Thank you, Mr. Miller and members of the committee.
I'm the president of the Canadian Fertilizer Institute. With me today is Ian MacKay, our transportation legal counsel.
CFI represents the basic manufacturers of nitrogen, phosphate, potash, and sulphur fertilizers in Canada. Our members produce over 25 million metric tonnes of fertilizer annually. We export over 75% of this production to the United States and offshore to over 60 countries.
We are a resource-based industry heavily dependent on the railways to move our goods to domestic and offshore markets. Our ultimate customers are farmers. Delivering fertilizer products to them in a timely and effective manner is critical to the world's food supply.
I am pleased to see my colleagues from the railways here today. We have a partnership, one that is critical to the success of fertilizer companies and to the success of the railways.
Our growth in exports offshore and to the U.S. depends on our members' competitiveness. Our companies are investing in Canada's economic growth, with some $15 billion in potash expansions and about $3 billion to date in nitrogen fertilizer expansion. These investments will require the railways to invest in new rail infrastructure and stronger commitments to their customers.
Our member companies have invested in their transportation partnerships with the railways. One of our member companies has 5,500 railcars. It's the second largest railcar fleet in North America. Our other members have invested in tens of thousands of railcar long-term leases to move their potash and nitrogen fertilizers to the United States.
We are participating in research to build a new and safer rail tank car for the transportation of anhydrous ammonia. Our companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build new port facilities in Vancouver and on proposals for Prince Rupert. At our manufacturing plants and mines, CFI members have built sophisticated load-out facilities with the capacity to load 80 to 140 railcars at a time. That's a train two and a half miles long.
The railways have not always met their service commitments, and it's not always just due to bad weather. While there have been significant improvements in service since the problems we experienced in 2007 and 2008, we need to recognize that recent capacity constraints have not been there due to the economic slowdown. What happens when the economy recovers to full level?
Our industry is investing in dramatic growth. Another 10 million to 15 million tonnes of potash and nitrogen fertilizer will need to be moved to our customers, and virtually 100% of this new product will need to be exported by rail.
Today, our members require sophisticated commercial service terms and agreements to meet their individual business needs. Specifically, they need to negotiate new railway commitments on the service obligations, over what I would categorize as the “generic”: a one-size-fits-all provision of adequate and suitable service as currently set out in the Canada Transportation Act. Today, generic, simply stated, will not work.
CFI is encouraged by Bill C-52, the Fair Rail Freight Service Act. We commend the government for bringing forward this important piece of legislation. We at CFI view this as a crucial step towards a better commercial balance between the railways and their freight customers.
That said, CFI has found areas in the bill that give us some cause for concern. The backstop requiring railways to commercially negotiate and deliver on service commitments with their customers, and enabling arbitrators to establish those agreements if negotiations fail to do so, is provided to some extent in Bill C-52, but it is incomplete. We can strengthen the backstop by ensuring that rail customers can ask for service agreements backstopped by commercial dispute resolution provisions.
Our members believe that railway service problems should be resolved by commercial processes. CFI has been a leading advocate of commercial dispute resolution since the beginning, since the federal debate regarding railway service started around 2006.
We were the first to develop and present a timely, effective, low-cost mediation and arbitration process to the rail freight service review panel. CFI supports commercial negotiations backstopped by mediation and arbitration. This panel cited CFI's efforts in their final report. We are pleased that the arbitration process contained in the bill mirrors many aspects of CFI's proposals.
The CFI supports all of the recommendations for changes made by the CRS earlier this week. However, today I want to emphasize two of the six recommendations that are of particular concern to the fertilizer industry.
We start with operational terms in the CRS document. This is known as recommended amendment number two. The scope of the service agreements should be extended beyond operational terms to cover all aspects of the commercial relationship between a railway and a customer. Limiting service agreements to operational terms excludes from consideration by the arbitrator a number of important terms and conditions that one routinely sees in commercial agreements. This makes little sense in practical terms and will result in shippers only being able to arbitrate some of the issues they might otherwise choose to negotiate on. The separation of operational terms from non-operational terms does not exist in commercial agreements, so we propose to the committee that the legislation be amended to strike the word “operational” from operational terms. This will allow the arbitrator to include clauses such as force majeure, dispute resolution, and other standard contractual terms found in commercial agreements.
Secondly, the bill needs to make it clear that service agreements may include dispute resolution terms to deal with service failures. This is CRS's recommended amendment number three. Shippers do not wish to undertake costly litigation to deal with a service failure or to wait for the CTA to conduct hearings. In our view, the most effective way to deal with service problems that arise after an agreement is established between a railway and their customer is under dispute resolution terms proposed by the parties themselves and settled by the arbitrator if need be. As presently drafted, the bill would not allow the arbitrator to include dispute resolution terms, meaning the bill is only treating half of the ailment.
In conclusion, the CFI notes that in Minister Lebel's testimony before this committee on February 12, service disputes relating to the Canadian portion of cross-border shipments will be subjected to arbitration under Bill C-52. Almost 50% of the fertilizer manufactured by our members is shipped to the United States. The transportation service challenges and the service issues that our members face on our exports on cross-border rail movements are the same as those faced on traffic movements within Canada domestically or to ports of export in Vancouver. Our policy and regulatory authorities need to work closely with their U.S. counterparts in an effort to establish and harmonize a commercial dispute resolution model that addresses the total shipment on cross-border moves.
It is imperative that this legislation support the new investment our industry is making in the growth, jobs, and future prosperity of our country.
Thank you for your attention, and I look forward to your questions.