Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague's discussion because it raises a number of the issues that the New Democratic Party has been trying to get out on this bill that we are dealing with now.
This is an issue of accountability. It is an issue of accountability with regard to the CN management that is making record profits. The CEO is making $56 million a year, yet we have seen cutback after cutback along the rail lines, the rail lines that run from one end of this country to the other and link so many of our communities.
There is also the issue of safety, an issue that has been raised by the workers on the front lines. It is an issue that seems to be irrelevant to the government. It was also irrelevant when the Liberals were in power. There are serious safety issues. We have seen such an increase in trains jumping the tracks, derailments and spills in the last five years, and there has been very little oversight.
Yet these issues are not being addressed by government, so in this debate what we are having is really a chance to speak to the failed management policies of CN and the need to restore labour peace. How do we restore labour peace? As my colleague pointed out, we need to have a commitment to ensure that there is proper investment along the lines and that there is safety, including safety for working families.
I would like to follow up on another element. My colleague pointed out how the government is trying to make this a debate of pitting one set of working families against another set of working families. The government is obscuring the fundamental issue. These workers were locked out. They were locked out by the CEO, who is making $56 million a year. They were locked out by the company that is setting an abhorrent record for numbers of accidents while it is making profits to send off in dividends to shareholders all over North America.
These workers were locked out. Now we are being called in as parliamentarians to stay all night if necessary to bring in legislation that would impose on them what has been called a baseball arbitration settlement, whereby management will then get to basically write the blank cheque for how it wants to write the rules for the agreement that will be imposed on the workers.
It seems to me that everything right now is in favour of this company that is run by a guy who is making $56 million a year. Let us think to back home and what it would cost a person to earn that over an entire lifetime. The average citizens back home would never even come close. They work hard for their money. They are accountable. If they do not produce, they will lose their jobs. If this man does not produce, who knows what kind of golden parachute he will be given?
In terms of production, as we see the horrific level of accidents that have been happening over the last number of years, there obviously are serious questions about the accountability of CN management. Yet these are the people who locked out the workers, the workers who have been speaking out about the safety problems and the lack of investment along the rail lines.
Where does my hon. colleague feel we need to go in terms of a railway strategy in this country to address these issues of safety and the necessary investment in rail infrastructure and to have a healthy economy for the 21st century so that no family is pitted against another?