Mr. Speaker, the other day I asked a question of the Minister of the Environment with respect to rail line abandonment. I asked him if he was willing to bring forward an environmental assessment of the various abandonments which are affecting my home province of Manitoba, for instance the possible abandonment of rail lines in the north and the Lyleton subdivision in the south.
I got a cute answer. The minister got up and said: "Not yet". It seems that the Trudeau shrug is back in style.
The fact of the matter is there is a good case to be made for doing an environmental assessment of these various rail line abandonments and what effect they have on the environment by increasing truck traffic and a variety of other things which need to be considered.
I would urge the government, pursuant to its commitment to the Bruntland commission, to do these kinds of environmental assessments. That is what governments around the world committed themselves to do when they endorsed the work of the Bruntland commission to environmentally assess all major policy initiatives; not just the environmental ones, but transportation and all kinds of
other policy initiatives. That has not been done by this government and it should be done.