Bill C-52 (Historical)

Fair Rail Freight Service Act

An Act to amend the Canada Transportation Act (administration, air and railway transportation and arbitration)

This enactment amends the Canada Transportation Act to require a railway company, on a shipper’s request, to make the shipper an offer to enter into a contract respecting the manner in which the railway company must fulfil its service obligations to the shipper. It also creates an arbitration process to establish the terms of such a contract if the shipper and the railway company are unable to agree on them. The enactment also amends provisions related to air transportation to streamline internal processes and certain administrative provisions of that Act.

Speaker's Ruling

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage]

Mr. Speaker, let me say at the outset that I hope the translation came through wrong because if it was right what I got from it is that the hon. member said that anyone who believed in the Liberal Party, voted for it or took out a membership with it had to have had an intellectual lobotomy. We have seen this from both parties.

The member from Winnipeg, whose riding I do not remember, has said that anyone who voted for the Reform Party in the past was just not smart enough, that western Canadians did not know what they were talking about, and that the millions of people who voted for the Reform Party had to be wrong and were not sane Canadians.

The official opposition is now saying that anyone who is a member of the Liberal Party must have had an intellectual lobotomy. What is it about the opposition parties that they so disrespect the choices Canadians make? What is it about—

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Order, please. The hon. member for Kingston and the Islands is rising on a point of order.

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am curious, not about the subject with respect to what my colleague is saying but to the relevance to the bill that we are discussing today.

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Order. The hon. member for Kingston and the Islands raises an important issue--that is, relevance. I would just take the opportunity to remind all hon. members that what they say in their speeches ought to be relevant to the matter before the House. Obviously, there is some latitude in context there and when questions are asked sometimes it relates to the context rather than the bill itself. However, as a general rule I would remind all hon. colleagues to stick to the matter before the House.

If the hon. parliamentary secretary could quickly put his question.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I hope the hon. member will apologize to those Canadians who might have a different opinion than he does.

Now that we have heard that both the NDP and the Liberals are supporting the bill, I would ask the member to reflect on this. We have had a broad level of consultation on it, have seen how many people across the country are supporting it and how important it is to industry, export and trade, which the opposition members do not support, including jobs and economic growth. In light of the fact they are supporting the bill, will they help us in passing it quickly?

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for giving me a chance to clarify this interesting position.

A member of the Liberal Party of Canada who blames the government for public transit problems has obviously forgotten that his party is the one that created those problems. Maybe their lobotomies caused some memory loss.

As for the government member's comments, he must understand that we support the bill because it will finally allow users, those who pay for this service, to obtain an essential service.

In 2013, it makes absolutely no sense that trains do not arrive on time, that there are not enough cars and that rail lines are in such a sorry state. If the Conservatives cannot understand that, what are they doing in power?

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question about CN.

My NDP colleague spent a few minutes strongly criticizing the privatization of CN. Is he in favour of re-nationalizing CN?

[Alain Giguère, NDP, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Speaker, that is hypocritical neo-liberal talk.

They privatize without any regulations or obligation and then when it is time to correct the situation, they have no recourse. Nationalization is not the problem. Regulation is the problem. You cannot sell a crown corporation like a fool without protecting the consumers.

That is what should have happened in 1995, but they failed to do that. They still do not understand that it was important to do that. They have their neo-liberal blinders on and think that everything must be sold. They are just like the Conservatives, but at least the Conservatives are candid enough to tell us to our faces. The Liberals are not.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to be able to rise and add to this debate on the third reading of Bill C-52.

Today is an important day in history, as it turns out, because this date in 1887 was the first day a train actually arrived in Vancouver. That train had a picture of Queen Victoria on the front of it, which I am sure the members opposite will be very glad of.

Our rail system has some problems, and those problems have been caused by years of neglect by governments with respect to the monopolistic position the rail companies are in vis-à-vis the rail shippers, the people who actually use the rail system. I will not go into the problems we have with the rail passenger system, which has suffered untold neglect by both the Liberals and the Conservatives.

