Mr. Speaker, for many years now, whether it be grain farmers, forestry companies or mining companies, what they have wanted to do is to ship their products from coast to coast to coast so that they could get loaded into a container and be exported. Eighty per cent of the shippers have been saying that the service that they are getting from rail companies is not satisfactory.
Why is that? It is because in Canada there is really a monopoly of service. CN and CP control all the tracks. They do not compete with each other, and there are no other choices. Yes, perhaps shippers could use trucks, but imagine large amounts of coal or large numbers of logs being shipped by truck. It is just not feasible.
Many grain, lentil or soybean farmers and many in the forestry industry are saying they need to get their products to the coast on time. They need to have advance warning if a train will not be coming on time. They also need to be assured that if the service is not satisfactory, there would be some kind of refund or compensation. If not, there would be a complete imbalance of power in that the rail companies could say whatever they want, charge whatever they want, deliver whatever kind of service they want and not worry about losing customers. The market is completely skewed. We all firmly believe that competition matters and that shippers should get the right price, but in this case there is no competition at all. There is a complete imbalance.
What is happening is that sometimes with no or very short advance warning, the train does not show up on time, or if it does show up, it does not deliver the products on time. As a result, the grain rots. Sometimes the company hires a large group of people to get the grain, or whatever product they are trying to ship, ready to be shipped, and the trains do not arrive. What do they do? Some of the companies, rather than booking one container, will book several, one before and one after, because if the products do not show up on time, they do not get their product exported properly. As a result, millions of dollars are lost because of poor rail freight service.
Successive governments have said they understood the problem and would do something about it. They talked a lot about it, yet nothing has been done.
The Conservatives promised that action would be taken. They first had a stakeholder panel and did a study. That study consulted everyone, and it took many years. As the report came forward, the rail companies said they did not need legislation; they would provide good service, and we should not worry about it. The Conservative government at the time agreed, but suggested a mediation process, the idea being to see how it went and then, if that did not work out, it would introduce legislation. Most of the shippers agreed to give it a try, although they did not think it would work because of the complete imbalance of power.
The Conservatives then made a promise in the last election that action would be taken. Now, two and a half years later, we finally see a bill in front of us.
Last year I got very impatient, so I established a private member's bill. I took the stakeholders' report and all of the recommendations in it and put them into a private member's bill. The shippers looked at the private member's bill and thought it was a model for what should be done and said that if the government were to take action, that should be the kind of legislation that should be made into law.
Unfortunately, we have this bill in front of us. This bill is a start. However, it does not include a model of what a service agreement should be, which means that companies that have no service agreements have to start with a blank slate. Instead of having a framework, with a model, they have no guidelines and have to start from square one with no template to back up their right to service agreements. That is very unfortunate. Negotiations need flexibility, but they should not have to start with a blank piece of paper. Optional elements should include performance measures, communication protocols and consequences for non-performance. None of that is in this bill, which is unfortunate.
This bill would only cover those that have no service agreements. Any companies that have service agreements with CN and CP would not be covered, unfortunately. In terms of conflict resolution, the shippers want a process like arbitration that covers not only negotiations for new contracts but also violations of existing contracts. Companies could have existing contracts, but if punishments are not spelled out, how would those contracts be honoured? Conflict resolution has to be accessible and affordable for all shippers. Unfortunately, this bill made it very complex. For some of the smaller companies in the forest industry and farmers, it is going to be very difficult to access because of the process and the red tape involved in this bill.
One of the critical points shippers have been talking about is that there has to be compensation for non-performance. If their products are not delivered on time, there have to be consequences. Unfortunately, there are none. Shippers need to be compensated for contract violations, not just when an arbitration agreement is reached. Any penalties have to go straight to the shippers, not to the federal government.
What does this bill do? This bill says that if CN or CP violate a contract, and compensation is awarded to the shipper and not to CN or CP, then they should pay a fine. I think the fine is something like $100,000. The amount of $100,000 is too small, and the penalty does not go to the customers. It goes to the government. That does not make sense. If I am a customer, go into an arbitration process and prove to Transport Canada that the company was not providing good service to me, the customer, one would think that the reward would go to the customer. In this case, no, it goes to the government. In some ways, that is a bit of a tax grab.
