House of Commons Hansard #48 of the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was million.
Financial Statement of Minister of FinanceThe BudgetGovernment Orders
The Acting Speaker Barry Devolin
It being 5:30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper.
The House resumed from November 22, 2013, consideration of Bill C-461, An Act to amend the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act (disclosure of information), as reported (with amendments) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.
Alain Giguère NDP Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
Mr. Speaker, the NDP will support the amendments to Bill C-461, but if they were not made, we would vote against the bill.
What can be said about this bill, which is typical of his government? What the government is doing is in fact exactly the opposite of what one might expect from the bill's title. It was supposed to address government transparency, but that is not what we got.
The bill was to require all direct or indirect employees of the government to disclose their salary if it was over $188,600. In order not to have to reveal what it was paying its special advisors, its numerous consultants and the employees in the Prime Minister's Office, the government increased this amount to $444,661. This is completely crazy.
The bill, which was introduced by a member who was a Conservative at the time, was essentially about transparency. Taxpayers are entitled to know how much people are being paid out of their tax dollars, particularly if their salary is more than $188,600.
You can be for or against this measure. However, in order to hide its use of the machinery of government for personal purposes, the government increased the amount to $444,661. Incredible. It is certainly indicative of this government's attitude.
The bill also imposed a number of restrictions on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, on the grounds that the CBC was not only an enemy of the Canadian people, but also a nasty crown corporation. Obviously the government feels that Sun News is much better and more intelligent. It is at least more conservative.
This use of government regulations for strictly personal and partisan purposes is nothing new. We have seen this in many other statutes. Private enterprise is deregulated and allowed to do whatever it wants. On the other hand, for members of first nations, the financial regulations are torture. They are far too stringent. The first nations are going to spend more time filling out government forms that working so that people in their community can have acceptable living conditions. That suits the government just fine. In the meantime, they will not be asking the government to build social housing. That is typical of this government.
It is the same story for unions. The government has spared no effort where unions are concerned. Everything has to be public, including private contracts. For example, Xerox has agreements with some unions. If a particular union asks Xerox to offer its services at a specified price, Xerox does not want another union asking it to lower its prices as well.
Once again, the government wants to cut spending with this anti-union legislation. The private sector can establish any company in any way. For a worker who wants to unionize, it is becoming difficult. Moreover, it is easy for the management to challenge the union certification of that worker.
Let us also not forget environmental groups, because all environmentalists are being targeted by this government.
Indeed, these groups are dangerous. They question the fact that the government is unable to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Needless to say, that is not working.
Yesterday, we saw a surprising bill that can be legally challenged and is highly questionable from a moral point of view. It concerns officers of Parliament, who must now disclose their political past for the last 10 years. As far as I know, though, people in this country are still entitled to their own political opinion. They have the right to vote for whoever they want. This government does not seem to agree. Let us get back to this issue.
To say that this shows that the government has been in office for too long and the Prime Minister's Office—which is already struggling with many ethical issues—is not really interested in transparency is stating the obvious. This bill is not about transparency; it is about control. What the government wants is to allow private companies to acquire a non-competitive power against crown corporations such as the CBC.
We will talk about this later on, but that is the real goal. With its partisan approach, this government sees the CBC as an opponent. Of course, it is using this bill to do the opposite of what it was supposed to do originally, which was to disclose the salaries of all those who earn more than a member of Parliament. It is clear that the Prime Minister's Office does not want this information to be disclosed, although we know the Conservatives can be more cunning than that.
Instead of paying some expenses through the Prime Minister's Office or out of the Conservative Party fund, they appoint party fundraisers to the Senate to save money and make taxpayers pay. It does not cost the Conservative Party a lot of money, they get salaried workers who run fundraising campaigns on a full-time basis for them, and they are happy about that. However, Canadian taxpayers who see this are not pleased. When we see the blunders made by some Conservatives who really embarrassed the government with the magnitude of their excesses, it is easy to see that the government had other things to deal with.
Even organizers from the private sector told the committee this did not make any sense. Conservative members of the committee did not even bother to give a single reason for these changes. This speaks volumes about this government's inability to truly defend transparency.
