Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his great speech. What I found interesting was his argument about how, even in the area where he lives, which is a little more remote than where I live in Toronto, rail infrastructure is critical to the economic development of that area. Earlier today in my speech I talked about how critical rail infrastructure is to a city region such as Toronto, both coordinating economic activity within that region and connecting that region to other economic activity. It seems that rail infrastructure, at least in Canada, has to be seen as a core component of global competitiveness.
Does my hon. colleague agree with that? If he does agree with that, what does he make of a government that sells itself as an economic manager, yet has taken years to actually deal with this problem of freight rail and the unhappiness of customers with the virtual monopoly we have in this country over freight rail services?