Now he is a lobbyist for CN. I am sure he is doing quite well. I do not know what the ethics counsellor thinks of that. I suppose he passed through the required time of cleansing and everything is being done by the rules, however inadequate those rules may be.
It was a travesty. I remember when we had a publicly owned Canadian National Railway infrastructure from coast to coast. It was operating on business principles but nevertheless from time to time could do things that served the needs of particular communities or regions.
Now we have that same Canadian National Railway, no longer worthy of that name, which is becoming more and more of an American railway. It merged with the Illinois Central. There are more and more American senior managers coming up and running the CNR according to American railway principles.
Who really owns the CNR? Up to 60% of its shareholders are Americans. We had a vast public infrastructure paid for over the years by the Canadian public which was turned over for a very cheap price to what are now American shareholders. We no longer have control of that enormous piece of transportation infrastructure.
It was part of the common wisdom of the country and of parliament for years that given the size of Canada transportation was a critical thing the government had to have some say in. Through the privatization of the CNR and through their relaxing of the regulations that used to attend the regulation of railways we now have a toothless organization. Whatever Paul Tellier wants Paul Tellier gets. Whatever the CPR wants the CPR gets.
Some members may remember when we had a Canadian Transport Commission that could actually make railways do things they did not want to do because it was in the public interest to do them. The CTC could prohibit them from doing things that were harmful.
When the history of Canada is written it will probably be in the past tense and will focus on the major decisions that led to the country's disappearance. Today we hear the Toronto-Dominion Bank saying that in 10 years we will be American dollarizing our economy. When the history of Canada's disappearance is written, the Liberal government of the day and its minister of transport, Doug Young, will figure prominently in its demise.
It is the most shameful thing the Liberals have ever done. There are Liberals over there who cannot say so, but many have told me privately that it was not one of the high points of their political life. They did what not even a Conservative government would do.
Even during the Mulroney years the Conservatives did not have the nerve to do what the Liberals did. They might have thought or fantasized about it, but they did not have the nerve to actually commit such a foul deed. That was left to the Liberals.