Mr. Speaker, I have been participating, as a listener, in the debate since it began at noon, and this is my first opportunity to take the floor. I hope that as well as posing a question to the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities I will be permitted to say that I will be voting against this motion.
In the course of this debate, I have heard more assertions without evidence than is typical in a normal day here in this place, and that is saying something. A number of the assertions without evidence came from the Minister of Natural Resources. One was that pipelines are so much safer than trains, because we would not want what happened in Lac-Mégantic to happen along the route between Alberta and Burnaby.
I want to ask the hon. Minister of Infrastructure and Communities, and he is aware of the basic science, if he would agree with me that shipping bitumen as a solid by train is completely without risk. If there were a derailment or a containment break in the tank car, it would lie there like a lump. It could not blow up. If someone were to take a blow torch to it and attempt to get solid bitumen to catch fire, it would fail.
I find it egregious that, in this place, the Minister of Natural Resources would attempt to mislead people by throwing in the spectre of Lac-Mégantic. That train was loaded with Bakken shale, a crude-like product with characteristics completely unlike solid bitumen, which is already being placed in rail cars. Bitumen is heated up, put in rail cars, and warmed up at the other end, with no spill risk and no risk of explosion.