Commons Kills VIA Rail Bill
Paul Delahanty, www.blacklocks.ca
The Commons has defeated a bill mandating better VIA Rail service and allowing employees to buy up to 10 percent of the company. Conservative MPs rejected the private bill as costly and disruptive to freight service.
“Canadian shippers work hard to grow their businesses,” said MP Patricia Davison (Sarnia-Lambton, Ont.); “The bill would ultimately undermine this hard work.”
New Democrat-sponsored Bill C-640 An Act Respecting VIA Rail would have outlawed service cuts; mandated six-day-a-week service between Halifax and Montréal, required a minimum three transcontinental passenger trains between Toronto and Vancouver each week; and guaranteed minimum 80 percent on-time service. The bill also granted VIA passenger trains preference over freights, even on right-of-way track owned by Canadian National Rail Co. and Canadian Pacific, and permitted VIA to electrify any track including those owned by private railways.
“The importance of freight railways has only increased,” Davidson said; “Essentially this amendment would give unfettered primacy to passenger rail operations at the expense of freight rail efficiency.” MPs defeated the bill on a voice vote, with a formal recorded vote deferred till Wednesday.
VIA projected a record operating deficit of $321 million last year. The railway carries four million passengers a year, by official estimate. Critics noted the bill would have allowed VIA management to borrow up to $500 million in bonded debt to upgrade equipment and service.
“Ultimately the government would have to backstop these financial commitments,” said MP LaVar Payne (Conservative-Medicine Hat, Alta.); “It is a significant financial risk”.
Proponents of passenger rail said VIA’s current structure and operations have left Canadians without adequate service. “VIA is under the thumb of the freight railways, especially CN, on whose tracks it operates the bulk of its trains,” Green Party MP Bruce Hyer (Thunder Bay-Superior North, Ont.) said earlier. “It is a one-sided relationship.”
New Democrat MP Irene Mathyssen described the bill as “an effort to turn the tide of the steady erosion of rail” dating from the privatization of CN in 1995. “Canadians have the right to the highest levels of service,” Mathyssen said.
VIA last year narrowly averted disruption of continuous Atlantic service for the first time since 1889 when CN announced plans to abandon a 71-kilometre stretch of track near Campbellton, N.B. VIA management paid $10.2 million to purchase the line and maintain its Ocean passenger service from New Brunswick to Montréal.
“We have to be forward thinking,” said Mathyssen, MP for London-Fanshawe, Ont. “Rail travel is cost-effective in terms of the pocketbook and the environment.”
VIA management had reported ridership on the Atlantic run fell after service was reduced in 2012 to Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays, noting it was “steadily declining” and failed to meet costs even in peak travel seasons.