Madam Speaker, that is a pretty hard act to follow.
I have enjoyed listening to this debate. I want to inform hon. members, and some of the members of my party that I really am a railway man. I was born on the prairies where the only source of communication was the mail which came in by train. Passengers came in by train. All goods came in by train and the wheat went out by train. The greatest social event every evening was to go down to meet the train coming in to see what lovely girls were getting off the train.
I am sure the hon. parliamentary secretary does not know that in Saskatchewan we named a fruit after the railway. We called prunes CPR strawberries and it was not meant in a positive way I might add.
Railways were a part of my life and they still are.
The railway comes through most prairie towns with the station at the end and the crossings on the outside of town. That is not always true in some of the larger centres.
The parliamentary secretary will probably know of the disdain the prairies had for railways, which they still have to some extent. In grade six we had a special class. All students were taught as they got older to hate the railways. That has been part of our vernacular, to be very anti-railway. However, that is coming to a close simply because the railways are disappearing.
I want to pay tribute to the transport committee. I asked for a video. It was a good video, although it was a little long, but it was totally made in the U.S. I suggest once more what to do for the thousands of school children in Canada who still play on railway property. We need a Canadian made safety video, which would be cheap to make nowadays, to send out across Canada. I have tried to research this and as far as I know we do not have a safety railway video available for teaching safety in our schools. That is a must.
I was once present at a scene where the speed of the train was not that great, but it hit a car and there were fatalities. I will never forget that engineer stepping down from the engine. It was impossible for him to stop. He had to live with that for the rest of his life.
This bill is more than just a safety bill. I believe it is to bring to the attention of the Canadian public that we still have railways, we still have crossings, we still have people who trespass and we need more education. I urge the parliamentary secretary to take that message to the Minister of Transport, the Minister of Industry or whoever. Let us design and produce a really good safety video to give to schools across Canada. That would not be a costly venture. One life saved would be worth the cost of the video.
I will present to the House one of my intentions with respect to Bill C-58. I wanted to have a firsthand glimpse of what has become a very unique problem in my constituency. There are two places in my constituency where what I am about to explain takes place.
Each aisle in the House will represent a distance of exactly one mile. That is the way the west was surveyed. Most of the trains currently in operation are unit trains. Both incidents happened on the CPR Soo Line. In the new operation, with newer cars coming on, the length of the train will only increase.
I want members to picture this centre aisle as being the centre of the city. Half of the city lives on one side and half lives on the other. The fire halls are all on one side. The train approaches and the flashing lights block off that crossing. When he gets halfway there, this one is crossed. The engine comes over here, so we have two crossings now blocked by the same train because a 110 unit train will be over a mile in length.
There is a fire alarm, but the fire truck is not aware that there is a train blocking those crossings. The centre crossing is the one which is used the most. The fire truck may arrive before we get past the first crossing. By the time we have blocked this crossing at least 12 minutes have passed. By that time traffic has built up on both sides of the crossing, so the fire truck cannot get through. Even if the train started to move forward in five minutes or seven minutes, that crossing could be obstructed for a period greater than 10 minutes. I witnessed a period of 13 minutes.
The reason I bring this to the attention of members is because this in itself concerns safety. I believe that the transport committee should look at the three groups involved: the municipality, the railway and the federal government.
There was no longer any need for rails, such as in the case of Regina, as there was no longer any passenger service. When there no longer is a need, as is fast becoming the case in these smaller cities, it is incumbent upon the governments of the province, the municipality, the federal government and the railways to take a look at this situation because sooner or later there is going to be a catastrophe because of the length of the trains.
In my day, if there was a train which was a half-mile long, that was a long train. The trains travelling now are well over a mile long in most cases. These trains are presenting new problems. First, they need a greater distance to bring the train to a halt. Second, because of the length of the train they are often blocking two crossings at the same time. They pose a communications problem, particularly for police but mainly for fire trucks in these centres. I would suggest that we take a look at the problems that are being created.
I would like to mention one other point that was brought up tonight. The hon. member spoke about the Halifax problem and the amount of money that is needed. CN explained very clearly to the transport committee that they can take goods from the port of Halifax to the Chicago market, beating the U.S. not only in dollars and cents, but by almost 24 to 48 hours depending upon the cargo.
I think it is incumbent upon this government to take whatever steps are necessary. Should the $40 million be spent? Yes. We must make sure that our port of Halifax does not lose this advantage to the United States. If that happens, I believe we would find that the maritimes would suffer a very severe blow, even a greater blow than that which is taking place on Cape Breton Island at this time.
I am not sure if the Minister of Transport is really cognizant of the importance of ensuring that this Canadian venture stays in place and that we do gain this facility and keep it for the welfare of Canadians.
Yes, we will be supporting this bill. Yes, it was a timely bill. I personally enjoyed going through this bill because of my background with the railways. But let us not ever take it upon ourselves to think that this bill is the end all, that we do not have to touch anything more. There are many other factors concerning safety which will be coming up with the new modes of transportation, the new cars, the new braking systems and the new demands on the highways.
The railways and the department of highways have to work much more closely together than they have in the past. That is a foregone conclusion. It is not the case now, but it is up to this government to do that.
If we could ever get into a pattern of having a national highway program, then the ease of doing this and the ease of working with the railways would become a reality and Canadians would benefit a great deal.
This is a plug for the railways and a plug for the highways. We have a national railway policy. I see no reason why we cannot have a national highway policy too.
