Railway Continuation Act, 2007  Put the boots to the Wheat Board.

Railway Continuation Act, 2007  You have a lot of nerve talking about the farm family.

Railway Continuation Act, 2007  Go to Wabamun Lake and ask the people there what happened.

Railway Continuation Act, 2007  Mr. Speaker, obviously the member for Victoria has eloquently spoken to this issue and the Conservatives do not get it. The reason there is a labour conflict is because they have not acted on safety. For a year and a half now we have had employees saying that there are safety issues.

Railway continuation Act, 2007  Mr. Speaker, in short, this is bad. Simply put, no member of Parliament, if they are responsible, should be voting for this legislation. If they are thinking about the needs of their communities, the needs of the shippers and about the loss of life that comes from this escalating accident rate, no member of Parliament should be voting for the legislation.

Railway continuation Act, 2007  Mr. Speaker, that is where the hon. member and I differ. We are hitting the exact issue that is most fundamental to this whole discussion. We have had 18 months now of CN employees saying that we must improve safety standards and CN management saying no way, that it will not do that.

Railway continuation Act, 2007  Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is absolutely right. The CEO not only has over $1 million a week in benefits, the Liberals and the Conservatives have just given him a blank cheque in terms of labour negotiations to impose whatever kind of low safety standards he wants to see. CN has been given a blank cheque from the Conservative government, supported by the Liberals, of not only $1 million a week, but he not only passes go, he collects a blank cheque from Canadians.

Railway continuation Act, 2007  Mr. Speaker, I am quite appalled by what I see here this afternoon. We have the Liberal Party and the Bloc Québécois helping the Conservative government do something that we know is not in the interest of Canadians. We know full well that this is not in the interest of Canadians because they are telling us that they are increasingly concerned about the escalating accident rate, the loss of life, communities devastated and environments destroyed.

Railway continuation Act, 2007  Mr. Speaker, in the House today, the Bloc Québécois and the Liberal Party have allied themselves with the government. The Bloc says it might vote against this bill later today, but everyone knows that the Bloc Québécois supported the government's closure motion. The only reason we are having a closed debate, a forced debate in so little time, is that the Bloc and the Liberal Party supported it.

Railway Continuation Act, 2007  Mr. Speaker, I do not understand the Liberal stance on this. I simply do not understand. The member should know that we are now facing a situation whereby, because of CN's horrible management, we are facing derailments, collisions, fires and explosions, escalating to a rate of three to four a day now, because of what happened under the Liberals and the Conservatives when they simply gutted safety conditions.

Railway Continuation Act, 2007  Mr. Speaker, the minister is talking about situations where there would be no trains and no service. But that is precisely what we have with all the problems we are seeing at CN because of bad management. The government did not encourage talks with the Minister of Transport. That is absolutely absurd.

Railway Continuation Act, 2007  Mr. Speaker, the NDP cannot vote in favour of this bill because it gives CN managers a blank cheque. We have seen what this bad management has caused in communities across the country; I will come back to that later. My question is simple. The government had a choice to make. We know full well that the safety of our railway is the major sticking point between the workers and the management of this company.

Government Funding  Actually, Mr. Speaker, it said no, which raises the question as to why B.C. always comes last for the government. B.C. is also suffering from the loss of 700 highly skilled aviation maintenance jobs in Vancouver. Air Canada wants to put those jobs in El Salvador. B.C. has been badly hit by the softwood sellout.

Government Funding  Mr. Speaker, the 2009 World Police and Fire Games were awarded to the lower mainland. This is an important way of supporting the work that firefighters and police officers do in the community every day. They asked for a small amount of funding and, despite the fact that the federal gave almost $2 million to the Quebec City games, the government said no, not a penny.

Carmel Bélanger  Mr. Speaker, New Democrats across the country are mourning the death of Carmel Bélanger. For more than a quarter century, Carmel was the centre of NDP activity, first as an assistant to former leader Ed Broadbent and later as the heart and soul of the NDP's national office in Ottawa.