Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm very grateful to have this opportunity to speak about how Bill C-52 may have some unintended consequences that will affect my company and the community in which we operate.
I will start by saying first that while all men are created equal, all railways are not. That's especially true in the case of the Essex Terminal Railway Company. One hundred per cent of our revenue is from interswitching. It's from servicing the industries that are located on our line and taking those goods to and from the main-line carriers that we connect with. I believe that we are unique in that aspect. The CTA recognized that when they exempted us from the interswitching regulations due to the fact that 90% of our revenue is from interswitching operations.
We're unique in other ways. We operate totally within yard limits. We do not have main-line track. Our main track is only 19 kilometres in length. Although we don't handle crude oil, we do handle dangerous commodities in excess of 40,000 tonnes. Seventy per cent of those commodities travel only 4.4 kilometres on our railroad at speeds of 10 kilometres per hour or less during daylight hours, on very flat geography where there are no hills. We have an incredible safety record.
I have been with the company for 34 years. We have a very strong safety culture. Never in the 34 years has our insurer had to pay a claim due to damages to third party property or rail.
But because of Bill C-52, we will be forced to increase our insurance four times. That will come with very significant costs, and they are costs that we cannot pass on to our customers. We are operating in a very competitive environment in a very depressed local economy. We have the highest unemployment in Canada. We have lost 50% of our business in the last 10 years. We've lost that business because plants have closed. They've moved their operations to other areas where operating is more economical. Anything we do to increase the cost of our customers' business will undoubtedly result in lost business for them and lost jobs for the 850 or so people who work for the industries we serve.
I was glad to hear the minister say that the railway liability limits should be equal to the risk of the company. The risk of our operations obviously is not the same as that of MM and A. We operate at very slow speeds. As I said before, we have an impeccable safety culture.