Madam Speaker, one of the concerns we have in the city I represent, in part of the riding that used to be part of the area of Toronto I represented until redistribution, is the Dupont rail corridor that goes through midtown Toronto. It would be an excellent service for commuter rail. The challenge is that it is the main freight rail as it moves through the most dense part of the City of Toronto.
Those who followed the Lac Mégantic situation and saw the resources moved by rail through that Quebec town, to great disaster, will know that only a few hours earlier, it came through midtown Toronto. If the derailment that happened at Lac Mégantic had happened close to downtown Toronto, as the Mississauga derailment did almost a generation ago, the death toll would have been off the charts. This is one of the reasons we need to move volatile substances off rail cargo, out of residential areas, and find a rerouting of that system. Perhaps even a pipeline may be one of the alternatives.
However, the reality is that what we actually need is a rethinking of the rail system to accommodate people and to accommodate the environmental outputs that are possible. In the city of Toronto, that means rethinking how cargo moves through Toronto.