No, it wasn't an issue then.
In 2004, we reflected on it, mostly for GO Transit or for the transit authority in Montreal. To be able to do so, either the federal minister does so or the shipper can do so. A customer cannot, but I'll come back to that in a second.
More importantly, as you know, one of the criteria places the burden on the shipper—in our case, it's on CN—to demonstrate to the Canada Labour Relations Board that there's immediate danger to the safety or health of the public. There are no commercial criteria, so having the CLRB telling Alcan to shut down four smelters, including one in Kitimat and three in Quebec, because there's a railway strike in Canada is not a criterion to have that service determined as being essential. There's no demonstration that by not producing aluminum you're impacting the safety or health of the public. Obviously, that argument is hard to make in that case.
In the case of GO Transit, you have to demonstrate that by having a transit strike in downtown Toronto you are endangering public health, because effectively there will be so much gridlock in downtown Toronto that you cannot get an ambulance between an accident site and the hospital. That's pretty hard to make as a case. It goes to show that sometimes you have transit strikes in Toronto that are not tied to the railway.
To answer your question, we have not done so, but the better view of council is that the provisions provided for under section 87.4 are effectively restrictive and therefore cannot be used. Therefore, without prejudging the decision, it would most likely come to the view that no services of CN would be considered essential.
I submit to you that the reason is that there's no economic argument to reach such a conclusion. But if you make an economic argument that the impact of a railway strike in Canada will shut down the Port of Vancouver, the Port of Halifax, and any smelter, and that it would have a major impact on the automotive industry, then why do you think Parliament decided three times in a row—1974, 1986, and 1995—to enforce back-to-work legislation or at least arbitration? Parliament realized that there was an economic impact to the country of Canada.