Transport committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Transport 2000 wishes to thank you for the opportunity to briefly present our points of view regarding Bill C-11. There are a few ancillary matters that constitute context, rather than directly belonging to Bill C-11. As a general comment, we

Transport committee  No, it's context. It's not within the bill. This is simply a plug to remind members that VIA Rail has some needs. They haven't all been met. But for the act to operate efficiently, one has to have viable carriers. That's all. I wouldn't push this as part of Bill C-11. It's conte

Transport committee  I'll give you an example, Mr. McGuinty. The people in Gatineau were very upset about the Quebec Gatineau Railway, and I've heard of other instances. Transport 2000 has some interests in Gatineau, and we spoke with Transport Canada. They brought forward the fact that they have a

Transport committee  All I can say, sir, is that we would be a little sad if obligations were placed on these carriers that are not placed on other transport industries. That's basically it. Some rules are sometimes used by some citizens to beat some industries over the head with a stick. It's import

Transport committee  I think your points are well taken. I will say that sometimes with a little goodwill, things can be solved a lot faster using appropriate technology. For example, the Quebec Gatineau Railway would have saved themselves a lot of misery had they installed the Hotstart technology on

Transport committee  Yes, I think we could say that, sir. You can detect a distinct bias on our part in favour of such things as buses and trains, and maybe a little bit of a jaundiced look at the automobile, for example. Yes, I would admit to that. We function as a consumer group for airline passen

Transport committee  Mr. Laframboise, this issue has been around since the days of the Champlain and St. Lawrence Railway, the first railway in Canada, which was on the south shore of Montreal, when people living along the rail lines complained that the passing trains frightened their horses. Of cour

Transport committee  You are absolutely right, Mr. Laframboise. This problem is not an easy one to resolve. Certain noises are unavoidable. For example, when a long train goes into a curve and must negotiate the bend, the locomotive will lean more towards one side. This movement produces noise as the

Transport committee  Mr. Julian, I guess I'll have to give you a yea and a nay. The yea is that there are locations such as this Gatineau case that I brought out where it's quite feasible to tell the railway to quit shunting at night or quit idling your locomotive outside these nice people's bungalow

Transport committee  Sir, I have seen this thing go both ways. I've seen mediation that led to nothing. I think Mr. Laframboise and others will probably be familiar with the case in Outremont, where buildings were put up near the tracks. No remedy was really ever found, and I think the problem cont

Transport committee  I think that regulations should set performance standards, rather than forbidding this or that. Does that answer your question? In other words, you want a result. With the TGV lines, for instance, in France, I think it's 30 metres...and they can only emit 65 decibels. They're t

Transport committee  It seems to me, sir, that the mention of a specific standard, if done right and if people know what the objective is, might help the discussion. But as I say, I think you have to go for a performance-based regime rather than a prescriptive regime that says how to get there. In ot

Transport committee  If you'd asked me that question two years ago, I'd have said no. About that time, Canadian Pacific announced a $2 billion investment, mostly on western corridors. Canadian National waited about a year and a half and only announced a similar investment, practically a photocopy of

Transport committee  It's changing. I won't--

Transport committee  There are a lot of aspects to this, sir. But the first thing I think is the time aspect. We recently had the experience of travelling to Saskatoon and finding that westbound we were held up constantly; eastbound, things were facilitated. The question of the length of sidings has