Sir, in terms of the Halifax connection, we are a party to the agreement that was made between our two container terminal operators and CN Rail. That is a balanced agreement that recognizes there has to be reciprocal obligations on the parties involved. For example, when railcars are provided to the terminal, in order to strip off the export boxes and make those available for import, there has to be a reasonable and prescribed cycle to return those cars back to CN. There are all sorts of nuances and ways this can be slowed down or delayed, which then affects the railways' performance in terms of being able to supply that car inventory for its customers.
The other aspect we're very deeply involved in is the correct monitoring of the metrics. One of the biggest problems leading up to the federal rail review is different parties pointing their fingers at each other because they weren't necessarily using an agreed-upon set of metrics; they weren't arguing apples to apples.
One of the most important things we can do, and have done, is to make sure we agree exactly what we're measuring and that all the parties to the agreement concur with that. Then we have to set up an IT process where that data is collected, verified, and distributed to the parties that are signatories to the agreement to verify that these are in fact the correct metrics. There's no blame game or finger pointing: “Well, you're not measuring the correct thing”, or “You're not measuring the way we measure it.” That's as simple as agreeing, for example, on questions such as when the ship actually stops working, when you start the clock on the terminal time, when you start the clock on spotting the cars on the terminal, when the terminal releases the cars back to the railway, and when that clock starts for your metric.
That's a small example of the complexity and sophistication and agreements required, just on that rail terminal interface alone.
Thank you.