Madam Speaker: The hour being 5 p.m., time for Private Members' Business.
Madam Speaker: Debate on second readings, private bills, the proposed motion of the honourable member for Swan River (Ms. Wowchuk), Bill 301, An Act to Amend an Act to Incorporate the Dauphin General Hospital Foundation (Loi modifiant la Loi constituant la Fondation de l'Hôpital général de Dauphin), standing in the name of the honourable member for Gimli (Mr. Helwer).
Is there leave to permit the bill to remain standing? Stand. [agreed]
Second reading, private bills, Bill 303, The Brandon Area Foundation Incorporation Amendment Act.
Madam Speaker: Debate on second readings, public bills, Bill 201, The Crime Victims' Bill of Rights and Consequential Amendments Act (Loi sur la déclaration des droits des victimes d'actes criminels et modifications corrélatives), standing in the name of the honourable member for St. Norbert (Mr. Laurendeau).
Stand. [agreed]
Second reading, public bills, Bill 203, The Legislative Assembly Amendment Act (2); Loi no 2 modifiant la Loi sur l'Assemblée législative.
Mr. Gerard Jennissen (Flin Flon): I move, seconded by the member for Selkirk (Mr. Dewar), that
"WHEREAS passenger rail service is the most environmentally friendly form of transportation; and
"WHEREAS in many rural communities, particularly in Northern Manitoba, rail transportation is the only practical means of transporting passengers, food, and goods; and
"WHEREAS despite the severe cuts to VIA Rail by both the former Conservative Government and the current Liberal Government, thousands of Manitobans continue to depend upon VIA Rail; and
"WHEREAS VIA Rail has repeatedly ignored the pleas of tourists, businesses and communities to make a commitment to improve service on the Bayline and Sherridon line; and
"WHEREAS as a result, the communities of Churchill, Thicket Portage, Pikitownei, Lynn Lake, and Pukatawagan amongst others have had to put up with second rate service and tourism has suffered; and
"WHEREAS VIA Rail, with the permission of the federal government, has repeatedly cut back on maintenance; and
"WHEREAS the accident at Biggar, Saskatchewan in 1997 once again pointed out the need to keep a high standard of maintenance, but VIA was allowed to make further cuts to maintenance at the Winnipeg and Vancouver centres in October of 1997; and
"WHEREAS the federal government brought in the Canada Transportation Act which gave railways the right to abandon rail lines at will with no allowable appeals; and
"WHEREAS as a result of that Act, thousands of kilometers of rail lines have been abandoned including the Cowan, Inwood and Steep Rock lines in Manitoba; and
"WHEREAS even the extremely popular Prairie Dog Central lost its line as a result of these cuts and was unable to operate in 1997; and
"WHEREAS despite public outcry the Federal Government has shown no interest in making passenger rail service a priority in this country; and
"WHEREAS by making a commitment to national passenger rail transportation the Federal Government would create countless jobs across the country, boost tourism and allow Canadians to have a better understanding of their country.
"THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba go on record asking the Federal Government to make rail passenger transportation a priority, and to review the current level of service to see where schedules could be altered and increased; and
"BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT this Assembly request VIA Rail to improve service on the Bayline and Sherridon line including using more mixed trains carrying goods such as fresh fish on ice and other products and restore maintenance staff cut in 1997; and
"BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT this Assembly request the Federal Government to allow VIA Rail Canada and other passenger train carriers to operate mail, parcel, and express service; and
"BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT this Assembly request that the provincial Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism consider highlighting passenger rail transportation in future advertising campaigns promoting Manitoba."
Motion presented.
Mr. Jennissen: I rise today to put forward this resolution which highlights the sorry state of rail passenger transportation in this country generally, and in northern Manitoba particularly. I do so in the almost vain hope that the federal government might learn from Europe, from Japan and other parts of Asia that rail passenger transportation can be given a high priority.
Instead of walking away from rail passenger transportation, the federal government should be seeking and encouraging creative and flexible ways to increase such transportation. Passenger rail service is one of the most environmentally friendly forms of transportation. In light of the Kyoto Protocol adopted on December 10, 1997, Canada is committed to reducing substantially the emission of six greenhouse gases, particularly CO2.
