Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you to the committee for allowing me to come here tonight to speak to you.
My name is John Corey. I'm the president of the Freight Management Association of Canada, as well as the chair of the Coalition of Rail Shippers. The Freight Management Association advocates on behalf of freight purchasers: rail, marine, air and trucking. The FMA has been in business since 1916.
The Coalition of Rail Shippers represents various shipping associations that, combined, constitute about 75% of the Canadian revenue of CN and CPKC, with more than 100 member companies from all major industries in Canada, including agriculture, agribusiness, forest products, mining, fertilizer, chemicals, manufacturing and retailing.
As we are all aware, we've just come through a very tough three years, and shippers were very pleased to see that, in January of 2022, Minister Alghabra struck a national supply chain task force. The task force produced a final report in October of 2022. Some of the recommendations in that report actually made it into the recent budget.
There were five main ones, including one to establish a supply chain office to oversee the supply chain and to have better co-operation between Transport Canada and Stats Canada in developing transportation supply chain data. Also, the minister is being provided the authority to compel data sharing by shippers accessing federally regulated transportation services. As well, there's a temporary extension of interswitching on a pilot basis, and there's a review of the Shipping Conferences Exemption Act.
Of the items above, three are of main concern to shippers.
First, the ability of the minister to compel shippers to provide confidential data without any stated parameters is worrisome to shippers. Second, a review of SCEA, the Shipping Conferences Exemption Act, is long overdue, since Canadian shippers currently have no ability to complain about poor service and high rates charged by ocean carriers. Third, the extended interswitching to increase competition in the rail sector is good, but the limited time frame and the restriction to only part of the country are problematic.
I'll say just a few more words about extended interswitching. This is a mechanism that shippers can use to level the playing field when dealing with the monopoly railroads. The railways obviously have a power imbalance, and they use it extensively to control shippers' choices of transportation. We think that needs to be addressed. Hopefully, the budget will do that when regulations are brought out.
Thank you.