Mr. Speaker, I am aware that costs in excess of the pooled disaster relief fund would be paid out of the consolidated revenue fund.
It is worth noting the costs that flowed from Lac-Mégantic. The Quebec government has put them at well over $400 million. Other estimates are much higher. I guess it depends on how one accounts for these matters. It should also be noted that those costs were mitigated by the particular geology of that area, a layer of clay not allowing the oil to seep down causing greater environmental damage than it did.
It is in light of those costs that one can anticipate a train derailment in the context of a dense urban area. It is not to be missed that hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil are being transported by rail through dense urban areas. A derailment there would have costs well in excess of those in Lac-Mégantic, and those costs would be environmental and, most tragically, human costs. There are communities of thousands of people in my city of Toronto within a stone's throw of railway tracks that are transporting thousands of barrels of oil a day in very dangerous railcars.