Mr. Speaker, this certainly is a storied bridge. The bridge was begun in 1907 and, as a matter of fact, collapsed on two occasions and 80-some people died as a result.
I would like to note that the Delcan reports suggest that the current coating on the bridge is supposed to last for 30 years, but it is already judged as inadequate.
We have experience with the collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis. In my own riding a truck hit the bottom of a bridge and now a bridge which is only 50 years old has to be replaced at a cost of $140 million. We can never assume that the bridges are not going to collapse on us very quickly.
We want to try to get this resolved as quickly as possible, but I would like to know where the Liberals were when this issue was being dealt with. Clearly, they were asleep at the switch. They allowed this bridge to leave the public domain, to be transferred over to CN, a crown corporation. That was the beginning of the problem. A private company now owns the bridge and it does not want to own up to its responsibility to do the repairs. The public is going to end up having to take the bridge back and do all of the repairs at the taxpayers' expense.