This is not a new proposal. This comes from 2001, from Justice Willard Estey, who made the suggestion to the transport ministry in 2001-02 to look at open running rights. At the time, CN and CP said they weren't interested in open running rights. They wanted to keep it closed here in our country, in Canada, while they lobbied the U.S. Congress for open running rights in the U.S.
Of course, CN and CP were successful in the U.S. for open running rights, contrary to my good friend Mr. Payne's suggestion that somehow trains run into each other on open running rights. You just need to coordinate things, just like open highways. If we put more trucks on the road, we just have to coordinate things.
The bottom line is that open access is a doable and achievable thing. Yes, it takes work, and yes, it will take some regulation, and yes, it will take some thought processes. That's why it's a consultative process, not a “do it by this particular moment in time” process, because what it does is enhance competition. It allows other players to come in if they choose to; it doesn't say that they must. The hope is that the competitive market will take care of that and folks will come into the market.
Yes, there are things that need to be looked at. It's not simple. It is about railroading. Railroading is, by nature, because of the way it's done, a bit complex. It's not just as easy as pointing the car in a general direction and off you go.
Clearly, one of the complaints we've heard from many of the shippers right across the entire spectrum, not just the grain sector but right across the entire sector for those who ship, whether it be coal or potash, or whether they're from the shipper's coalition, is this idea is that they don't get the service they think they deserve. With my understanding of an open market, one of the ways to do that is to introduce competition. I know that my friends across the way in the government have been trying to do that in the telecom sector by making more competition.
Now, I don't want to suggest doing a railroad is as easy, because it's a physical piece versus what happened with Bell Telephone many years ago where they had to open-access their lines. It's not. That's an electronic transmission, and in digital transmissions there aren't real physical things that can run into each other, but the idea of it is somewhat similar. This is physical infrastructure, with a steel railroad and with railroad engines, locomotives, and cars that could do damage to themselves and other people's property if they collide, so yes, an element of coordination has to happen, as it happens now in the U.S.
It actually does work. I mean, there aren't huge numbers of railroads, so it isn't as if it's going to be like Highway 401 going through Toronto, for those who know that bottleneck. It won't be like that at all, because there just aren't enough of them, but there are more than what we have presently. It may encourage a short-liner, for all we know, to decide that they want to get into the game in a different way than they are now. It won't necessarily be BNSF coming up, but it might be.
This is an attempt to bring competition into the system. That is what this is structured to do. I would hope that my friends would want to introduce additional competition in that very closed market that we have now, that market called CN and CP, because it is very much a closed shop when it comes to who you want to ship with. In certain parts of this country, you have choice. For those of us who live in Ontario, there are some choices, but for those of us who live in the Prairies, the choices are less so. Primarily in certain parts of the country, whether you live in the north or the south, you are a captive market. I would hope that one would look at this perhaps as a positive aim and work towards that.
Thanks, Chair.