To meet that target, fossil fuel gas emissions by the year 2010 would have to be 6 percent lower than the 1990 level. It is extremely doubtful that Canada will be anywhere near the target set out in the Kyoto Protocol.
As the Sustainable Transportation Monitor points out in its March 1998 edition, there are only two ways to reduce vehicle emission. One is to improve transport technology, that is vehicles, fuels or infrastructure, and the other is a reduction or change in transport activity. The first way is very costly, and the second way has not been seriously explored.
Better public transportation and specifically passenger rail transportation would be a positive step in the right direction. It amazes me how much passenger rail transportation has been downsized and downgraded in Canada over the last several decades, whereas in other parts of the world it has increased. In India and China, passenger train service is booming. Japan has extremely fast bullet trains. France also has extremely fast trains. Most major European airports are linked directly to passenger rail service. Trains leave on time every 10 or 15 minutes. In 1991 in the former Soviet Union, over 2.7 billion passengers used the passenger rail service. That was 50 percent of all passenger traffic, but in North America, specifically the United States, less than 1 percent of all passenger traffic is carried by trains. That is a disturbing trend because passenger rail service in North America is teetering on the edge of extinction. That is regrettable because passenger rail service is still very important to large regions of this country.
In northern Manitoba, the communities of Pukatawagan, Thicket Portage, Pikwitonei, Ilford and Churchill still rely heavily upon rail passenger service. None of those communities have an all-weather road linking the community to the rest of the provincial road system. Rail passenger service also affects many other northern communities, The Pas, Cormorant, Wanless, Cranberry Portage, Sherridon, Lynn Lake, Wabowden, Thompson and Gillam. That is why VIA Rail is so important to northern Manitoba and why many northerners are upset with the existing VIA Rail service. Quite simply, Madam Speaker, VIA Rail is not performing the tasks that Canadians, Manitobans, northerners, want it to perform.
Lack of funding does not in itself explain the failure of VIA Rail to effectively market itself to Canadians and foreign tourists. I am at a loss to explain the lethargy and paralysis that beset VIA Rail at the highest levels. Yes, we do write letters to the president of VIA, and we do get polite replies, but the system keeps deteriorating. The situation is one of missed opportunity and failure to do basic promotion.
A majority of Manitobans are vaguely aware at best that passenger rail service still exists in the province. Certainly, VIA does nothing to encourage people to take trains in this province and this despite the spectacular scenery along many of our rail lines including the Sherridon and the Bay line and despite the well-known positive attractions of Churchill. The infrequent service and odd times that trains arrive and depart from many communities combine to make trains unattractive to many people.
VIA has shown little inclination to improve service in this province. Anyone wanting to book a seat or get travel information must call a New Brunswick call centre. The representatives there have a passing knowledge at best of this province. At one point in 1996, when there was another of the many derailments on the Sherridon line, callers were told by VIA Rail representatives in New Brunswick that service had been scrapped permanently.
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One always gets the feeling that VIA is merely waiting for an excuse to cease offering passenger rail service to northern Manitoba permanently. Certainly, I have never been able to figure out why we have to phone VIA in New Brunswick about the status of a passenger train in northern Manitoba. If I want to catch a VIA passenger train in Cranberry Portage heading south to The Pas or northeast to Pukatawagan or Lynn Lake, I can do so only twice a week. The train is usually late, sometimes many hours. When you phone New Brunswick, they will tell you, for example, that the train is somewhere northeast of you between Cranberry Portage and Sherridon and that it should be arriving in Cranberry soon. That usually means waiting between one to 12 hours.
I know that there are many go-slow orders on the northern lines, but track maintenance is improving ever since OmniTRAX purchased the bay and the Sherridon lines. But the political will to improve and expand passenger service is lacking. The federal Liberal government, despite its promise while in opposition, has cut funding even further than the Mulroney government. After all, it was the federal Liberal government that ended protection and financial support for branch lines. The day after the federal Liberal government proclaimed the new Canada Transportation Act on July 1, 1996, CN announced it was scrapping the Sherridon line. The new act allows railways the right to scrap any branch line regardless of consequence with zero public input or debate.
