Madam Speaker, this is the first time I have risen in the House to give a speech since returning from the summer break. I have put questions to several of my colleagues, but this is the first time I have had the opportunity to rise in the House to present a speech.
I am very pleased to rise during this debate on Bill C-39, an act respecting certain measures to strengthen the economy.
Admittedly, the bill is rather long. I managed to read it last night and this morning. I have to keep referring back to other existing laws to understand the situation better. However, as I was reading the bill, an image came to mind. It was a train. I love trains. If I have to choose between flying or taking a train, I always take the train, to go to Montreal, Toronto, Windsor or Quebec City, for example. That has been my preference since I was a young child. It is the best way to travel and get around our great country.
However, there is something that I never did as a child or a young adult. I never travelled across the country by train. I had the opportunity to do so when I was 49 years old. It was very exciting. My adult children and I took the train from Toronto to Vancouver. It took four days and it was extraordinary. I recommend that all my colleagues take advantage of the opportunity to see the country by train. There is the Canadian train that goes from Toronto to Vancouver, the Ocean train from Halifax to Montreal and between the two, there is the Via Rail fleet that serves the Quebec City-Windsor corridor.
Throughout my journey across the country, I thought about one thing. Could we build this railroad today? Historians and history teachers know that the Canadian Pacific Railway was basically built in four years, from 1881 to 1885. Yes, construction started a little earlier, but there were issues. The bulk of the construction was done during those four years. Could we do that today?
I readily agree with the member for Berthier—Maskinongé that it is important to have modern standards. We are not about to use slaves or workers who are treated like slaves to build the train, as we did with the Chinese-Canadian population at the time. We have labour standards, thank goodness. In a modern country, we can build in a responsible manner and in a way that ensures worker safety as much as possible. That is very important. However, given these factors, would we be able to do that today? I am not so sure. That is one of the reasons I like the specific provisions in this bill. When a project is proposed and all the information is available, we promise that there will be an assessment and that it will be completed within a year.
To me, that is key. Things need to change. Everything has become too complex. We are complicating things. Is that really necessary?
We do not want to get rid of the standards we have established, including environmental standards or standards related to working conditions. We need to keep those.
That being said, can we get organized and accomplish great things together, within a reasonable time frame? I hope that, through this bill, we are saying that we can.
I am hoping that with the building Canada strong act, we are able to organize ourselves in a way that allows us to respect all the different elements that we have thought are important as a country, that we have put in our laws, but that we can do so in a reasonable time frame because, and I have to say it and I know we have heard it, we really are living in exceptional times. Never before have I felt that this country has been threatened in the way that we have been. Now it is time for us to put all the elements on our side, to take advantage of all the wealth in people and in natural resources and in our industrial capacity, to build big things.
When I say “to build big things”, I want to make it very clear that I do not expect us to derogate from a lot of the important standards we have put in place. Still, can we do that evaluation quickly? Can we do so in respect of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which we have an obligation and a duty to consult and to work with? I think we can. I think we can get ourselves to that place because, again, from another example in history, another time when Canada felt as serious a challenge was during the Second World War. When we got into the war in 1939, Canada was far from being an industrial powerhouse as a country, but in a very short period of time, Canadians, recognizing the challenges that we had, came together and organized ourselves properly so that we transformed our entire economy to become a wartime economy. We did so quickly, without taking shortcuts or compromising on quality, but just saying to ourselves, “The challenge is great.”
We have to meet this challenge, and we have planned accordingly to be able to do so. This is something I expect from Canada and from all members of the House. I know we will not agree on everything, but I can only control what I can control.
I want to tell all my colleagues that I will listen to their concerns and support suggestions to improve the bill as much as possible. However, I do not want that to be used as an excuse to paralyze everything and not do the work. Personally, I think we are all up to the challenge before us.