I want to ask one question, and you can you provide information....
What happened to the dynamic brakes that were in B.C.? Where did those engines go? How many of the engines that you have in B.C. right now have dynamic braking? That's technical information, and I'd appreciate getting it, because B.C. has unusual geography, as I understand it.
Mr. Marshall, you've referenced perception several times. I spent a number of years in a major Canadian corporation at an executive level. The theme we dealt with was that perception is reality. Within our company we would hear things, and I'd have managers saying it wasn't so and I'd tell them that's what we're hearing in complaints from our customers, so as far as they're concerned, it is so, and therefore it is so; it affects our business.
What I'm interested in, Mr. Creel, is that you were working for a company in Michigan when there was a head-on collision. If that's the head-on collision I've heard of, I understand that the fault in it was attributed to fatigue of the crew. In fact, the crew that was assigned--it may not have been yours, but another one--was theoretically a fresh crew. I'm curious about the issue of fatigue. It was brought to us earlier that you work 12 hours and you can be called back very quickly. There isn't an adequate rest period between times, whether you're at your home station or away. I would appreciate getting an understanding of that.
Finally, I'll go back to a point raised by Mr. Watson and some others. Mr. Fast questioned this as well, and others on my side have asked the question. It is the concern we had from Mr. Rhodes. We requested these people to come as witnesses, you need to know. We went out looking for people. We saw, obviously, stories that appeared in the media and we contacted these people. I don't think they were formally summoned, for want of a better term, but they were invited, and if they hadn't come, we could have summoned them.
He said:
I don't think it's right when a company can fire you for what they call “conduct unbecoming of an employee”. When you're not at work and you speak out and try to say something is wrong, they fire you because of that and they call it, in their generic terminology, “conduct unbecoming of a CN employee”.
Do you consider that someone who comes and tells us there are problems here is guilty of conduct unbecoming of a CN employee? Would someone like Mr. Rhodes or Mr. Holliday, for example, run the risk of being fired for appearing before this committee?