While northerners fought hard to save their rail lines in 1996, VIA Rail was conspicuously silent. In fact, much of Ottawa was curiously silent that summer. I remember phoning the Transport minister and many other government M.P.s to voice my concern, along with that of many others, about the horribly negative consequences to the northern Manitoba economy if the Sherridon line or possibly even the Bay line were to be scrapped. But nobody seemed to be listening and I got that sinking feeling that in Ottawa, on the government side, nobody was really minding the store. There was no engineer behind the throttle, Madam Speaker. Here we were trying to save a railroad that belonged to the people of Canada and in Ottawa the ones responsible were out of the picture. They certainly were not in the forefront to save our railway lines or improve railway service or show support for laid off railway workers.
Madam Speaker, more than a year ago a Pukatawagan passenger was killed when he fell off the train while attempting to go from one of the passenger cars to the caboose, which has the only food service available on the train. The distance from The Pas to Pukatawagan is roughly 200 kilometres, and a train trip is supposed to last seven hours. However, the journey routinely takes 12 or more hours. VIA has been using passenger cars that are of pre-World War I vintage. They were in such poor condition, one of them was actually taken to the city dump last December precisely at the time of increased passenger flow between The Pas and Pukatawagan. That is typical of VIA timing.
Even though the band had requested an extra car for the Christmas trip from The Pas to Pukatawagan, VIA failed to do anything and thus left the more than two dozen passengers stranded in The Pas. A request by the Fort Rouge maintenance yard to modernize the passenger cars on the Sherridon line was refused by VIA officials.
Some wags in the North have suggested that the decrepit passenger cars from the World War I era are at least products of the early 20th Century. Apparently cars used during the 1940s in northern Manitoba still had signs that read: please, no shooting at buffalo from the train. That is according to Joan Edwards, a well-known northern historian who writes for northern newspapers, and that is a factual account.
It is obvious that VIA Rail has no real interest in improving service to remote areas. It is no more committed to northern Manitoba than CN was.
Many others have voiced their concern about substandard passenger rail service. The Thompson Citizen, on May 13, 1998, quotes Mayor Bill Comaskey of Thompson. Mayor Comaskey made a presentation to the Standing Committee on National Transportation on behalf of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.
Allow me to quote a few excerpts. Quote: We have been faced with growing unreliability and reduced quality of service for the past decade. Although there is a regular timetable for trains in northern Manitoba, VIA is seldom able to keep it. Trains can be as late as one to 12 hours and on occasion are completely cancelled. This has left local merchants, residents, tourists and travel agents upset and frustrated.
He further states, quote: Another problem is a loss of local VIA agents along the northern line, meaning that communities have to rely on services of agents four provinces away. These agents seldom have any knowledge of northern Manitoba and have little interest in finding out where a train might be or when it might be arriving.
As well, Mayor Comaskey stated that VIA refuses to rent out an entire car to a large group. Often VIA cancels reservations when there are still seats available. Sometimes people are asked to ride in the baggage car.
The article in the Thompson Citizen further states that M.P. Bev Desjarlais proved to be a very valuable ally for Mayor Comaskey at that meeting. Further, Mr. Comaskey called on Liberal M.P.s such as Lloyd Axworthy and Reg Alcock to take up the cause of rail transportation. Finally, Mr. Comaskey said, quote: Liberal M.P.s will have to put their obsession for privatization on the back burner for now.
Obviously, VIA Rail needs to tighten up its scheduling. It must be flexible; it must listen to requests to work with tour operators to facilitate charters and have more runs and also provide a dome car. There is a tourist demand, but VIA is not catering to it. Yes, the Mulroney government and the current Liberal government have, by their cuts, undermined VIA. The cuts to maintenance staff and service are particularly disturbing. The Toronto maintenance shop has basically been gutted, as have the operations in the Maritimes.
The tragic accident near Biggar, Saskatchewan, last September was a clear signal to VIA that there were major problems with the system. The details of the deliberate decisions to ignore warning signals that equipment needed repair should have resulted in improved safety and maintenance procedures. Instead, less than a month later, VIA cut staff at both the Fort Rouge and Vancouver Yards. The Transportation Safety Board investigation into the Biggar crash will not even be completed until this fall.
