And at a time when our nation is looking at improving itself from the environmental perspective and meeting Kyoto requirements, now more than ever we should be supporting rail transportation.
I listened to my colleague, again from the Alliance, who somehow suggested that it was more environmentally sound to have a short-haul plane in the air rather than having rail transportation. I do not know where he is getting his information from, but anything I have seen over the course of the last number of years does not prove that out. I am not opposed to short-haul air flights. I just do not think they are the be-all and end-all.
I think this country, this nation, can support a variety of transportation services and I think we should make them available so that travellers do have a choice. A lot of people coming to our country want to be able to hop on a train and go throughout the country because they prefer rail transportation. They are used to it in their countries and they want the same here.
I know I only have a few short minutes, but I just want to mention a wonderful experience I had as a caucus member. A few years back our caucus made a decision that we were not going to have our caucus retreat in just one little area of the country. We made a decision to do our retreat on the train and travel from coast to coast. It was an extremely wonderful experience to see our nation, each and every province along the way and experience it by rail. What I also saw, and I had my eyes opened because I did not travel by rail very often, were numerous people throughout this nation using rail transportation. Yes, I want to see a lot more people doing it, but there were a lot of people using rail transportation. There were students travelling to and from school, students who wanted to do that as part of their holidays. There were families travelling together where someone did not have to sit in the driver's seat and miss half the vacation. They could be together and enjoy our nation. For that reason alone, it is worthwhile to support VIA Rail.
I for one also very much support improved rail transportation, higher speed rail transportation between--and I know this will shock members because it is not my area of the country--the densely populated areas in Ontario and Quebec. To me it makes sense. We need to get that traffic off the roads if at all possible. If people want to travel by road, they should be able to do that, but if they want to travel by rail and not have to put up with the hectic traffic on the road, they should be able to do that as well.
I want to emphasize my support and that of our caucus for ensuring that those dollars go back into VIA Rail. In the future we will support VIA Rail as a public-run corporation for the benefit of all Canadians and all travellers.