You're right. We're disappointed with it as well, and we did try very hard.
My colleague, Monsieur Patenaude, referred to the CDR process. That was the major effort that was made to try to address the request of the minister to find a commercially based approach to dealing with some of these issues as opposed to looking at a legislative solution. We believe we came very close. Unfortunately, toward the latter parts of those discussions, some of the shippers took a very, very firm position that notwithstanding that they had generally a fairly comfortable feeling about how the whole process would work in Canada, they wanted us to make a commitment to extend exactly the same process to our operations in the U.S.
That caused a major problem for us. The U.S. regulatory environment is very different from the Canadian one. The nature of how business gets done there is quite different. It is much more confrontational; it's much more litigious than it is in Canada; and, frankly, the implications of introducing that sort of process into the U.S. business environment were very substantial, not just for CN and CP but for a whole range of other railways and other business arrangements that exist south of the border.
We didn't say that we would never do the U.S. option, but we said, look, why don't we proceed with the Canadian option now and see what we can do to sort something out further down the road on the U.S. side?
It was just too big a pill to swallow all at once without really understanding what was going on in the U.S. system, and if you follow that system at all, sir, you'll probably be aware that there are a number of disputes and issues going on in Congress and other places south of the border. There's a very difficult and complex environment in the U.S. at the moment. That was the straw that unfortunately broke the camel's back, and we were not able to get there.
But let me reiterate that, frankly, we'd go to a meeting this afternoon to restart that process. We think it's the right way to go.