Mr. Speaker, under the former system, rail abandonment took place after the railroad could prove financial hardship. Therefore, any rail company that wanted to abandon a railroad first made absolutely certain it had financial hardship, even though it may not have existed. I have spoken to the rail companies and they will never admit this on record but it is undeniable.
What the rail companies do is they first demarcate the line. In the case of a rail line abandonment in my own riding they wrote a confidential trucking contract to a reload centre so that the customer would be gone and would not exist on that rail line.
The second thing is they do absolute minimal maintenance. They do not break any safety standards but they do the minimal maintenance which may mean running their cars at half loads, at five kilometres an hour over the track so that it requires prohibitive capital investment if someone else were to come in or if they were ordered to continue to operate that line. Ultimately, they get abandonment but by that time no short line operator in their right mind is going to come in and buy this line that needs this tremendous capital infusion and has no customers.
The intent of the new abandonment procedures contained in the bill is to ensure that does not happen. As the hon. member has suggested, if they start putting all kinds of restrictions and prohibitions in the way of the rail companies, they would simply revert to the old system and we will not get any short line development in this country.
The new system allows a rail company to sell off a line or abandon it. It is the company's choice. The company first has to offer the line, market it publicly by a set series of advertisements and a time parameter set out in this bill. If it does not find a customer, it then has to offer it to the federal government, then the provincial government, then the local government at net salvage value without first demarcating and running the line into the ground.
The bill will enhance the viability of any lines considered for abandonment. I have talked to short line operators who are eager to expand their networks and to increase-