Evidence of meeting #62 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was customers.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Vice-President, Government Affairs, Law and Risk Management, Canadian Pacific Railway
I can assure you we're working very hard with the cities to try to come to a solution because several municipalities are involved here, but the idea that we should just build more of these at-grade pedestrian crossings is of great concern to us.
Liberal
Vice-President, Government Affairs, Law and Risk Management, Canadian Pacific Railway
We will try, sir.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
Your time has expired, Mr. Coderre.
We'll now move to Mr. Poilievre for seven minutes.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
I has been alleged by a member of the opposition that “Around 80% of rail commitments between the rail companies and farmers and grain elevators are not fulfilled”. Is that an accurate statement?
General Manager, Service Delivery, Canadian National Railway Company
Evidence does not support that, no. Mike Murphy spoke to it. We had record grain spotting and unloads for 2012. Yes, we've been in a hard winter here these last couple of months, but I think Mr. Mongeau also presented the point that our spotting to the day of the week.... If you go back three years, the grain industry looked at car fulfillment on a weekly basis. When we implemented our scheduled grain plan, we were able to ratchet that to a new level of precision, which was to the day that we committed to. We've had great success with the scheduled grain plan where, as I said, have hit record spotting and unloads at the port.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
Since our government launched the rail freight service review panel has service improved?
General Manager, Service Delivery, Canadian National Railway Company
I'm going to speak for CN, and I would say absolutely. I hear that all the time when I go out and meet with our customers one-on-one. I'm going to put aside that I think we've had—as I think even Mr. Mongeau said—a tough couple of months with winter. All of our metrics in the last three years, whether it's our order fulfillment, our switch window compliance, or our grain spotting, have improved.
I'd just like to add that I participated in the rail freight service review and I participated in the Dinning facilitation panel, and they were real catalysts for change at CN. We took a step back from the great movement that we had hub to hub and we listened to the feedback that came from the customers about where we needed to improve in the way we interact with them on a day-to-day basis.
One of the key initiatives we have as part of our strategic agenda is called our Customer First program. It's a suite of initiatives involving eight different programs about how we interact with our customers on a day-to-day basis and how we can improve that process. There are all these touch points with customers that we're working to retool and simplify to make doing business with CN easier.
I'll just talk about two of them quickly. One is called Car Management Excellence. You've probably heard how important it is for many of our shippers to get their empty car supply. Car Management Excellence puts our car-management team directly in contact with customers on a weekly basis. They have weekly structured calls in which they discuss the performance for last week's car orders and what they see for the upcoming week. The dialogue is very much a two-way street, so if we see any changes to car supply, we talk to customers about that. Customers can also tell us, “I've had production problems” or “Something is wrong”, and it gives customers a much greater ability to participate in our day-to-day distribution so we get the best spotting of our fleet.
The second initiative is called First Mile—Last Mile. I think it came out very clearly through the rail freight service review that we are very good hub to hub, but when we got into the local serving yards, this is where we needed much more visibility in terms of how we deliver traffic to our customer facilities. So we've done two things under this. One is to look at our switch window performance. Did we show up at the time we said we would be there? The second thing, just quickly, is that we also have implemented a new program called iAdvise, wherein if we're not going to deliver the cars that we said we would, we send an automatic e-mail notification to customers.
So again, it's more innovation. We're much further ahead than we were three years ago.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
You say this process has improved customer service. Why is it that it took a process like this to impose customer service improvements? Should the companies not have been performing at their best without such external pressure?
General Manager, Service Delivery, Canadian National Railway Company
Process is one thing, but we also had to make system changes too.
If I think back three years ago, we did not have the visibility at the local level to give that kind of information. We're talking about 140,000 shipments a day. So as we recognized how important this was to our customers, we started to invest in the infrastructure and our IT system as well as training for our local yard operating people so that they recognized how important this was and so we could deliver that information in real time.
President and Chief Executing Officer, Cando Contracting Limited
I have just a short comment. I think for some of that, that's where the short lines come into play. I know, for example, at CP, we handle their intermodal yard in Toronto. I'm the one who said that for CN and CP, it's the same thing. For the long and heavy, they do very well, but in the yards, they have trouble. That's where our “closer to the customer” smaller company, I think, can come and help out with that. We've seen lots of successes in the last three or four years on that type of thing, with us running on their lines and stuff like that, whereas 15 years ago or 10 years ago, we'd never even heard of that.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
Sorry. Could you repeat that last part? You run on whose lines?
President and Chief Executing Officer, Cando Contracting Limited
Sometimes we run on their lines. We have to go out on their—
President and Chief Executing Officer, Cando Contracting Limited
CN's or CP's—for a mile or two to help service or to get cars or do whatever, and we've been able to negotiate terms for how we do that.
Once again, lots of times industry is paying us—CN and CP are not paying us—to help improve their transportation systems.
Vice-President, Government Affairs, Law and Risk Management, Canadian Pacific Railway
Thank you.
I was just going to add two quick points to what's been said, because it's an important question. I think they both relate to the notion that we have a complex supply chain, so it wasn't—and rail is the easiest piece of it to target and look at and try to poke into, because there's a lot more opportunity, but we have other players in the supply chain. I'm thinking of people like ports and terminals. Part of what happened over the last several years was an outreach there, and we've collaborated with them a lot more efficiently and together we've come up with improvements in terms of the supply chain. So it hasn't just been rail, but part of it was that relationship-building.
The other thing that happened, I think significantly, is that we're starting.... We've been making a plea for some time now to give us more visibility in terms of the traffic that you as a customer or groups of customers want to deliver to us. When you do that, watch our service improve. The two are inextricably linked.
Those two things I spoke about have started to happen over the last four or five years. I think they're a big reason why, collectively, the supply chain is performing better.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
Do you acknowledge that there are certain so-called captive markets in this country that do not have sufficient choice to give customers the bargaining power they would need in order to secure favourable terms?
President and Chief Executing Officer, Cando Contracting Limited
I'll just add a real quick one.
I came in from Winnipeg yesterday, in a two-hour drive. We don't have an airport, either, so we have to drive for two hours. That's not fair compared to the guys in Winnipeg, but that's life.
So I'm captive with no airport, either.
Conservative
President and Chief Executing Officer, Cando Contracting Limited
Oh, we have a highway, but in a blizzard and that, and the conditions to do it, how good is that compared to the railroad? We're all captive, to a certain degree, in the rural part of Canada to certain things.
These plants are put there because it's economical. The raw materials come from a certain area, so the plants are put in remote areas to produce things. It does pose a problem, but there are things in the railway industry to help them with that.
Conservative