As with everything else, the facts are hard to challenge. On the issue of the environment, the government may claim that acid rain does not exist, or that there is no greenhouse effect, but the facts show otherwise and people notice them. As for science, the government may claim it supports science, but when all the scientists say they are tired of being monitored and not being allowed to disclose their findings, again the facts are hard to challenge. In the case of the census, everyone told the government not to go ahead with its plan, but it did nevertheless. Now, Canada's censuses can no longer be used to anticipate medical services that should be developed in the future. For the Conservatives, climate change does not exist. People in Texas who are coping with a snow storm must really be having a good laugh. As for the CBC, the Conservatives are essentially saying that the corporation is not a problem.
There is nothing worse for a liar than the facts and the truth. We are going to support the amendments and this point of view on transparency. We are going to say yes to these amendments.
If the amendments are not adopted by the House, we will have no choice but to oppose this legislation, which is inappropriate, which is against Canada, and which does not promote transparency.
Costas Menegakis ConservativeParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak on the subject of Bill C-461, an act to amend the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act (disclosure of information). The bill was introduced in the House on November 5, 2012, by the member for Edmonton—St. Albert, and it has been the subject of numerous debates.
The bill was referred to the House from committee for third reading debate. Shortly before the debate took place, the member for Edmonton—St. Albert tabled eight motions to amend the bill as adopted in committee and as reported to the House on June 6, 2013. Today I wish to speak to these motions.
It is important to recognize that these motions fundamentally alter the state of Bill C-461. They would remove everything related to the records of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. These motions not only fundamentally alter the state of Bill C-461 as amended by the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics but also go against what the member for Edmonton—St. Albert originally proposed for Bill C-461.
The bill initially proposed to amend the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act to make most of the CBC's information accessible under these acts. This was an important component of Bill C-461.
At that time, the bill proposed to change the treatment of the CBC's records to be in line with the recommendations made by the ethics committee during its study of section 68.1 of the Access to Information Act. Section 68.1 is the ambiguous and confusing exclusion currently applicable to the CBC. This is the provision that the Federal Court of Appeal described as “a recipe for controversy” in paragraph 69 of its decision in 2011 FCA 326, the case of the CBC v. the Information Commissioner of Canada.
The government will oppose all eight motions presented by the independent member for Edmonton—St. Albert and will ask that Bill C-461 be voted on in the state in which it was when it was referred to the House on June 6, 2013.
I will now speak on each motion separately.
Motion No. 1 would modify the long title of Bill C-461 to remove the reference to the Access to Information Act. Based on this motion, the title would now read “An act to amend the Privacy Act (disclosure of information)”. The motion goes against what the member from Edmonton—St. Albert originally proposed for Bill C-461 and against what was approved in committee. The approved version proposed to amend the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act to make most information under the CBC's control accessible under both of these acts.
Motion No. 2 would modify clause 1 of the bill—that is, the short title of Bill C-461—by removing the reference to the CBC. With this motion, the short title of the bill would read “This Act may be cited as the Public Service Disclosure and Transparency Act”. Again, this motion goes against what the member for Edmonton—St. Albert originally proposed for Bill C-461 and what was approved in committee. Bill C-461 was originally about increasing transparency of the CBC by removing the broad exclusion that applied to it.
The government will oppose both of these motions, as they fundamentally modify Bill C-461.
Motion No. 3 proposes to delete clause 2 of Bill C-461 and thus remove the proposed injury-based exemption, which would relate to how records of the CBC are to be treated under the Access to Information Act. I will remind the House that the bill originally introduced by the member for Edmonton—St. Albert proposed this injury-based exemption.
As a result of this, repealing the current ambiguous exclusion available to the CBC—that is, section 68.1 of the Access to Information Act—would no longer be viable. That is reflected by Motion No. 4, which would delete the relevant section of Bill C-461. The effect of these two motions would be the continuation of the status quo for the CBC.
The effect of these two motions would be the continuation of the status quo for the CBC. The Access to Information Act would not apply to information under the control of the CBC that relates to its journalistic, creative, or programming activities, other than information that relates to its general administration. This ambiguous exclusion would remain and the public would be prevented from getting access to much of CBC's information.
As I have indicated, the government will oppose these motions.
Motion No. 5 would amend clause 4 of Bill C-461 by modifying the categories of personal information that could be disclosed by government institutions respecting their employees or officers, and the threshold for doing this. The new proposed threshold would be based on the sessional allowance payable to a member of Parliament.
