Only to the shareholders of VIA Rail, Mr. Speaker.
In terms of freight, Canada is actually number two in the world in terms of tonne-kilometres per capita that are transported. Russia is number one at 12,000 tonne-kilometres per person, and Canada is number two at 10,517. What does that mean? It means we have the infrastructure. We have the rail capacity in this country to move lots and lots of goods, but we are not using it effectively to move people. We are not using it in such a way that the people of Canada can actually make use of that infrastructure, some of which, if not all of which, was created with federal and provincial government money.
People in this country been asking the government to change its approach to the VIA Rail dilemma for the past several years, ever since VIA Rail started to do the bidding of the Conservative government by reducing service. In St. Marys, Ontario, Chris West and Lynn Hainer and the rest of an advocacy group there have been holding meetings on a regular basis and invited VIA Rail to the meetings to find out why their service had to be cut when the service had lots of passengers. The answer they had was, “Well, we just decided.” There is not really an answer.
We know that there is something going on from the government side that is perhaps pushing VIA Rail to remove itself from what the government might call non-competitive routes, or non-filled routes, but that it has made it impossible for individuals in the area between Toronto and Sarnia to get to Toronto or to get to Sarnia. As a result, the farmers and residents of rural Ontario are now forced to drive, and they do not want to drive. They want to take the train, but they can no longer take the train. It is no longer possible. The trains have been cancelled.
There are residents of New Brunswick and in the Gaspé region who are begging the government to reinstate their rail service. We have it in New Brunswick, although it runs very slowly, and in the Gaspé it is still not there. On Vancouver Island, a rail service was put in place as a result of the sale of a CP Rail system to the people of Vancouver Island so that they could put a rail service in between Victoria and Comox. There was a huge tax benefit to the CP Rail system, but that rail system is now languishing because repairs were necessary. CP had left it in a derelict state. It received a huge tax benefit for the so-called donation, and now where are we? We do not have any rail service. It is not running. There was agreement locally that there would be, but VIA Rail has not come forward with its side of the agreement.
In four areas of this country—the Gaspé, New Brunswick, southwestern Ontario, and Vancouver Island, rail service is disappearing under the Conservative government. We had it and we are losing it, and that is the crime of the government's approach to rail service. While the rest of the world is moving toward rail service, this government is moving away, in such a way that it is sometimes irretrievable.
My colleague for Acadie—Bathurst pointed out how long it takes for trains to get from A to B there, and the same is true in southern Ontario, except that the federal government gave a private rail company money to upgrade the line. It did not bother to do it, so the train takes two hours to get from Kitchener to Toronto, whereas it takes about 45 minutes to drive that distance. It is yet another example of the government's waste. The government sends money freely away, supposedly to upgrade a service, and then watches the money disappear when the service does not actually get upgraded.
This is an excellent bill. It would give us a start in putting VIA Rail back on the footing it needs to make Canada competitive in the transportation business with the rest of the world.
