Mr. Chair, I'd like to speak in favour of the amendment proposed by my colleague, Mr. Jean. I wouldn't want to demean his intentions here. I believe the suggestion that his motion for an amendment is a red herring is wrong.
By the way, I do have confidence in the chair, and I believe all the members on this side of the table do have confidence in you, Mr. Chair. You've done an excellent job in the past, and I know you'll continue to serve us well.
As one of the three MPs from British Columbia, I, along with them, feel perhaps the most direct heat from the derailments that have occurred in British Columbia. Mr. Bell has brought this issue forward in the past. I've spoken about the importance of rail safety and that we need to get to the bottom of this.
I want to make it very clear that on this side of the table we take this issue very seriously. In fact the minister issued what is relatively uncommon, which is a directive to CN to present the government with a revised operational and safety plan. After much ado, the safety plan was submitted. It was found to be unacceptable by the minister. It was referred back to CN. CN then had to go back to the drawing boards and improve on it. It's not like the minister doesn't take this issue seriously.
I can tell you, I for one consider this to be one of the most important issues we're going to grapple with here at this committee. Having said that, though, I'm also keenly aware of the fact that the most recent disruption in rail service in my community alone caused a great deal of angst.
I can give you many examples, one being the poultry and dairy industries that rely on feed. We have three or four feed mills in our community, big ones, because we are the number one farm gate community in British Columbia. So we rely on those feed mills to keep our agricultural industry going. They were within one or two days of being out of feed because the product that comes into the feed mills that's required to make feed just wasn't available.
What was even worse is that even though this product had been ordered by those feed mills, the brokers who deliver the stuff were shopping the stuff around, finding the highest bidder for it. So even though you were the one who ordered it, you may not have got it because someone else bid higher. Those are the problems we're facing, not only in Abbotsford, but right across the country, and that's just in the area of agriculture. So for me it's critical that we get a resolution to this rail dispute.
Now, there was a suggestion that somehow this back-to-work legislation that our government has introduced and will be proceeding with is going to solve that problem. That doesn't deal with negotiations. If we have back-to-work legislation, labour negotiations continue, because there's no contract or collective agreement that's been negotiated at that time. So you need to continue with that.
I want to make sure that as we go through our deliberations here and hear the testimony of witnesses, nothing will occur at this committee that will in any way jeopardize the process of those negotiations. As four Conservative members of this committee, we are, I think, in a way using an olive branch to say that we agree that the testimony of these witnesses is important, but let's make sure that the chair has very clear guidelines that we want to avoid anything that's going to impede the ongoing labour negotiations.
If we can achieve that, I think we're going to have a harmonized approach to this whole safety issue. I don't want to in any way diminish the importance of that issue. I don't want that message to get out there, because for me as a British Columbian, it's very important.