I will do my best, Madam Chair, to do it in five minutes.
Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee, for letting me testify here today on behalf of the BNSF Railway Company.
We are the largest private freight railroad in the world. We are headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, and are a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, but have been a part of—and the third—class 1 carriers in British Columbia and in Canada since we came to British Columbia in 1909. We serve several provinces in Canada, and it is a critically important part of our network and our business.
I'd like to say a bit about myself. I'm an executive vice-president with BNSF. In my prior lifetime, I was the chairman of the U.S. Surface Transportation Board, which is the equivalent of the Canadian Transportation Association. Before that, I was the chief counsel of the U.S. House transportation committee, which is this committee's counterpart in the United States House of Representatives. I've testified many times in the United States but never in Canada. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today to talk to you a little about our railroad.
We very much applaud you for looking at the importance of trade corridors and international trade. For our company, international trade is a critical part of what we do. We are the third class 1 in Canada. We provide the port of Vancouver with its critical three class 1 railroads serving the rest of North America.
We work great hand in hand with our counterparts in Canada—the Canadian National and the Canadian Pacific, which were here earlier. We find those to be fine companies and we enjoy working them. We also feel that, in addition to the service that they can provide, our company can provide an expanded network within the United States, which provides a competitive advantage for the port of Vancouver.
Our footprint is vast. We have 52,000 kilometres of tracks—so 33,000 miles. Of that, of course, only 38 kilometres is in British Columbia, but that allows us to connect to the rest of our network in 28 states and across the United States.
In our experience, the Canadian government's public policy support for trade and trade corridors is something that is a real competitive advantage here. We serve every major port on the Pacific and west coast of North America. We very much admire the public policy initiatives that you all have to recognize the importance of trade at a national and local level, with the private sector and communities working together to be able to mitigate the impact of trade and to be able to invest in corridors for trade. That is something that we appreciate having been a part of and is a real differentiator, in our experience, from the ports in the United States. This gives Canada a great advantage.
It's our goal to continue to serve here and to be able to be a part of the market. We've made investments in our line to be able to expand in the Vancouver area. We are committed to safely operating. We are committed to investing in our system. At our company we have made some of the largest capital investments that any freight railroad has ever made in their network. We think that shows in our unparalleled safety record, particularly in terms of equipment costs, derailments, the condition of our track and the condition of our network.
As I promised, Madam Chair, I would be brief and finish before my five minutes.
Thank you for the opportunity to be here. I look forward to answering questions from the members of the committee and from all of the stakeholders who are here. We very much want to continue to be a part of trade in Canada and international trade out of the Vancouver metropolitan area.
With that, thank you.