Mr. Speaker, maybe the member was not here at the beginning of my remarks, but I think I did point out that the railway transportation environment in Canada is a duopoly. There is a new term for him to consider and add to his vocabulary.
Obviously the issue here is that we do not have competition. We have a highly restrictive system that is hurting local producers, farmers and shippers. Supposedly this bill is an attempt to help alleviate the result of that kind of monopoly hold. Those are some of the reasons we would support the bill.
I would love to spend another day, and maybe we will be here another few days, debating the gateway. I am from British Columbia and that is something I have looked at a lot, the B.C. government's gateway proposal as well as the federal government's gateway proposal. There might be a line here or there in the federal budget that is supportable, but I can say that in the NDP, we felt not a shadow of a doubt in casting our negative vote on that budget, because that budget failed Canadians on so many levels, whether they are farmers, producers, the homeless, students trying to get into post-secondary education or families seeking child care. I could go on with a very long list.
However, on the gateway proposal, one of the things that really bothered me in the budget is that any new infrastructure money has to be subject to a P3. We are talking about the privatization of this country's infrastructure. I could go on and on.
We do have credibility here. We do know what we are talking about. We actually look at legislation on its merits. That is actually why we are supporting this bill. There is enough here for us to say we support this in principle. We will look to improve it at committee.
I will say that the budget got a failing grade not only from us, but from all the provinces, from British Columbia right across the country because of the Atlantic accord and the failure of the equalization payments.