Transport committee  No, the VIAFast would have continued on the same track, sharing it with the freight railways.

Transport committee  The capital cost was quite a bit lower. In fact, some of the money that was announced in the 2009 budget, and actually in 2007, is going to get close to producing similar results--having portions of the track triple-tracked, trying to deal with bottlenecks in certain key areas--a

Transport committee  I would refer you to page 13 of the request for proposal. Section 9, which talks about environmental and social impact analysis, is a very important aspect of this study, in our opinion. We have asked the consultant to look at this in detail. We want to have a better understandin

Transport committee  I don't know whether in the past that was done, but maybe I can clarify one thing that's really important. I deal with many infrastructure projects, so let me take this opportunity to present to you a bit of a sequencing of what happens. This study, for example, which will be do

Transport committee  No, it would definitely be required. There are rules in the Canadian Transportation Act about any infrastructure improvements for rail and about when an environmental assessment is required, and the exemption is very limited: it's within a three-kilometre maximum length and withi

Transport committee  I believe it was in 1998.

Transport committee  Yes, it contains confidential information about the two railway companies. That is why the report is confidential.

Transport committee  To get started in terms of construction? As I said, we just launched the update of those studies. The situation has evolved considerably since 1992-1995. We have more population in the corridor than we did before. The technology options have evolved significantly. As well, there

Transport committee  I did in terms of the implementation scenarios. I think we have to look at the whole corridor in terms of the ridership and the cost, but in terms of how you would implement, what would make more sense, we've asked the consultants for advice on that. Are there segments of the cor

Transport committee  Are you asking about the total cost, or the upfront costs?

Transport committee  The last study, the 1992-95 one, concluded that to implement high-speed rail from Quebec to Windsor would cost $18 billion. That is a very large investment, and that was an estimate.

Transport committee  We currently would not have that kind of revenue to fund this kind of project. It is something that would have to be allocated in future budgets.

Transport committee  Thank you very much for inviting us to be here today. We have provided the committee with what we think are key documents that you might want to take into account for your study. Today, all I'll do is give a quick recap of what has happened over the last 15 years and what we ha

Transport committee  Alain.

Transport committee  We're really trying to balance two competing objectives here. We heard the comments you made from a lot of the shippers, and that it was very important to have a timely resolution of the matter. The final offer arbitration is very timely. It gives you a quick black-and-white resp