Members have already debated what information should be disclosed under the Privacy Act. The bill was amended to reflect what the government considers necessary to promote more transparency at a certain level of the public administration.
The government will oppose this motion, as it alters Bill C-461.
Motion No. 6, would delete clause 5 of Bill C-461 and would therefore remove the proposed injury-based exemption, which would relate to how records of the CBC are to be treated under the Privacy Act. Here again, I will remind the House that the bill originally introduced by the member for Edmonton—St. Albert proposed this injury-based exemption.
The government will oppose this motion, as it modifies the essence of Bill C-461.
Motion No. 7 would delete clause 6 of the bill, which provides for an exclusion for personal information under control of the CBC that would reveal the identity of any confidential journalistic sources, and for personal information that the CBC collects, uses, or discloses solely for journalistic, artistic, or literary purposes.
The government amended the bill in committee to add an exclusion for any information under the control of the CBC that would reveal the identity of any confidential journalistic sources. The government strongly believes that the confidentiality of journalistic sources is a fundamental aspect of journalism, and we do not want to place the CBC at a disadvantage compared to private sector broadcasters.
The government will therefore oppose this motion, as it alters Bill C-461.
The effect of Motion No. 8 is that the status quo would remain for the CBC with respect to access to its personal information. The Privacy Act would continue to not apply to personal information that the CBC collects, uses, or discloses solely for journalistic, artistic, or literary purposes.
The government will oppose this motion as it modifies Bill C-461 in a fundamental way.
I am grateful for this opportunity to speak on these motions amending Bill C-461. As noted at the beginning, our government will oppose all eight motions presented by the member for Edmonton—St. Albert, and we ask that Bill C-461 be voted on in the state that it was referred to this House on June 6, 2013.
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
Mr. Speaker, I will not take a long time in this debate. Suffice it to say that during the last round of debates, before the bill hit committee, I was one of those members who voted against it. However, the amendments brought forward by my friend go a long way toward establishing the intent of the bill with respect to transparency.
I find it ironic that the government that touts itself as being a champion of accountability does not want to expose salaries above the $160,000 mark. It moved it to $444,000. Imagine: if someone makes anything more than $160,000 up to almost a half a million dollars, the government does not want the public to know about it.
The public should know. This is the government of accountability, or so it claims to be, which is why I am astonished that it would not allow this to go through. We just heard all about this. How can it be a Conservative government of accountability when anyone who makes below $444,000 including bonuses it does not want? It is incredible.
The Conservatives want everything out there. They want to protect taxpayer money, yet they do not want taxpayers to see how they spend their money within their own offices, such as the PMO and others, including bonuses.
That is the part that really gets to me. It is not so much about the CBC as it is about that. That is what this is all about. I am astonished that a government that claims accountability would go to this measure. It goes against the grain of Conservative principles, such that we have an honest member of Parliament here who became an independent as a result of it.
Jasbir Sandhu NDP Surrey North, BC
Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of my constituents in Surrey North to speak to Bill C-461, the CBC and public service disclosure and transparency act. Bill C-461 is a blatant attack on the CBC's ability to remain competitive and independent, which the Conservative government has tried to cloak with language of “transparency”. The Canadian public will not be served by the changes proposed by this bill. The only beneficiaries will be CBC's competitors.
How can the federal government, while demonstrating a trend toward greater secrecy and less transparency, ask for exactly the opposite from everyone else? In a stunning display of hypocrisy, the Conservatives continue to demand near limitless disclosure from first nations, labour unions, and now the CBC, while they simultaneously refuse to disclose the number of employees in the PMO who earn over $100,000.
If the Conservative government were truly interested in transparency, it would have supported the original salary disclosure measures in this bill. Instead, during the ethics committee's study of the bill, the Conservatives gutted these provisions by raising the minimum income threshold for full salary disclosure of federal employees from $188,600 to $444,661 annually. This amendment they introduced at committee was designed to effectively neutralize Bill C-461's salary disclosure measures, and rather than supporting transparency, as the name of this bill suggests, the Conservatives are doing exactly the opposite. By gutting the salary disclosure provisions proposed in this bill, the Conservatives are yet again demonstrating their aversion to any measure of true transparency.
