Mr. Speaker, I beg the great indulgence of my colleague. We had an adjournment proceeding a couple of nights ago in which I gave prepared remarks because I thought the risk assessment question was to be asked at that particular proceeding. I gave a detailed response, so I point the member back to that response. However, he asked a separate question, the one I thought he was asking today, so I would like do two things.
First of all, I want to respond to one aspect of what he said today, and that is about what the TSB said in its report. In fact, it reported that the cause of the accident in Lac-Mégantic was that an employee did not follow the established rules—which have the force of regulations, once approved by the minister—with respect to the application of hand brakes, and more importantly, with respect to testing their effectiveness. Those rules were not followed, and that is why the Sûreté du Québec proceeded with an investigation and laid charges as a result. A criminal court proceeding is now under way. That should be clear for the record.
I do owe the member some pertinent information or response with respect to the question he asked Tuesday. He did have some discussion with respect to the Transport Canada budget.
With respect to the budgets that the government has passed in this House without the support of the opposition, I would remind the member that over $100 million was for investments in the rail safety framework. That all came as a consequence of the rail safety review that had been initiated by this government and the report that had been received by the government pointing out the need to put in place additional measures in the rail safety framework.
With respect to the estimates, which list the requests for and the timing of spending year over year, obviously there are fluctuations. What the member referred to as “cuts” fall into two categories.
One category is savings. There are grant-based or application-based programs for rail grade crossing improvements, for example. There are other measures such as the airport capital assistance program in the air sector. If people are not applying for the money, the money does not get spent, even though it may have been allocated or prepared to have been spent. That is not a cut in aviation or rail safety; it is simply money that was not spent in a particular year, which is an important distinction.
The other thing that was referred to mistakenly as cuts are shifts.
First of all, there are certain responsibilities that were moved to other departments, and the funding followed those responsibilities. For example, in the case of environmental assessments, some of those responsibilities in the department were moved to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, along with the funding. That is not a cut. It may not have been spent by Transport Canada, but it may have spent elsewhere in the government.
Second, there were shifts of funds from back-office operations to the front line. There were legitimate cuts. Funding for professional services is significantly down. Waste is down. Senior bureaucrat travel is significantly down. It was in measures like those that we were able to find savings.
By contrast, just as one example, officials at the Transport Dangerous Goods directorate testified that their budget moved from $13 million to $20 million, which is what would be expected for dealing with any potential risk in the safety system.
We are getting the job done, and I hope the member will support us in that regard.