Mr. Speaker, I will touch on my own motions by way of introduction. My colleague will deal further with those.
I would just like to point out two things. First of all the Official Languages Act is not the subject of the motion. The subject is a restriction to a private company contrary to what the parliamentary secretary, the hon. member for London East said earlier with regard to the headquarters. He suggested that because it is in Montreal and it has always been in Montreal it probably always will be. That may be. If the company follows the official languages policy of the federal government and it works for it, I am sure it will continue to but if it does not work for the company, then it should not have a gun held to its head.
I guess I should not use that expression. That would offend the Minister of Justice who is taking all those away. Instead I would say that we should not twist the company's arm and require it to remain there subject to this policy. Of course even twisting its arm now is a little dangerous because the thought police will first have to determine whether we are twisting its arm because we want it to use a particular language or because of race, religion or sexual orientation. I guess I will have to start to be more careful in the House.
I would like to speak just briefly to Groups Nos. 5 and 6. Group No. 5 deals with the Bloc motion with the Pont de Québec. I listened to the group which came to committee on this matter. They were a very passionate and dedicated group. They obviously feel very strongly about their project to preserve the bridge and have a lot of commitment to this. I am sympathetic to their case. It was their explanation that there is a legal obligation on the part of CN. If that is true, and I have no reason to believe that they would be incorrect given how conscientious they seem to be about this, then it will not matter whether CN is still held by the government or privatized.
That legal obligation, if it exists, will go with the company and should be dealt with and enforced. I have suggested to them that I, among others I am sure, because I know the Bloc is very concerned about this, would be prepared to take this up if they are prepared to bring forward the evidence that this is a legal obligation.
With regard to Group No. 6, in principle I have some support for what the Bloc is talking of. However, this is the wrong forum in which to do this. The government has already put me on notice that it will be introducing legislation next week dealing with regulatory reform for the entire rail industry. It would be inappropriate to take a small segment of that and try to deal with it under privatization when we have the regulatory legislation coming forward that will deal with all of it.