Mr. Speaker, I certainly appreciate and welcome the questions from the hon. member from the Canadian Alliance.
On the timing issue, as we get to committee we will have to get into this issue in a lot more detail. We will want to ensure that there are, hopefully, deadlines and that the government will agree that deadlines should be established so that the proposal does not just sit on the books, so to speak, and nothing happens.
However, what I am particularly interested in, is the proposal includes a proposed mediation process that the CTA would be able to engage in with respect to matters affecting noise, or maybe other matters as well. I think from a resident's point of view, this would be a much more effective way of dealing with this kind of issue than having to hire lawyers. This happened in one case and maybe in the member's case as well. In many communities local residents do not have those resources.
I would certainly agree that we should be pushing as much as we can so that the government is held to account to set out some clear timelines and deadlines for when this will be implemented.
On the second question, I am little familiar with the situation that the member raises. In speaking to the corridors that are no longer being used, I was referencing mostly the situation in urban communities and what opportunities there were for public transit.
However in other situations where a contract has been established and then all of a sudden VIA Rail decides to yank it back because something has become profitable, maybe that needs to be looked at by the committee. There has to be a fair process. We cannot allow a decision to be made and then have it unilaterally changed at some point because the company has decided there is some profit there and maybe it had better take another look at it. Maybe can look at that issue in committee.
Overall some of the proposals in this bill, not all of them but many of them, are good proposals. I am being optimistic but I hope that they will address some longstanding grievances that people have had.