Mr. Speaker, it is proposed to amend this clause in two places, essentially where prescriptions for requiring railways providing transportation services to people are written. According to the way the bill is now presented it takes into consideration the special needs of people with special disabilities.
I have proposed to add the words "and the elderly", because it is not always easy to describe the problems that come with age: being slower, not able to make such long steps. There are special requirements that are caused as a result in loading and unloading of conveyances.
For that reason I thought it would be appropriate to include the needs of elderly persons as something of which providers of transportation would have to be kept aware.
I note that most of the airlines now do that to a certain extent. Elderly persons are loaded in advance but there is no requirement in the act. As the act is now written there is nothing requiring them to do this other than the exigencies of the market.
If we are going to draw attention to providers of service into perpetuity which this act will have the affect of doing, we should mention that it is a requirement of the Government of Canada for providers of those transportation services to keep the needs of elderly persons at the top of their order of priorities, along with the needs of people with special disabilities.