Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Lévis for his comments. We have enjoyed a valuable asset in the rail system in building this country.
Many times I have gone through the province of Quebec, growing up in New Brunswick and living in Nova Scotia. It is part of our whole eastern heritage, part of our whole country.
These assistance programs are antiquated. They have come through the British North America Act in 1920, 1930, 1940. I say again that they are antiquated. It is important that we update and modernize. Our manufacturers, our grain growers, our furnace makers in Nova Scotia, our farmers, wherever they are, in Quebec or Nova Scotia have the same needs: to move products to the marketplace.
I cited some statistics taken by StatsCanada four weeks ago. Trains have increased some 19 per cent in freight in this country. If time permitted, I could address the question of railways, how a line in Nova Scotia from Sydney to Truro, my hometown was sold. It has become privatized. It was losing a million dollars a year and now it is making several million dollars a year. The amount of freight moving through those lines has increased. This is happening with short lines across the country. They are becoming profitable.
By taking the subsidies away we are allowing our manufacturers and farmers to have more flexibility. We are allowing them to be more efficient in the 21st century, to modernize and to look at creativity under a world trade organization as well. The transitional funding allows us to get to that point and to upgrade the highways.
The hon. member for Lévis knows as well as I from Cumberland-Colchester that the highways between Quebec and Nova Scotia certainly need upgrading so that we can share in trade wealth a lot better between each other.