We have a very complex logistics system in Canada, especially if we take a look at pulse exports to Japan, which all go in containers. You can imagine the number of steps between moving them from a farm to a processing plant and arranging equipment—whether that be a container in an inland position or a hopper car or a boxcar—to move them to a port position where they have to be reloaded into ocean-going containers and booked on vessels, and we have to find space at the port for them. The whole logistics system has to work in a very coordinated manner.
Taking a look at this issue very closely over the last five years, we've seen that a lot of individuals and individual companies in the system work to optimize it for themselves, which unfortunately can have the effect of sort of suboptimizing the performance of the entire system.
We've talked about our need to optimize system performance. The railways play a key role in this, because they are the link that is common through a lot of these elements of the logistics system. Certainly railway performance has much improved in the last number of months over what it was in the recent past.
But we have to make sure we have some guarantees that we're going to have the kinds of linkages in the system to ensure we can improve. I'll just cite one particular fact that I think illustrates it well, which is that for agricultural exports in containers out of North America, we have the worst record in all container shipping around the world. At one point we had more than 40% no-shows, bookings that were made and cargo that did not arrive. The steamship lines have told us that you pay for that.
Because we have inefficiencies, everyone is trying to make sure they're operating with a full system. It's like airlines that overbook. But can you imagine if airlines overbooked at 40% the kind of chaos we would have? Well, this is the kind of problem that we're having in our shipping system, and we all have to look at the responsibility we have to contribute to those kinds of problems.
I think there need to be some better linkages. We need to have some consequences for non-performance through all the players, and that is one of the things we're lacking.
When I talked about service-level agreements, it really was to define what kind of service you're buying, what the obligations of service providers are, and what the consequences for non-performance are. I think it's an incentive to perform well, if you know that you've defined what you're going to do and you've said you're going to do it. I think the concept of service-level agreements is going to go a long way, not only for our industry in agriculture. It was very interesting to see the strong level of support from a number of shippers in other sectors as well.