I am sure Canadians are wondering why the Conservatives voted to raise the salary disclosure threshold. There must certainly be a valid rationale behind this particular decision. I am sorry to disappoint Canadians searching for this answer. There should be a reasonable explanation from the government, but there does not seem to be one. In fact, the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation noted that not a single witness nor committee member even spoke to why increasing the threshold was a good idea. I have to say that I agree with the director's prediction that this was probably because the Conservatives could not think of even one good reason to justify their action.
The Conservatives are demonstrating that they are nothing if not consistent in this position. Over the past few months, we have seen in the House their attempts at evasion and cloaking the truth. Even independent transparency experts have criticized the government for its deteriorating commitment to transparency. How can we be expected to work toward transparency when the government is unable to set a good example of what that should look like? Why should we settle for transparency for everyone except the Conservatives? On this side of the House, we believe in a regime of transparency and accountability that applies fairly to all aspects of the federal government. This is clearly not a view shared by my colleagues across the aisle.
I am sure we can all agree that it is of the utmost importance that the CBC remains accountable to Canadians. However, it is also important that CBC be able to protect its journalistic programming and creative activities in order to perform and deliver in this marketplace. This bill would make protection of that information significantly difficult and would threaten CBC's competitiveness and ability to produce investigative journalism.
It is important to acknowledge, first of all, that the CBC has taken measures to improve its access to information operations dramatically. In fact, the information commissioner remarked in her 2011-12 report cards that CBC had “achieved an outstanding level of compliance” and awarded the CBC an A grade for its performance under the Access to Information Act.
Furthermore, the CBC proactively discloses information to the public beyond what is required. The CBC's improvement in this area is even more impressive when compared to the federal government's own appalling performance in this regard.
The amendments in this bill would repeal the exclusion from the Access to Information Act of CBC's information that is related to journalistic, creative, and programming activities, and instead replace it with an exemption. Under this exemption, the CBC would be required to demonstrate that the disclosure of a record would be reasonably expected to prejudice the corporation's journalistic, creative, and programming independence.
Currently the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada reviews the requested documents to ensure that the information relates to protected activities, and then makes a decision. Under the proposed exemption, the CBC would be required to turn over documents, as well as legal arguments, outlining how the release of the information would cause injury to the CBC.
This would place an undue and unfair burden on the CBC and would open a door to damaging requests, as well as needless and expensive legal battles. There is no other broadcaster that is subject to similar measures.
It is clear that these amendments would seriously threaten the CBC's journalistic operations. The majority of the CBC's access to information requests already come from its competitors. These amendments would only serve to exaggerate the situation and force the CBC to spend more time and effort protecting information relating to journalistic, creative, and programming activities from its direct competitors.
Why would we want to expose our public broadcaster to this extra burden, which would seriously threaten its competitiveness? These amendments are unnecessary. The CBC has already demonstrated excellent compliance with the Access to Information Act, and the Federal Court of Appeal has already settled the matter to the satisfaction of both the Information Commissioner of Canada and the CBC. There is absolutely no need to place an additional burden on CBC, our public broadcaster.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I must point out the hypocrisy of this bill. How is that the Conservatives can expect the CBC to adhere to an even more demanding access to information procedure when they are not performing to the level that CBC is? This is truly perplexing to me.
This bill is a backdoor attack on the CBC, targeting its ability to remain competitive and independent. The Conservatives have demonstrated, with their amendments to the bill, that they are not committed to ensuring transparency on salary disclosure.
I agree that the CBC must remain accountable to Canadians, but this bill would hinder its ability to protect journalistic, programming, and creative activities, which would negatively impact its ability to perform and deliver in the marketplace. I believe that the CBC should remain a strong and independent public broadcaster. The bill demonstrates that the Conservatives clearly do not feel the same way.
Public Service of CanadaPrivate Members' Business
The Acting Speaker Bruce Stanton
The question is on Motion No. 1.
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?
Public Service of CanadaPrivate Members' Business
Public Service of CanadaPrivate Members' Business
Public Service of CanadaPrivate Members' Business
The Acting Speaker Bruce Stanton
In my opinion the nays have it.
And five or more members having risen:
The recorded division on the motion stands deferred and the recorded division will also apply to Motion Nos. 2-4 and 6-8.
The next question is on Motion No. 5.
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?
