Thank you, Mr. Chair.
In representing the short-line industry in this great country of ours, certainly everybody in this room knows--and I've heard all your comments about Canadian National and Canadian Pacific--there are 45 short-line operators out there who, for the most part, are mom-and-pop operators--15 employees.
In my own case, I have 33 employees, and we operate 20 minutes south of Parliament Hill.
We are dependent on the health of our shippers. We are dependent on CN and CP because we can only move traffic x number of miles. Some short lines are 20 miles. In our case, we operate on approximately 225 miles.
In Atlantic Canada there certainly is economic activity going on. That port of Belledune could be a real winner for all of us if it ever gets developed. But in terms of the rest of the country, short lines play an integral part in moving traffic. Somewhere between 25% and 30% of all traffic handled by the class 1 railways--traffic that originates or is destined--is on a short-line railway.
But we are small. People don't think we're railways. We have the same big locomotives. We have the same tracks to maintain as the class 1 railways do, but we're mom-and-pop; we're cornerstore operators.