Madam Speaker, in the final days of his dictatorial tenure as the transport minister, I would like to take this opportunity to thank him for his latest excesses on VIA Rail. His outrageous new spending announcement is enough to finally focus media and public attention on the phenomenal waste of money that VIA represents.
Since the Liberals took office, VIA has used up $3 billion of taxpayer money, exclusive of this latest announcement. That money could have been far better spent on health care, justice issues, basic community infrastructure or simply left in the pockets of Canada's hard-pressed taxpayers.
However I certainly cannot thank the minister for the destruction he has brought on all the other areas of transportation. While he has focused on his pet rail fetish, our highways are crumbling, airport rents and the subsequent airline fees have skyrocketed and have tripled. Airline security has turned into another expensive and inefficient bureaucracy, and security at our national ports has been slashed.
Our country needs and deserves better. If the minister had just stayed home and played with toy trains, the taxpayers and the transport industry would be in far better shape.