It would be hard for me to find a solution for CN, but I can give you a few ideas. I know that currently, in Europe, there is a pneumatic system to dampen the noise when trains are assembled. Here, they still do it the old way, and the engines hit the rail cars.
Also, procedures have changed in the shunting yards, which is why they are noisier. Before 1998, they proceeded manually. The engineer drove the locomotive, with a spotter standing behind the rail car. He would tell the engineer to slowdown, for example, and it was all done quietly. But that is not how they do it now. The shunting operations are remote, and a control lever is used. There is nobody driving the locomotive, which is why the vehicles bump into one another. In some areas, at night, noise can be as loud as 90 decibels, which, as you can well imagine, seriously disrupts the sleep of those living adjacent to these yards.
There are ways around this, such as, for example, using pneumatic technology. In Japan, trains are assembled in buildings. I think that we could look to countries that are older than Canada which have managed to make the areas surrounding their shunting yards a lot quieter.
I think that CN must have already done some research and development in these areas. I am not a railway professional, but I speak on behalf of citizens who have had enough. I am told that countries like Japan, and Holland in Europe, have found marvellous solutions that could be applied here. I think they even have underground shunting yards. We are not trying to tell CN what to do, but we know that something can be done to improve the way in which they operate their shunting yards, particularly with respect to the remote operations. As I explained earlier, the use of the control lever causes the metal to hit metal in the middle of the night.
Any individual citizen who would dare to make the same amount of noise would be thrown in jail, because he would be breaking the law. Yet, a company is allowed to get away with it. I think that Bill C-11 needs more teeth, in order to put an end to a problem that is widespread in Canada. We don't want to weaken the railway industry: however, its progress must not be at the expense of our citizens.