Mr. Speaker, an issue that is of great concern to my constituents is rail safety. Our riding is crisscrossed by several railway lines, and we have many residential areas where the houses literally back onto the railway tracks. My residents are concerned about the growing length of commercial trains that have hundreds of tanker cars rolling through these residential neighbourhoods.
In the government's budget implementation act, a budget bill, are transportation measures. They would allow the government to change the rules around railway safety to undermine railway safety and make life potentially more hazardous for people across this country, including in my riding of Parkdale—High Park in Toronto, without ever communicating those changes to the public, without ever having to explain or reveal the changes it is making.
My question is this: why is the government making these changes behind closed doors and reducing transparency? Why will it not communicate these changes to the public? Why is it endangering public safety and rail safety and doing all of it in secret?