Madam Speaker, I will not talk at length about this part of Bill C-17, since I do not think there are major problems with the administrative provisions on transportation contained in this bill.
I will rather speak about the lack of seriousness of the Reform Party when it proposes to examine the bill section by section. We were just told in a very strange way that the party wants to eliminate the entire clauses of that part of the bill, while recognizing that some provisions could be beneficial. I have never heard such a thing before. I have already seen politicians
who were not serious, but we expected that the Reform Party would be a little more serious than that.
Had they proposed constructive amendments to this part of the bill, it seems to me that it would have been promising for the overall examination of the bill. I see that they are unable to do that, because they are not serious. All the more so since it was just said that the bill contains some provisions that are beneficial for Western grain transportation. They have been elected only in the West and they are proposing amendments to eliminate these provisions as a whole, including the ones concerning Western grain transportation, the famous Crown's Nest Pass Agreement.
Do these people talk to their constituents? As they claim, their way of doing politics is somewhat different. They bring up questions faxed to them by citizens. They should have gone directly to their constituents, especially the western farmers and the western carriers to seek their opinion, instead of acting so irresponsibly and proposing these amendments.
I also noticed that each time a bill, including the motion introduced by the Reform Party, dealt with a region east of Manitoba, it was necessarily bad. One said for example that, in the Maritime Provinces, users could have been asked to pay for the ice monitoring. As if these people were not already overburdened. I noticed it during the hearings held by the sub-committee on bill C-17, especially on the part dealing with unemployment insurance. Let us stop -as the Reformers always do-taking the Maritime Provinces as the sole example to illustrate inefficiency.
The same thing applies to regional development grants. I feel it is a little too much. I wanted to stress that. It does not add anything to the motion introduced, it does not take away anything from it. But the attitude of the Reform Party today is disgraceful.