If you are a railway enthusiast then you got some sad news recently when the Ontario government announced that it would sell off most of the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission (ONTC). That means that our northern Ontario lifeline to the south by train, the Northlander will be cancelled.

This cancellation of the Northlander is very bad news for northern residents on tight budgets. For people who travel south for health-care reasons, education and for First Nations, this historic connection from Cochrane through the North to the South means a lot.

Many don’t realize that First Nation people were part of the work crews that built and maintained the rail lines from North Bay to Cochrane and Cochrane to Moosonee. My dad Marius was one of those workers when he was a young man. Labourers were killed and injured in the construction and maintenance of these rail lines which made life a lot easier for people who wanted to travel from up the James Bay coast and down to southern towns and cities.

I know that in the past there was a lot more freight travelling the rail lines from the North to the South and the South to the North. However, with the coming of the transport truck and the lobby groups that supports them, the rail system has suffered. It has also meant that there is a continuous stream of transport trucks travelling along the Highway 11 corridor. This trucking nightmare has cost many northerners their lives through accidents and the wear and tear on our northern roads is substantial.

I realize that fewer people are travelling by train these days on this northern rail line and less freight is being moved than in the past. However, I have also travelled a lot through Europe and I can see how important the train can be if properly supported, maintained and developed for transportation and freight.

We have been tearing up the rails in northern Ontario and right across Canada for the past 20 years. Just recently, it has dawned on us that train travel is very efficient, reliable and safe. Today, communities are considering laying down new track as they have realized that train travel and rail transportation makes a lot of sense.

With the rising cost of fuel and highway maintenance, it makes sense that train travel will become more important in the future. It is too bad that the Ontario government is selling off most of the ONTC rather than funding it, developing it and making it more attractive for travellers and freight transportation. Instead, they will be selling it off to some private-sector company that will reap the benefits of the blood, sweat and tears that all our rail workers have sacrificed for decades.

Hopefully the government will stick to its promise of continuing to fund the Polar Bear Express. This train is critical to the First Nation people on the James Bay coast as there is no road travelling to the remote First Nations up the coast. The Polar Bear Express is also a real tourist draw to northern Ontario. We love our Polar Bear Express and we want to keep it.

It might not be important to some to be losing the Northlander, but if you were a senior who still wants to travel south to visit family, a cancer patient who needs to travel economically for treatment, a student who needs a cheap-and-safe way to get to college and university or a First Nation person who requires an affordable way to get to the city, then you might understand what the Northlander means to us. It is not just about numbers, profits and loss, it’s about providing a much needed service to the public.

I see governments spending money in ways I just don’t understand by funding wars in foreign countries and making it easier for the very rich to become even more wealthy. In the meantime, public services like transportation, health care and education are being cut back.

Dismantling the ONTC and selling it off is not a positive step for the people of the North. We need more and better train services, not less.