No big deal.
I'll talk a little bit about the industry in Canada and our involvement in the rail freight service review process, which was extensive. I'll also briefly touch on our views on the act.
The association has over 350 members across Canada. Our membership covers the entire spectrum of the industry—producers; wholesalers; retailers; transporters; manufacturers of appliances, cylinders, and equipment; and associate members of applied services.
Annually the propane industry contributes about $10 billion a year in terms of impact on the Canadian economy. It generates over $900 million in taxes and royalties and employs more than 30,000 Canadians. More than half of the propane in Canada is shipped to the United States. Approximately 3.5 billion litres of propane are shipped using Canada's railways.
Just to give you a little bit of insight—this slide is not in your deck—one propane railcar holds about 30,000 gallons of propane. That's 113,700 litres, to be exact. It takes about three trucks to unload a railcar. Again, about 3.5 billion to 4 billion litres a year find their way onto Canada's railways.
We have railways here in Ontario, with unloading racks in Sarnia. A new rack was just put in there; Sarnia was most recently affected by some work. Primarily in Canada the propane finds its way out of western Canada, comes into Sarnia, is offloaded onto trucks or rail, and finds its way east. It also finds its way on CN's lines out of the west, straight into the Toronto area, and then goes east from there.
We've been an active participant in this process since 2008. Recently, towards the end, we had a representative on Mr. Dinning's rail freight service process facilitation group.
Our stated positions were these. We support commercially based legislation that contains the right to a level of service agreement as a way to address the market imbalance between the railways and the shipping community. We support the right to access an appeal mechanism if a service-level agreement cannot be achieved. And legislation should provide for the rights of shippers to levy penalties in the same way as against the shippers.
We believe this piece of legislation hits all three marks. It provides a very good balance between railways and shippers. We're not coming today with any changes at all. Finding a balance is very, very difficult.
It provides a tool to improve freight service in Canada and it makes the level of services more predictable. It respects the commercial nature of the relationship between the railway and the shipper. We have members that use level of service agreements and we have some that do not. It strikes a balance. It's their choice.
This legislation, in our view, is an option to be exercised if you think the need is there. For us, it contains all the mechanisms and measures we requested some years ago: a right to a level of service agreement, an arbitration process, and administrative monetary penalties.
Mr. Chairman, we'll leave it right there. We'll stop and allow time for others.
Thank you.