Mr. Speaker, I have just a few words on the bill before the House today, Bill C-26, an omnibus bill dealing with a whole series of transportation issues. I want to begin by saying that our critic, the member for Churchill, is not here today. She is travelling with the aboriginal affairs committee and would otherwise be here to make a well fleshed out presentation in terms of our position on the bill.
The bill before the House today is a bill that we call an omnibus bill. It covers a whole series of topics, from air transportation to rail transportation to transportation of naval vessels and the like. It covers deregulation and a whole series of issues in this country that are transportation oriented, so I just want to say a few words that hopefully the government will take to heart.
In terms of the last decade or so, my main concern about transportation has been the tremendous deregulation of transportation in our country. We have seen it that has not been helpful to the ordinary citizens, the ordinary consumers of transportation right across the country.
We have also seen the privatization of some of our transportation industries. Air Canada is a prime example of that. Despite privatization and deregulation, Air Canada is in serious financial trouble today. It has also stopped serving some of the smaller markets that it used to serve in different parts of Canada.
I think these are things that should be looked at in terms of the future. We should be looking at re-regulation in some areas of the transportation industry in Canada.
We support the bill before the House. We think it is a positive step. We are not greatly enthusiastic about a lot of it, but it is a positive step in the right direction. When our critic gets back, she will have a chance to speak on the bill and to look at it in the transport committee as well.
The other issue that concerns me about transportation is that in the recent federal budget there was very little in terms of investment in transportation in Canada and very little in terms of investment in infrastructure in the country. I know my friend in the Liberal Party across the way is interested in urban infrastructure and urban issues. This is something the government has fallen down on in the last decade. With a huge surplus, the last budget in particular was an opportunity to put more money into transportation and infrastructure. That is needed for all kinds of reasons. We have environmental problems, traffic congestion problems and problems of frequent travel from point A to point B right across the country.
About a year or so ago I was supposed to speak in Peterborough. I flew to Pearson airport in Toronto. It is about 150 kilometres between Pearson and Peterborough. I thought that would take about an hour and a half on a huge freeway. I got to the meeting an hour and a half late. It took three hours between Pearson and Peterborough because of all the traffic congestion and big trucks on the road. All the pollution being emitted by those trucks and vehicles really shows us in Technicolor the need for increased investment in transportation to get some of the trucks off the road in the country, to have a better rail system in Canada so that there is more transport of cargo by rail as well as transportation of people by rail. These are things that have to happen. Again, the federal government missed the boat in the last budget by not putting in very much at all in terms of investment in transportation and urban infrastructure in Canada.
When I look at my own part of the world, rural Saskatchewan, I can see what has happened there over the last 20 years as well through greater deregulation of transportation. In particular, I see what has happened to the whole rural elevator system and the rural rail lines and branch lines across the Prairies.
In town after town, elevators are now abandoned because the rail lines have been pulled up. With the rail lines gone, trucking is now a common thing for transportation of grain from the farm to an inland terminal. Many of the prairie roads were built with thin membrane concrete and when the big trucks are put on the road they damage and destroy the roads. There are all kinds of potholes on them. It has been very costly for provincial governments to rebuild the roads with a thicker membrane that can withstand the trucks hauling the grain to market.
That is one of the consequences of Liberal Party and Conservative Party policy over the years in terms of abandoning rail lines. When rail lines across the Prairies are abandoned, there is more trucking. When there is more trucking, there is damage to the roads. When there is more trucking it is harmful to the environment. It is more costly for the farmer. As well, when the farmers truck their grain to a market that is further away, they tend to shop in the bigger centres and then the small towns disappear, as they are disappearing right across rural Canada.
These are some of the issues that are extremely important. We have to put a lot more money into investing in urban and rural transportation infrastructure so that we can get more of the trucks off the roads and get more transportation and people onto the rails.
We could look to Europe or of course Japan, but let us look at Europe. We see a lot more rail transportation there than we have in this country, in both people and goods. That is the kind of direction we should be moving in, particularly when it comes to VIA Rail in the high density corridor between Windsor and Quebec City. Again, these are issues that are extremely important.
I mentioned Air Canada and the airlines. We saw the privatization of Air Canada. We see the problems that Air Canada now has. We have seen the lack of proper servicing to smaller communities. I believe that once again there should be a government equity investment in Air Canada on behalf of the taxpayers of the country.
The other thing I wanted to mention is that the government very recently brought in the airport security tax. That was a $24 tax. The government reduced that tax in the budget of a few weeks ago, but again, that tax was put in to provide more security for airports. That did not occur. For example, a few times in the last year I was at a small airport in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. They had one person with just a wand who was trying to provide security at the airport in Prince Albert. They collect the $24 fee and people fly in and out of the airport, and they still only have one person with a wand. With all the money they have collected, they could have a better security system.
These are the kinds of things that I believe are important and should be addressed in the bill that is before the House today. We are a large country. We are geographically the second largest country in the world, surpassed only by the Russian federation in geography and pure mileage. It should be our country that leads the world in terms of transportation technology. It should be our country that leads the world in terms of a national transportation policy.
In our country we do not even have a national highways policy. Most countries do have a national highways policy. In Canada, most of the money for building highways comes from the provinces, from provincial revenues. For a small province like Saskatchewan that becomes very expensive. With just one million people, Saskatchewan has more highways on a per capita basis than any other jurisdiction in North America. Without a national highways policy in Canada, it becomes very expensive for a small province with a small budget to maintain a very thorough highway system.
These are the issues that are extremely important. We need a national highways policy. We need a national rail policy. We need a national airline policy. They would help bind this country together.
Grain movement and grain handling issues are also very important. I know we have gone a long way down the road and it is very difficult, most times impossible, to turn back the clock, but there are some things that can be done. There is a group on the Prairies now that is interested in buying some of the short line rail lines. That is dominated by farm groups and supported by provincial governments.
There is another group that is interested in purchasing hopper cars. The federal government purchased 12,000 or 13,000 hopper cars, I believe, primarily in the 1970s, to transport grain in Canada. It did this in order to make sure we met our export commitments to our customers and to make sure that farmers had a way to transport their grain. The federal government now wants out of the hopper car business. There is a group called the Farmer Rail Car Coalition, supported by the provincial governments of the Prairies, which is interested in purchasing those hopper cars on behalf of the farmers to move grain across the country. That should be looked at as well.
These are some of the issues. As I said before, our member for Churchill will be back in the House shortly and will shepherd this bill for our party through the House of Commons and through the committee.
