is an investment rather than an expenditure.
However, these advantages are better understood abroad than in this country. Several of the most developed countries in the world now have one or more HSTs in service. Canada is lagging behind.
Bombardier, a domestic company, has more customers abroad for its railway products than it does here. In this area as in so many others, the government's lack of vision is overwhelming.
Does our low population density preclude this kind of project? That would be a poor argument. Some of the countries that already have HSTs or are planning to put one into service are not more densely populated than the Quebec City-Windsor corridor.
In this high-tech sector, we could be leaders instead of followers and be the first ones to develop an exportable expertise that could help improve our balance of payments. Yet, while our competition is taking action, we are examining the umpteenth report on the subject.
If our governments act now, we still have a chance to find our opportunity window on the high speed train market. The time lost so far can be caught up, we are told, but we must act now.
The late lamented Jean de La Fontaine wrote a delightful little story our minister of transport may find useful and inspiring to read every day. You guessed right, I am referring to the tale of "The Tortoise and the Hare".
In closing, Mr. Speaker, tomorrow, in their history books, will our children be taught that in terms of collective achievements commanding their admiration, the last decade of the 20th century was marked in their country by the so-called infrastructure project, that is to say a plan to fill in wholes with asphalt from the West coast to the East coast?
Is our ambition limited to leaving our children-apart from a huge debt of course-roads with fewer wholes in them and sewers with fewer leaks? Certainly not. Such a vision is not worthy of Canadians and Quebecers.
Our children-I hope and it depends on this government-will be able to say proudly that besides carrying out this infrastructure work, we, their parents, made sure, as the 21st century drew nearer, that we remained leaders among innovative nations.
So, with the HST, we will prove to them that our creative potential and capacity of having daring ideas is intact; in a word, we are not in a decline and want to provide them, to face the challenges of the 3rd millennium, a new building tool that reflects our ambitions for their future as well as our own past achievements.