Public Service of CanadaPrivate Members' Business
Public Service of CanadaPrivate Members' Business
Public Service of CanadaPrivate Members' Business
The Acting Speaker Bruce Stanton
In my opinion the nays have it.
And five or more members having risen:
Normally, at this time, the House would proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded divisions at the report stage of the bill.
However, pursuant to Standing Order 98, the divisions stand deferred until Wednesday, February 26, immediately before the time provided for private members' business.
A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.
Raymond Côté NDP Beauport—Limoilou, QC
Mr. Speaker, on January 27 I asked a question about a recent episode of red dust in Limoilou.
In fact, I went to the location in question to see the deposit, which was limited to a very specific area in the extreme southern part of Limoilou, but nevertheless affected several hundred residents.
Needless to say, the question had to do with the fact that the Port of Quebec and the company were hiding behind the federal government to avoid taking any action. For its part, the federal government stated in a letter that I received from the Minister of the Environment that as the contamination was related to air quality, it fell under provincial jurisdiction.
I have been working on this file for over a year now, and my team has worked very hard on it too. I ended up submitting many access to information requests. I wish to tell the House that I am extremely dissatisfied, because some of the answers I received, from both Transport Canada and Environment Canada, demonstrated patent inaction. This was the case for several of the replies. Others had so many sections blacked out that I was unable to determine the outcomes of the consultations or actions by the two departments in question. It amounted to an outright denial.
The departments involved are clearly hiding behind sections of the Access to Information Act and claiming that there is too much information of various kinds for it to be disclosed. This pretext goes much too far and is much too wide-ranging for me to be able to believe it and let things go. However, what is particularly deplorable is that many of my access to information requests remained unanswered, even though the deadline for responding was exceeded by a wide margin.
I will come back to the answer that I received from the environment minister. It was repeated, practically word for word, by an employee in the minister's department: air quality is a provincial jurisdiction and hence the responsibility of the Quebec Department of the Environment in this specific case.
I would like to point out to the House that this response contradicts the claims made by the Minister of Transport, who is passing the buck to the Port of Quebec and washing her hands of the whole affair.
On the other hand, it is viewed quite differently by the Port of Quebec, and particularly Arrimage Québec, represented by Johanne Lapointe, who claimed in connection with the most recent episode that all matters pertaining to dust contamination in the Limoilou area are in fact the responsibility of the Quebec Department of the Environment, but that everything within the boundaries of the port remains to be determined by the courts. In other words, this is one more way for Arrimage Québec to shirk responsibility, with the collusion of the federal Conservative government, of course.
I would like to ask the minister when she will finally shoulder her responsibilities and resolve this impasse, which has been holding residents of my riding hostage for too long?
Jeff Watson ConservativeParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport
Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Beauport—Limoilou for his question.
First of all, I would like to remind the member of the efforts of Transport Canada in monitoring the file related to dust emissions in the Limoilou area. I believe it is important to mention that Transport Canada is working in close co-operation with the Quebec Port Authority, which is responsible for administering, managing and operating on a stand-alone basis the infrastructure under its responsibility.
Also, I would like to emphasize that the federal government is not involved in the day-to-day operations of Canadian port authorities and any consequences resulting from these operations are under the ports' jurisdiction and responsibility. However, regarding the dust emissions, the port authority implemented measures for monitoring the types and quantities of air emissions associated with port operations.
As the member knows, the Quebec Department of Sustainable Development, Environment, Wildlife and Parks has determined in a report that the high source of contamination of nickel in the air is due to the transfer of mineral ore by Arrimage St-Laurent, an affiliate of Arrimage Québec. Since then, as a follow-up to the notice of non-compliance sent by the Quebec government, Arrimage du St-Laurent has worked on developing an environmental action plan, the latest version of which was sent to the Quebec government on October 15.
Note that Arrimage du St-Laurent already announced a full review of its operations, the installation of water and snow cannons and dust sensors, the implementations of washing stations, and the relocation of an access route. I would like to highlight that the cannons and the dust sensors are now fully operational.
The Quebec Port Authority, which works in collaboration with all of its lessees to limit the impact of the port activities on the community, follows-up and co-operates in implementing the measures put in place by Arrimage du St-Laurent. It is also worth noting that the port authority now dedicates a full-time resource whose role is to ensure the smooth operation of the transshipment of ore.
