While our performance has been exceptional, we know that our long-term survival depends on generating even more opportunities for growth. Without significant investment to update and improve our equipment and facilities, and without greater, more assured access to infrastructure, we will be unable to sustain the high level of performance achieved in recent years. That investment can not come through lowering costs. It must come through growth.

In the past, much of our success has come through integrating private-sector approaches into our management practices. In the future, we believe our success will come through even greater innovation – through new forms of public-private sector partnerships.

Throughout 1997, a special team has been looking at the form such partnerships could take through the VIA Transformation Project. We have identified the investment needed for the continued revitalization of passenger rail – and the continued viability of a national passenger rail service for Canadians. Managed innovatively, such an investment makes good business sense, and – we believe – could come in large part from the private sector. But this will require significant changes in the environment in which VIA operates.

As a result of the Transformation Project, we have prepared a number of strategic options for the future of passenger rail. Our road map to the future includes many exciting opportunities – with no additional costs to the taxpayer. We see expanded express services between major centres in the Corridor, new overnight services in the West, enhanced tourism services in the East. New services could provide intermodal links to international airports. New partnerships with Amtrak could improve services into the U.S., including Florida and Chicago.

The market is there. The opportunities for growth are there. And there is a sound business case for seizing those opportunities.