Thank you, Mr. McGuinty.
There is shared liability in the sense of the parties being each individually responsible for the parts of the operation under which they have care and control. There is shared liability in the concept that our member companies are paying substantially higher freight rates for TIH products. We've done an analysis that would show that Canadian shippers of anhydrous ammonia fertilizers are paying a $55-million premium per year on our freight rates. This compares to the total insurance premium of the class I railroads in all of North America of $150 million to $200 million.
Third, the challenge with your proposal is that the railways have already purchased all of the third-party liability insurance that's available in the world. One of our member companies had Marsh and McLennan do an assessment of the ability of a producer of ammonia to obtain third-party liability insurance. First of all, the insurance company wasn't prepared to issue insurance to a producing company for the operations over which they had no care and control. Second, the pool had already been purchased by the railways. There's a lack of capacity in the insurance system to provide more than $1.2 billion to $1.5 billion in third-party liability insurance pools.