In 1995, the Liberal government decided to sell CN, which was at the time one of Canada's biggest rail shipping companies. I am not going to answer a question from the members to my left about whether we are going to re-nationalize CN. That is not the point. The point is that when a public entity is given to the private sector, one must look at the consequences of that decision. If one of the consequences is to have created a virtual monopoly, then one needs to have put in regulatory controls to balance the playing field. That the Liberals did not do. I have heard from the member for Winnipeg North that the member for Wascana is a champion for the shippers, but from 1995 to 2006, his government was in power, and the Liberals did nothing to protect the rail shippers from their decision to privatize one of Canada's two large rail-freight operations. The shippers finally complained loudly and long enough that this Conservative government said that it would do something about it. That was in 2007.

Here we are in 2013, and I hear the parliamentary secretary and others saying to hurry up and pass this bill. We have been talking about this for seven years. Let us hurry up and have a bill to talk about. Finally we do, and it is flawed. That is one of the reasons I am here to talk about this bill today. It is not that we are not supporting it. We do sometimes have to hold our noses and support flawed legislation, because it is at least one step forward. However, we could have gone six or seven steps forward, and the Conservative government chose not to.

In 2008, as a result of a lot of pressure from the shippers, who said that they were being held hostage by the rail companies, there was a rail service review. That service review came up with a report in early 2011, before the current government was elected. In its platform, the Conservatives pledged to do something about it, but interestingly, even though the rail service review was in, it was not in the Speech from the Throne. There was no indication that this bill would be part of the legislative agenda of the current government. In fact, the Conservatives did not actually propose legislation. When the rail service review report was put in place, the Conservatives then tried mediation. They tried to talk it out between the parties and see if they could work it out. The problem is that talking does not work if one of the parties is so enormous that it absolutely controls the other.

Then the member for Trinity—Spadina put forward a private member's bill, Bill C-441, that would deal with all the steps of the problem. It would deal with the service level agreements, the price and a whole bunch of the issues the rail shippers had determined were their problems in dealing with this David and Goliath situation. All of a sudden, the Conservatives said, “Whoops, we forgot. We had better put a bill forward”, and Bill C-52 magically appeared.

The trouble is that Bill C-52 does not actually deal with some of the shippers' problems. It deals with one in particular, and really, that is all that has happened in this bill. It would deal with one of the shippers' problems, which is that they do not have the right to a service level agreement in their negotiations with the rail companies.That means that they do not have the right to negotiate, to firmly fix in their contracts with the rail companies, that, yes, a train will arrive on Saturday when their grain is ready to be shipped; yes, there will be 12 boxcars; yes, those boxcars will make it to Vancouver by two weeks from Saturday. Those are the kinds of things the shippers said they just cannot get.

Finally, we have a piece of legislation that would actually deal with that, in a roundabout way, by saying that if the shippers cannot work it out with the rail companies, then they would have the right to an arbitrated process. Therefore, the shippers would now have a right to an arbitrated process that would give them that service level review.

I am being reminded, Mr. Speaker, that I will be splitting my time with the member for Brossard—La Prairie.

Therefore, one piece of the puzzle would be solved. As a result, this party will be supporting the bill at third reading but wishes that it had gone further.

The shippers would now have the right, as a result of the bill, to an arbitrated service level agreement. However, that arbitration would come at a cost. The shippers themselves would have to pay for half the cost of that arbitration process.

The railroads have deep pockets. Paying for an arbitration process, for them, would be like a small flea on the back of an elephant. It would mean nothing to them. However, to the shippers, it may mean something. There would be no assistance from the government in the cost of this arbitration process. That is one problem.

The railways have a monopoly on price, as well, and price is not part of what could be arbitrated. The price is something that would be subject to negotiations only between the shippers themselves and the railroad. The railroads would not have to do anything about the price in this arbitration process. All they would have the right to talk about and all that could be arbitrated would be the service level agreements.

Railways have a habit of charging extra fees. Airlines have extra fees now. Passengers are charged for bags. Apparently some airlines charge passengers to use the overhead bins. There is one airline in Europe that is going to charge passengers to use the bathroom.

The railways do the same thing.The railways have the ability, as a part of the service level agreement, to set up fees, which the shippers will pay if their product is not ready on the day they suggest or if there is any other problem the railways might consider the fault of the shippers. The shippers do not have any reciprocal rights.