Passenger rail transportation needs to be modernized and upgraded. It is an environmentally sound form of transportation. It is regrettable that the federal government has given the lowest possible priority to passenger rail transportation. It indicates a serious lack of vision. Canada and Manitoba are blessed with many scenic and exciting passenger rail lines. These lines have enormous tourist potential. Both the federal government and VIA must get serious about being more accountable about showing leadership, about improving service.
We have let passenger rail service languish far too long. Courage, flexibility and political will is needed now, otherwise, rail passenger service will barely limp into the next century. That would be a most inglorious ending for the historically formative and dominant role that railroads played in developing and maintaining this great country that is Canada. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
Hon. Glen Findlay (Minister of Highways and Transportation): Madam Speaker, I listened intently to the member opposite on this resolution. It is a fairly long resolution with a lot of WHEREASes in them. As I read the WHEREASes and listened to the member opposite, it is pretty hard to dispute the facts that he put on the record and the comments that he put on the record that came from other people in terms of the exceptionally poor service that VIA offers. It has been frustrating, I think, to all Manitobans that use rail service or want to use rail service for transportation that VIA takes the position that they have taken over the years.
The member opposite mentions the Kyoto commitment that Canada made and the Canadian Transportation Act in terms of changes that the federal government allowed, both of which definitely will negatively impact the ability to meet objectives that we think are important. With regard to the Kyoto agreement that Canada agreed to--and I touched on this the other day in Estimates--we are supposed to, by the years 2010-2012, reduce emissions by some 6 percent from 1990. If nothing changes, the emissions in Canada will be plus 19 percent, I believe they are, from '90 over the 20-year period to 2010. Instead of plus 19, we have got to be minus six. My arithmetic says that is a 25 percent change.
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Anything I have seen or read or been made aware of is that rail transportation has less emissions per tonne of freight hauled or per 1,000 passengers hauled than buses or trucks, yet the federal government, in terms of decisions they make, whether it is under the CTA or whatever, however, they facilitate more abandonment of rail right across the country for all users and they put more passengers, more freight on the roads, which is totally contrary to what they agreed to in Kyoto. It questions the intelligence of the decision they made there.
The member opposite refers to the actions of the Liberal government. I can remember--I believe the year was 1995--appearing before a study that the federal government had commissioned. I believe the M.P.s that led the rail transportation review were M.P.s Duhamel and Harper. A lot of submissions were made, and it was all around the general concept that rail transportation for passengers in the North was critical because it was the only ground means of transportation to a number of communities up the Bay line. Lots of people made presentations, made recommendations all around, improving service, better quality maintenance of the rail line, a broader use of those rail cars in terms of not only for passengers, but mixed trains, promote tourism, move fish, move packages, all kinds of initiatives that could improve the viability of VIA Rail and prove the viability of that rail line in the North. I cannot think of a single thing that was done by the Liberal government after that report was presented by Duhamel and Harper, and everything continues the same today as it did prior to that review.
We all know that CN never very aggressively marketed the rail line to the North, whether for freight movements or for passenger use. When the process of CN's decision after the CTA act was passed by the federal government, we certainly met with CN and said, you know, why do you want to abandon the line to the North? There are opportunities commercially for freight movement in and out of northern Manitoba. There are opportunities on the passenger side. There are big opportunities on the tourism side. They had no interest whatsoever, and they basically wanted to roll the line up.
As a provincial government, we took the position that was very counterproductive, particularly from the standpoint of passengers accessing the northern communities. As a result, I believe, of our discussion with CN, they offered the two lines, the Sherridon and the Bay line, as a short-line package deal. OmniTRAX showed up as a successful bidder in the tendering process. I think I heard the member opposite say that service on the line, maintenance on the line, has improved. Clearly, we have somebody with a vested interest now to make that line function and operate. If it can operate commercially in freight movements, that means the line is there for passenger use.
