Yes.
You know, I did say that you have to take a closer look at the operations of CN, and that's why I indicated at the front that I think it would be appropriate if the committee were to invite CN in to talk about its operations.
That being said, with respect to the cars, we removed from flammable service those first ones, the DOT-111s, because they didn't have the continuous protection underneath, and I'm glad we did that. So now we have the new standard of car that we expect to be retrofitted to the CPC 1232s. Those are the cars that were involved in this incident. Currently we know that nine of them were ruptured—we don't know for sure, because the Transportation Safety Board has to do its analysis—so it does give us pause. That's why we continue to work on this new standard with the United States, which is a leap forward from what the 1232s are. We're very close to having an idea of what this new standard will be, because certainly industry wants to know what it will be. The means of containment are just one aspect though. I think, as well, operations have to be looked at.
The Transportation Safety Board, in the wake of Lac-Mégantic, gave immediate updates regarding what it felt was going to be needed in terms of the incident and the investigation, and we will wait to see what it says with respect to this derailment. I can tell you that officials have already asked CN for its mitigation plan with respect to moving forward, and it is working out those details right now to ensure that it is looking at all aspects of its operations as well.
I think the best thing I can say with respect to it is that there is a role for operations that are mitigated, and there is a role for making sure that the means of containment are as safe as possible. We are working to set a very strong timeline on the phasing out of the worst of these cars. Three years to move them out as CN retrofits is pretty fast, and, of course, it is taking a look at this new tank car standard as well.
We're going to continue to work on this. In the meantime, CN has to ensure that it's operating as safely as possible, and that it understands what happened in this particular incident, and it has to report on that to Transport Canada. From there we'll take further action if necessary.