That is something else that is missing from the bill. The shippers cannot charge the railways a fee if they are late. In fact, the government has said that if the railways break these agreements, the shippers' only recourse is to go to the courts for recompense from the railway companies.

Again, we are dealing with a David and Goliath in the courts. We now have the situation where small wheat farmers in central Alberta, who are barely making ends meet with their wheat farms because of the demise of the Wheat Board, are actually going to have to sue the rail companies, at their own expense, because the rail companies failed to meet their arbitrated service level agreements. That is yet another penalty for these poor shippers.

The shippers have told the government, and we in the NDP agree, that a mechanism by which the shippers could arbitrate a penalty regimen back to the shippers would be appreciated so that if the railways break the service level agreement, the shippers would know what they were going to get and would not have to go to court. That is done all the time in labour arbitrations and labour negotiations.

The government claims that it is not going to do it here. It is saying that the shippers should speak to the courts.

In closing, I would like to say that we in the NDP will, in fact, be supporting the bill. However, there is a lot more the bill could have done, but every single one of the amendments we proposed was rejected by the government at committee without, really, a whole lot of thought.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and to the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, I have been listening intently to the last number of interventions. What I think is not understood well by the opposition is the incredible value the railways provide in Canada. In fact, it is a North American industry. From any perspective, the freight railways in North America are the finest in the world. They support trade, certainly international trade and ports, and businesses.

In fact, the previous speaker spoke about wheat. There were record grain shipments just a couple of years ago, and those numbers continue to climb, as a matter of fact. Goods leaving Canada through our ports and coming into Canada through our ports are shipped by the railways. This is an incredible strength for Canada.

I think what the government has sought to do is to balance the rights of the shippers and the railways and to provide a mechanism whereby we can come to agreements that actually work for shippers and that support industries and support communities.

It is a good bill. The member should support it.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in fact, we have said that we will support it. We are disappointed that it does not go far enough.

While the rail companies do provide a service in Canada, the shippers have said that the service has not been a fair marketplace. While we are correcting part of that unfair marketplace, we are not dealing with the whole problem. For example, soybeans from Argentina enjoy a competitive advantage in markets such as Japan and China, because they are delivered faster and more punctually than soybeans from Canada, despite the fact that the total distance covered is significantly shorter for products from Canada. Part of that problem is the ability of the rail companies to meet a service level agreement. That is part of what the bill does.

However, we on this side of the House, who actually believe in fairer and freer trade, believe that we should be in a position to compete with countries like Argentina and not allow them to overrun us.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for York South—Weston for his presentation. I see that the official opposition is prepared to support the bill, recognizing that there are so many lost opportunities.

Recently the railway industry in our country picked four pillars as its priorities going forward. One of those is sustainability, particularly with respect to reduced greenhouse gases and the fact that shipping goods by rail is much better for climate action than shipping by transport trailer and truck. I wonder if the hon. member has any thoughts on what opportunities we have missed in this piece of legislation to also recognize the greenhouse gas benefits of shipping goods by rail.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, one of the government's reactions to comments about the pricing portion of the bill was to suggest that shippers have another alternative. Many of them, but not all of them, have trucks as an alternative. Well, trucks consume considerably more fossil fuel and have a larger environmental footprint. As a result, we should be encouraging the use of rail rather than discouraging it through inaction on the part of the government.

[Hélène LeBlanc, NDP, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his speech. In the House of Commons he often speaks to transport-related issues.

We all know that freight and passenger transport is vital to Canada. In fact, that is what Canada was built on and what continues to contribute to Canada's economic prosperity.

The hon. member talked about how other countries have managed to balance the interests of the shippers, those who use the railway for moving freight and people. I would like him to elaborate on that.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, certainly Canada is a laggard when it comes to the creation of rail systems across our great land. We are one of the last countries to adopt good rail transportation strategies. We have no public transportation strategy by the government. We have no support from the federal government for public transportation in a concerted and disciplined way. As a result, we, as Canadians, are suffering from a lack of good public transit infrastructure and a lack of electric public transit, which in fact deals with greenhouse gas problems and helps the environment. We in Canada should be doing way more than we already are.