VIA Rail is still the weak link in the process. They have shown no desire to improve service, and the member opposite mentioned a wait of one to 12 hours. You cannot put up with that. That is very unreliable service. I fail to understand why somebody would deliver that poor service, because anywhere else in the country they would lose business big time. Just the fact that it is a captive audience up there is not good enough for doing that sort of poor service.
The member mentions the amount of rail trackage that is proposed to be abandoned across western Canada. Again, the Liberal government has been inactive, paranoid about making decisions. We met just a little over a week ago with the federal minister, and we--Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and B.C.--all asked the federal government to cease and desist in terms of abandoning further lines until the Estey Review was in, until we saw what real lines would be part of the network for grain movement in the future. Certainly, the northern rail line going North will be part and parcel of a strategic plan in the future for grain movement, if nothing else.
All these actions by the federal government are to have less and less rail in western Canada; certainly they have done it in eastern Canada. The member opposite mentions Europe as progressive and aggressive marketing and development of rail transportation, but in Canada it has never achieved that same level. I think, to a certain degree, the psyche of Canadians is that they are not committed to rail transportation. The fact that they get very poor service, have historically had very poor service, unreliable service leads to that kind of psyche. People just say, well, we will find another way to get there.
But I question how Canada--and we raised this with the federal minister a little over a week ago--is going to meet the Kyoto commitment when they are progressively removing the amount of rail activity in Canada. We are a nation that depends on transportation. We are spread out across 5,000 kilometres. It is incredible. I cannot imagine that five years down the road, suddenly, they will make a decision that we are going to reduce the number of passenger cars by 50 percent in certain regions of the country to achieve emission reductions. That would be very difficult for people to adjust to if there was not some other form of transportation, and the amount of rail reduction, they are just continuing to allow it to happen.
We see great opportunities for tourism in the North. I hear about people who have come from Europe to live in northern Canada, because they love the scenery, the tourism opportunities up there. Lots of Canadians in the southern parts of our provinces are not aware of the opportunities up there; tourism is not marketed. I mean, there is an opportunity for an entrepreneur, in conjunction with the railroad, in conjunction with VIA, to market that region of the province, not only northern Manitoba, but on up into the Northwest Territories, and the future portion called Nunavut.
The federal government is on a track. They have not really announced that track, but the track is less rail, less support for rail. The only bright light, as I have mentioned already, in terms of northern Manitoba is that OmniTRAX is there with a vested interest to try to make something work. I hope that they are successful in the package of commercial activity and rail transportation, that the package will work for them.
I have heard there have been groups interested in taking over the VIA activity of rail passenger transportation in Canada. I notice discussions like that have occurred, but nobody has every showed up prepared to take over VIA and operate it more commercially viably.
Madam Speaker, I do not know of anybody in the 10 provinces across this country that speaks against passenger rail transportation, but yet progressive federal governments have chosen, for whatever reasons, not to listen to provincial points of view. That goes not only for rail transportation. It goes to grain transportation. It goes to our ideas on terms of trying to promote a commercially competitive western Canada in terms of the North American economy.
So there are many things in this resolution that are factually correct. Whether we could ever change the federal government's point of view remains to be seen. We must continue to do it. We must continue to work with the people who are service providers and try to explain to them the opportunities they are missing by not providing a good, high-quality level of service, a dependable level of service that the rail customers of Manitoba and western Canada see as desirable.
So, with those few words, I was pleased with the opportunity to be able to speak to this resolution. Unfortunately, as the years go by, we do not see any improvement in terms of commitment to restoring a level of service that would improve the economic opportunities in northern Manitoba, whether it is passenger service, whether it is tourism, whether it is mining, or whether it is commercial movement of goods. We have to fight hard in this province to keep that activity, maximize the opportunity, but the federal government so far is not with us. CN certainly was not with us, but I think the new partner in the railway in terms of OmniTRAX is probably more with us than any partner has been in the past.
Mr. Steve Ashton (Thompson): I want to put--
Hon. James McCrae (Government House Leader): If I may, Madam Speaker, I apologize for interrupting my colleague the honourable member for Thompson (Mr. Ashton), but just for clarification, the bills passed this afternoon were Bills 22, 24, 37, 41, 19, and 44. Those would be the bills being referred to the Law Amendments committee for public presentations and examination by the members of the committee Thursday morning, June 11, at ten o'clock.
