Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the NDP member or British Columbia Southern Interior whom I mentioned earlier in my speech. He is our agriculture critic on that committee. He is a relatively new member of Parliament, but he has done an incredible job of connecting with farmers and producers across this country and bringing forward their concerns in Parliament. I am very glad to have his question today because he has been a very strong advocate for the farming community.
He raises a very good question. He used the example of the pulp mill in Castlegar. It seems incredible that a successful business feels it is not getting the service from the provider, in this case CPR, and that it has to line up its own cars. I would think businesses would have enough to do in just taking care of business, but they have to keep knocking on the door of the service provider and asking whether anybody cares about them or is it that only the biggest customers get the attention.
This gets to the very heart of the matter that our railway system and the operation of it have so incredibly diminished. We had this dream of the railway linking all parts of Canada and yet it has shrunk to this monopoly situation where local businesses, producers and farmers feel that they cannot rely on the infrastructure that is there to do the very basic job.
The member's question is very relevant. What is it that we should be doing? We should be looking at this in a holistic way. We should be looking at it from the point of view of the capacity of the infrastructure. Why are we not increasing our rail service? Why are we allowing a lot of the smaller lines to be closed down? We should be increasing the competition.
This bill, while I believe it is an important step, it is certainly not the whole picture. It is certainly not the solution that the farmers, the producers and the shippers are looking for. I have already mentioned the safety issue. If we had a railway system that operated efficiently and in a safe way, we would see a vastly improved situation. I could cite those two things that need immediate attention by the government if we are to actually address these long-standing concerns that are being put forward by the member for British Columbia Southern Interior.