According to the act, currently there is no notification required. The bill was proposing that the railway be required to provide notification, and that the notification stay up for 60 days. In all the consultations we had with shippers, that was the complaint we heard the most, that there wasn't any notification.
According to the amendment that was introduced, we'd be doing two things. The agency would have to be notified, and the period of time for the notice to be up would go from 60 days to 120 days. Also, as Mr. Fraser said, if a shipper had concerns, the amendment would allow a shipper to go to the agency and ask it to do a service review to determine if they would need to keep an interchange. The act also reduces the length of time required for a service level decision by the agency from 120 days down to 90 days, so that the agency would have time to do that service review.
If we wanted a process where every time a railway decided to discontinue an interchange they could do so, we would have to create a whole new system for how that would apply according to legislation, because right now there's no process to account for that. The proposed amendment would require even more subamendments to make sure we have a process that's transparent and works. We believe, however, that with the amendments, any shipper who has an interest in keeping an interchange open will have time to go to the agency and ask the agency to make a decision to keep it open.