Mr. Ashton: I have a few brief comments to put on the record. Not that I could not talk at length on this issue, but I do hope that there will be consideration of passing this resolution, because I think it is important to send a message from the Legislature of Manitoba that we value passenger rail traffic and that it is still important to the north of our province.
I say right from the outset, because this is one question I always get asked when I speak on rail travel: do I take the trains? The answer is, yes, I do take the trains. I represent Thicket Portage, Pikwitonei, and Ilford, three communities that are not accessible by road, other than during winter road season, so I have to, in order to serve my constituents, go by train or by chartered aircraft. Once in a while I have to take a chartered aircraft. I make a point of travelling in the same way that people in that community do, because I think if you are going to represent people, you have to know what they go through in terms of accessing, whether it is medical services or groceries.
You also have to see the true ability we have, I think, if we can work on improving our rail service, to be a major tourist destination. I have been on that rail line and I have seen the international travellers. It depends on the time of year. If you go up just around now, a little bit earlier, you get the bird watchers. You go up in the summer, you get the beluga whale watchers. You go up in October, you get the polar bear watchers. You get people from all over the world. You will get people who will fly in from New York. They will fly to Minneapolis and they will go from there. They will hook up on our rail system. You can travel pretty well anywhere in the world, and if you turn on a television and look at a documentary channel, which I have done, guess what you will see? You will see Churchill and you will see the Bay line. That is probably the most famous tourist asset that we have in this province.
I say to people all the time--and this is no offence to any other community--if you want to tell people where you are from, if you are from Manitoba, do not tell them you are from Winnipeg or from Thompson or Brandon or wherever you are from. Tell them you are from the province that has the polar bears. They will understand that. You define it by Churchill. It is world famous.
I was on the train a while ago with the member for Wellington (Ms. Barrett) who took the time to go to Thicket Portage. Guess what? There was a camera crew from Good Morning America filming about the Bay line. Has it not dawned on some of the people what my colleague the member for Flin Flon (Mr. Jennissen) talked about, that we have a tremendous potential here if we really put the kind of investment that is necessary in to keeping that up? I agree with the minister, too, that I certainly am very open in terms of what OmniTRAX has been doing from their side, because the reality is this is one of our greatest assets.
Now, I can give you the other side as well. If we do not have rail service, what are you going to do to Churchill? What are you going to do to Thicket Portage, Ilford and Pikwitonei? In those communities, it would cost you probably in the range of half a billion dollars to put road access in. I do not know what the latest estimates for Churchill are, but I can guarantee you, it will be $250 million, minimum, let alone the bridges and other structures. So I point again to the fact that it is an essential service.
Now, I have also spoken out in the past on the fact that we have seen time and time again that when anybody has any innovative approach to rail service, usually there are vested interests that kill it off. The rail bus, in the 1980s. I was part of the government that supported that process. We were very strong advocates of that. As a local MLA, I pushed for it. I actually travelled on the rail bus, and I give credit to the Norman RDC at the time and the number of people who were very heavily involved with that.
But, you know, we ended up in a situation where they had to use a 1950s bus as one prototype, and they had to use a bus that was imported from Britain. I do not think that bus was designed for minus 30 degree weather. The end result, Madam Speaker, is we ended up with the whole project killed. That would have provided tremendous opportunity in northern Manitoba to have supplemental travel. It would have certainly helped deal with the needs of people in the Bay line communities. It would have improved service. I think it could have done a great deal to access tourism because, you know, one thing about the rail--and I would recommend this to people, by the way. If you ever get the chance, if you want to come up and you want quick and easy access to a remote lake, I will tell you how you can get it. You do not have to take a chartered aircraft. I can tell you a couple of places where you can go in by train. They will drop you off. They will even drop you off, by the way, with your canoe. You can spend the weekend there or just the day waiting for the train to come back the other way. You can go fishing and you will be in an area that no one has access to by road.