Bill C-52 covers only new agreements and not existing ones, as I said earlier. This bill would unfairly exclude shippers from any protection and conflict resolution measures. Instead, they would be stuck with continued contract violations, with retribution.
I heard my Conservative colleague say that they could always go to court. Of course they could always go to court. Why do we need a government, then? They could go to court now, of course. The problem is that the court process is long, involved, and expensive. Companies would end up spending most of the money on lawyers rather than on producing better products for their customers.
What does all of this mean? It means that a lot of Canadian customers, whether they are logging companies or grain farmers, are saying that it is hurting their exports. It is hurting Canada's productivity. It is costing our economy millions of dollars. Because they have no say over how the pricing works, they were hoping that this bill would not just talk about the service but would talk about the pricing.
We could have the best service, but if the price is too high and farmers cannot afford to ship their grain, what good is it? Unfortunately, that key component is missing from the bill in front of us. It deals only with service, service contracts and service agreements but not with pricing. That big chunk still has to be tackled through the Canada Transportation Act.
We need to know what fair pricing is. Right now, we do not know, and the government has not tracked it. We also need to know what kind of performance standards should be acceptable. There needs to be a model so that people could learn from best practices. That, too, is missing.
Yes, the shippers were happy that there was finally some kind of legislation, weak though it is. They want it passed. However, the coalition of all rail shippers came together and said that they wanted a series of amendments. They did a lot of good work. They came to the transport committee and they proposed six areas to work on.
They want to tackle the problem of what should be in the service level agreements. They want to make sure that they are legally protected. They want to allow shippers to include arbitration conflict resolution in service level agreements for non-performance. They want protection from additional service charges. That is important, because we can have an agreement, but if service charges are laid on all of a sudden, it is very difficult for shippers to plan ahead.
They want to narrow the arbitration to what the shippers' complaints are about and not allow the rail companies to broaden the scope of the arbitration. It is hard to believe that this bill, which is supposed to support the shippers, would allow shippers to put in their complaint after which CN and CP could say that they too have things to put on the table, which they could do. The shippers are slightly worried about that. I do not blame them. It is almost like protection against retaliation. If they dare challenge the CN and CP monopoly and dare to say that the service is not up to par and they take it to arbitration, CN and CP could retaliate and cost them a lot of money.
Remember, CN had a $3-billion profit last year, so it is not doing too badly. CP will also begin to have a profit margin.
The shippers' last recommendation was to lighten the burden of proof on shippers to demonstrate that they are captive during the arbitration.
Those are the six recommendations they had. They provided detailed support and documentation. They looked at the bill very carefully. They hired lawyers and different companies, whether they were logging and forestry industries, Canada Post, or the coalition itself, which all came in and said that this would make the bill much stronger.
Unfortunately, without much debate, without much deliberation, the Conservative majority on the transport committee said no and voted down all of the recommendations. That is really unfortunate. In some ways it is a betrayal of the good faith of these companies. They have been waiting for years for action. They have been waiting for legislation. They have been very patient. They waited for over a year for the negotiator, Mr. Dinning, to be appointed. They waited a year, because the Conservatives were not doing anything. Right after the election, the Conservatives had a blueprint showing how to go forward, but they did nothing. A year later, they appointed Mr. Dinning. The report took a long time, and this legislation has taken a long time.
Flawed as the legislation is, we as New Democrats support the bill, because it is better than nothing, but there is a lot of room for improvement.
Ultimately, Canada needs two pieces of legislation. The first piece of legislation would regulate and would clearly indicate to CN and CP what the performance standards should be, what the arbitration process should be, what kind of service contract should be given to the shippers, and what the results, the consequences, the penalty would be if the company failed to satisfy customers.
We also need a second piece of legislation that would provide a level playing field and deal with pricing. How much should it really be? How much should it cost? What would be the upper and the lower range? We need to let the market dictate pricing, but because the market is completely skewed right now, there is no competition. The government needs to step in and provide the support Canadian companies are desperately looking for.
All of the products Canada exports require a good transportation system, whether one is a small soybean farmer or one is shipping lentils or logs outside Canada. More and more oil is being shipped by rail. Rail service is good for the environment. It is an efficient way of moving things. We would prefer to see more train service rather than more trucks. As a result, the NDP believes that the Canada Transportation Act must be amended so that there is a level playing field for all shippers.
We support the bill, but we wish the Conservatives would listen to their constituents and these companies a lot more.