Mr. Speaker, the government is too easily satisfied with its very small steps. What the derailments and the government's lack of action on the issue raise for us is a system of rail safety that has been broken since the Liberals brought in the Rail Safety Act in 1999 where direct federal oversight over public safety with respect to railways was given over to a safety management system allowing the opportunity for railway companies to self-audit and self-manage the safety of Canadians. That is an abdication of the most fundamental responsibility that a government has, which is to protect the safety of Canadians.
The issue of safety has been raised now for years. In 2007 the Canada Safety Council sounded the alarm in a report about the deregulation of Canada's rail system. Here we are now in 2015 and the government chooses to take a very small step in the right direction on the issue.
The purpose of this debate in the House is to raise for the government and for all Canadians the broader issues about a rail safety system that is fundamentally broken and about the government's fundamental abdication of its most important responsibility, which is the safety of Canadians. There is a lot at risk here as we have seen from the frequency of derailments and in particular the Lac-Mégantic disaster.
The New Democratic Party will continue to talk about these issues in the House until the government changes its views on the deregulation of rail safety in the country, or until we replace the government in the House later this year.