Mr. Speaker, people in Saint-Basile-le-Grand, Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville and Saint-Hubert are extremely concerned about rail safety, and they are probably not the only ones, given the very preventable Lac-Mégantic tragedy, which I had first-hand experience with as the Quebec minister of public security at the time.
My predecessor and current mayor of Saint-Basile-le-Grand, Yves Lessard, managed to limit the number of cars per consist travelling through the riding to 100 by publicly raising the issue again and again.
However, that number has been rising since then, and we are now sometimes seeing up to 200 cars per consist. In addition to the annoyance the passage of a long train causes in terms of vibrations and traffic disruptions, this situation raises some real safety concerns, not only because of the potentially hazardous materials travelling through our communities, but also because Saint-Basile-le-Grand is literally cut in half for increasingly longer periods, which could prevent emergency services from travelling from one side of town to the other when needed.
Canadian National needs to stop turning a deaf ear and start responding to the legitimate concerns of those affected.