There are a couple of locations just between Thompson and Thicket Portage where I know a number of people who go there, and I can tell you--[interjection] Well, listen, I can say this on behalf of the people in Thicket Portage, by the way, that they would be more than glad to host people. Thicket Portage, by the way, also has the ability to have trains going in and out on the same day. It is very unique because the way the schedule works, you can actually go in, and a train will go the other way. It even has a restaurant now. A lot of people are not aware of this, but I really credit the efforts of people in Thicket Portage, particularly the couple who have opened up this restaurant.
People are not aware of this. These are some of the greatest secrets, and I can you tell you one thing. People, I would say, in Europe have a better sense of this than in Winnipeg. I do not think too many people in Winnipeg would think of going to northern Manitoba for tourist purposes. They should. They should, and I know the member for Lac du Bonnet (Mr. Praznik) knows that from his experience in southern Manitoba.
You know, we are a world-class tourist destination, but we try and do it with second-class equipment and third-rate service, not from the people, by the way, because the employees have been very good on VIA Rail, but from VIA and CN over the years. I am hopeful with OmniTRAX, and, by the way, there have been some very productive meetings that have taken place with OmniTRAX between northern officials. I have written to them myself, raised a number of issues with them, both service-wise and in terms of other issues, prices.
There are still some concerns. Freight is a concern, the cost of freight in that area, but I think there is a real effort to make it work, and, you know, the vested interests have been lined up against the Port of Churchill and the Bay line for years. I just say that I hope with OmniTRAX we have a chance to build. [interjection] Well, the aluminum cars, there are some positive things, and as the minister points out, is it not amazing, the vested interests that say you cannot do this, you cannot do that.
You get a company in and you get people who are committed to making it work, and guess what, it happens. I can say without a doubt that the end result of what can happen in this particular case is when you have northern communities, when you have the province, when you have the federal government, I think, and all the players involved making a real commitment, watch out for the Bay line, watch out for Churchill and all the Bay line communities.
I say to this provincial government, if you want to promote tourism in this province, do not forget about northern Manitoba. I can tell you there has been some improvements. I picked up a tourism document, and there was actually a big picture of Pishew Falls, the most accessible waterfall. It is excellent. For the longest time, the map of Manitoba kind of ends on the road network. There is a lot more out there in Manitoba that is not accessible by road. Now, we would like some more roads, by the way, too. I think I mentioned that on other occasions.
But just remember, when we hand out maps to people, the maps, I believe, should be like the map that has been produced over the years by Norman RDC, that even if you do not have a road, you are still on the map. I can tell you, if you want to get the message across to people about our tourism potential, how about a map that goes all the way up to the 60th Parallel, all right? I say that seriously. We have a map now, and we do splice in Churchill afterward, but you can be accessible by rail and you are still part of this province, and you can do a lot for this province in terms of tourism.
A few suggestions--that is one the government could follow up on, but I think the message we should send, if not today--we may not have time today--but in the upcoming weeks or months, as long as we sit here, I think by passing a resolution of this kind coming from the Legislature, we send a clear message that the whole province is committed to rail service and particularly the Bay line and the Port of Churchill.
You know what, I think if you ask people--and I have seen some criticism of the Port of Churchill over the years from a few people, but, by and large, people in this province support Churchill. They support the rail service. We have to make sure that that message gets through to the people who have been fighting against decent service to the Bay line and the Port of Churchill for many years.
Thank you, Madam Speaker.
Hon. David Newman (Minister of Northern Affairs): Madam Speaker, I want to add my voice of support to the positions outlined by my colleague the Minister of Highways and Transportation (Mr. Findlay). As the Minister responsible for Northern Affairs and Native Affairs and Mining, in particular, an efficient and effective rail network in the North is essential for the effective development of the North and for servicing the northern people, and not only servicing the northern people, there for their convenience and safety.
So no one will work harder than the Minister of Highways and Transportation and myself and colleagues on this side of the House in trying to persuade the federal government--
Madam Speaker: Order, please. When this matter is again before the House, the honourable Minister of Northern and Native Affairs will have 14 minutes remaining.
The hour being 6 p.m., this House is adjourned and stands adjourned until 1:30 p.m. tomorrow.