Mr. Speaker, back in December, I asked about restoring VIA passenger rail service between Winnipeg, Regina and Calgary. In response, the Minister of Transport tried to reassure me that Via Rail does pass through Saskatchewan. He must have been referring to the quite limited VIA Rail service to Saskatoon, but I want to make the distinction between Regina and Saskatoon clear to the parliamentary secretary, because that seemed to be a point of confusion for the minister. My question was about restoring passenger service on the southern Prairie line, from Winnipeg to Regina to Calgary.
One of the original purposes of our Canadian Confederation was to build a railway across the Prairies to the Pacific coast, so it is somewhat ironic that today we do not have passenger rail service in the southern part of the Prairies. Of course, the motivation behind my question was not simply to achieve that historic goal. I think in the present day, we need to recognize the importance of providing accessible transportation options to people and also of providing transportation options that are environmentally friendly.
We had a whole debate in this House for most of today about an opposition motion regarding the price of gasoline, and a lot of the argument came down to whether a higher gasoline price would motivate consumers to drive less. A key part of that question was whether people had concrete alternatives to driving. On the southern Prairies, people do not.
The Saskatchewan Transportation Company and Greyhound have both withdrawn intercity bus service, and as I mentioned, there is no VIA Rail service in the southern part of the Prairies. Therefore, people really do not have much of an option other than to drive or fly. We have people without the means to travel for important purposes, and the people who do have the means to travel do not have much choice but to use these more polluting means of transport. That is part of the major rationale for wanting to restore VIA Rail service on the southern Prairies.
I am sure that one of the questions is how much this would cost. Is it feasible? Is this a realistic proposal? I took a look at VIA Rail's 2017 annual report, which is the most recent annual report available. What it shows is that the subsidy per passenger mile in western Canada, in other words for long-haul travel from Toronto to Vancouver, is about 32¢, which is quite similar to the subsidy of 28¢ per passenger mile across VIA Rail's entire system. As well, it is quite a bit less than the subsidies of three dollars and four dollars per passenger mile that we find on some of VIA's more remote routes. What I am proposing is actually quite consistent with Via's existing operations.
To put that in terms of total dollars, the subsidy for long-haul travel west of Toronto is $41 million. Extending that to the southern part of the Prairies would presumably cost a comparable amount, which would be quite a bit less than the $350 million currently provided to VIA Rail.