In light of the recent dust emission developments, I am confident and satisfied with the efforts made by the Quebec Port Authority to further the region's economic development while ensuring the quality of life of residents of beautiful Quebec City and the quality of the environment.
Furthermore, Arrimage du St-Laurent said that it will collaborate with the government of Quebec to address this incident.
Raymond Côté NDP Beauport—Limoilou, QC
Mr. Speaker, I thank the parliamentary secretary for providing an answer and for making himself available, but I have to express my dissatisfaction right away.
When he talks about Transport Canada’s efforts with respect to the Port of Quebec, what efforts is he talking about? I cannot get any answers. There is no transparency. That is abundantly clear.
I would especially like to remind him that the scope of the port authorities' responsibilities and powers is determined by Ottawa. The federal government determined the famous parameters that mean that port authorities operate in isolation and do not have to be accountable, except for one event per year that is basically little more than a media relations exercise.
Unfortunately, while the people of Limoilou are suffering the consequences of the operations at the port, we are not able to get any answers.
I am totally dissatisfied with his answer. I am going to ask him when we can finally have some openness, some transparency and some real co-operation.
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that the member would like the minister to interfere, but I am not sure what part of “arms-length organization” he does not understand.
The Port of Quebec is an arms-length organization responsible for its own operational decisions and the consequences of that related to the environment. We know it is working not only with its lessees, those who are leasing and are tenants on its land, but also with the Quebec government.
We continue to monitor that file.
Philip Toone NDP Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC
Mr. Speaker, it is an honour for me today to continue with a debate that is of great concern to the people in my riding: the loss of VIA Rail service.
In just a few weeks, we are likely to lose all VIA Rail service in eastern Canada, from Quebec City to Halifax and up to the Gaspé. This is a matter of real concern. The service has existed for 100 years now, but because of the government’s lack of interest, there is a real danger we will lose it forever.
I would like to come back to what the minister said in this House. Today, in response to a question from my colleague from Halifax, she suggested that we could perhaps take a look at a map in order to understand the region’s geography. I can guarantee her that we are very knowledgeable about the geography of the region. I would like to encourage her to study the map with the help of opposition members so that she understands the problems that will be created if the federal government does not invest in the 70 km of rail that is at risk between Miramichi and Bathurst.
If the investment is not made in the next five months, we may lose VIA Rail service forever in eastern Canada. If the federal government does not invest in the railway in the Gaspé region in the next few weeks, the railway line may be shut down forever in my region by the end of March.
The amounts required are not enormous. For the 70 km railway section in New Brunswick, we are talking about an investment of $10 million over 15 years, in partnership with CN, which could save our railway. We could save VIA Rail service throughout eastern Canada. For the Gaspé, in partnership with the province and the region, the federal government could invest a few million dollars to save the railway and restore VIA rail service.
I would like to point out that VIA Rail service in eastern Canada involves two VIA routes that are twinned along two-thirds of the route. There is one train that divides in Matapédia, at the Quebec-New Brunswick border. The train separates and continues either to the Gaspé or to Halifax. If we lose the train to Halifax, we will lose the train to the Gaspé, because it is the same train.
The government says over and over that there is nothing it can do. It says that CN is unfortunately a private company and that the railway is an independent Crown corporation. It says that it is too complicated for the federal government to invest in a Crown corporation. The board members for this Crown corporation are appointed by the government. The Crown corporation is a division of the government. There is good reason why VIA Rail is a Crown corporation, and it is precisely because in the past it was felt that it was a priority to ensure that people in the regions had access to an adequate transportation network. Now we have a government that believes that people no longer need this transportation network.
I would like to state that the opposite is true. The people in my region depend on VIA Rail to get to the major centres. VIA Rail seems to be saying that the people in the region will have to make other arrangements, for instance, taking the bus. I would like to point out that soon the bus service in my region will probably be eliminated. In New Brunswick, Acadian Lines suspended service for several months and people had no other public transportation or public transit to travel to other regions. VIA Rail service is essential to ensure that people in the area can continue to participate in and fully contribute to the Canadian economy. This is part of the economy. VIA Rail is part of the wealth and well-being of our beautiful country; it must be present and provide adequate services.
I would like to know what the parliamentary secretary plans on doing to help the people in my region.