First of all, as I said earlier, there's no comparison between us and even other short lines, let alone a comparison between Essex Terminal Railway and main-line carriers. We operate under totally different circumstances, and our risk is entirely different. The fact that in 34 years our insurers have not paid one claim says something about the risk associated with our business, yet suddenly we'll be forced to increase our insurance coverage from $25 million to $100 million simply because we carry more than 40,000 tonnes of dangerous goods. We carry those goods about four kilometres during daylight hours at very slow speeds. The cost of that insurance will be somewhere between $75,000 and $100,000.
As the minister alluded to earlier, we can't pass that through to our customers, unlike the main-line carriers, so we have to find a way to deal with those costs. We are operating under very depressed conditions. We've lost half of our customer base. For us to try to absorb that cost at the volumes that we're doing right now is just impossible. We wouldn't be viable.
How do we deal with this? Does it cost jobs? Do we put fewer ties in every year? Where do we find the money to pay for this? Also, why do we have to? We've proven that we have sufficient insurance to cover the risk of our operation.