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Well, there's been a lot of threads talking about what can be done with Amtrak and passenger rail in the US, but for a change, here's one about Canada. This week Canadian Transport Minister David Collenette announced plans for the federal government to spend $692.5 million on improving Via with faster trains, better tracks and upgraded stations (most of this money will go to services in Ontario and Quebec). The money would be spent over 5 years, but wouldn't start coming until April, 2004. However, there is some contraversy surrounding this. Here's the background information to this: Our current Prime Minister is Jean Chretien, who has been our Prime Minister for the past 10 years. A while ago Chretien announced that he would retire from politics in February 2004. A few people have decided to step up as candidates for the new leader of the Liberal Party. It originally was John Manley (Foreign Affairs Minister), Sheila Copps (Heritage Minister), Paul Martin (ex-Finance Minister who Chretien hates and fired) and some other guy. Manley and the other guy both dropped out of the race because they knew they wouldn't win against Martin. The official vote is coming up soon and everyone knows Martin will win and be the next Prime Minister. He has 95% of the support from party members and only needs 60% to win, but Kopps refuses to give up. Martin has been doing some Prime Minister-like things including holding two caucus meetings and making official visits to see the damage of Hurricane Juan and the B.C. forest fires. There are a lot of jokes here about having two Prime Ministers and just who really is running the country. Now some people want to get rid of Chretien right away and vote him out now. Politics is nasty, isn't it? So, what does all of this have to do with the money for Via? Well, Collenette is a firm Chretien supporter. Some are accusing him and Chretien of trying to spend lots of money before Paul Martin comes in and give Martin a debt. Paul Martin can actually say no to the decision if he wants to when he gains power. Also, the current president of Via used to work for Chretien holding an important and well-paying job. Another thing that should be mentioned is that Collenette turned down a proposal to spend $3 billion on a high-speed rail line between Quebec City and Windsor. To me, the high speed project sounds like an excellent idea. The only thing I'm worried about is that because of all this political nonsense that it may be Via who suffers in the end. What are others' thoughts on this?
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