I can't remember how many people there were. There must have been about 80 or 90 people in this meeting, from both the government side and the shippers.
We came to a consensus in the dialogue with Transport Canada and a representative from the minister's staff as well. As a result of that, the government brought forth a proposal that was largely something that the shippers liked.
They did their consultation in series, I guess, rather than in parallel, with the railways. After they talked to the shippers, they discussed it with the railways, who were very unhappy with what they saw.
The CEOs of the two big railways organized a meeting with the minister, and they attempted to stall any further legislative action by offering a commercial dispute resolution process. That was kind of interesting, because the only time they'd ever done that, as far as I know, was when they were faced with legislation they didn't like. So that delayed the whole process through the summer of 2006.
Their first offer on CDR was only if the shippers decided that they would forgo any change in the legislation. The shippers basically said “No, that's not a condition we'll live with, but we're certainly prepared to talk to you about CDR.”
We spent the better part of the year talking to them about that, and as the minister said to you last week, I guess it was, those negotiations weren't successful.
CN and CP have subsequently put up their own versions of their commercial dispute resolution on their websites. To the best of my knowledge, no shipper has taken that up. I noticed that, in the discussion with the railways on Tuesday, they were very careful not to indicate whether any shipper had or hadn't taken them up on that.
Anyway, that went on. There was dialogue, and so on, with the minister's office and with Transport Canada. It finally led to Bill C-58, which, as I said earlier, didn't give the shipper community everything they wanted, but it's a good start, and we support the bill as written.