Thank you, and I thank you for inviting us today.
It's a great question.
If I came across as terse or serious in my speech, I wanted to meet the time limit, not to disrespect the committee.
We've tried everything. I used to be a city councillor in my municipality, actually, for 10 years. When I was on council we met with members of Parliament and we met with CN; we tried every means possible via that route. I have been off council for probably about 10 years now.
We have tried two mediation attempts. We've tried the CTA. You call the CN police and they're very respectful. I've never met a rude police officer yet, and basically you understand they have very little control over the operations in the yard. Sometimes a phone call can fix it.
Thus far, the most productive means of resolution has been Chair Badawey. Chair Badawey has shown leadership I've never seen before. No disrespect to any of you, but one phone call from him has meant that shunting stopped within 10 minutes. That meant that the idling stopped within 10 minutes, but this wasn't consistent.
What's happened is that sometimes it works, but sometimes it doesn't. You have to understand, I am also texting at one o'clock in the morning, or at three o'clock in the morning, whenever, and he gets it. The proof is that Chair Badawey gets it, but those calls go unanswered now. When the complaints go in, it seems to have fallen on deaf ears.
I want to point to last night, in particular. The argument has always been, in Thorold, move the shunting north. There is so much barren wasteland. It's unuseable land that will not impact anybody. I want to point out that this yard was expanded after the city requested that it be relocated, so it's not like an after the fact. We requested that they relocate it, and then I think they went and dumped $100,000—Mayor Ugulini will have to look it up—and they now say, we can't afford to move it.
I'm sorry, but with $3.2 billion in profits, this is like us buying a Kitkat at the Avondale. This is about being a good corporate citizen.
Our soldiers did not die at Vimy Ridge for this conversation to have to happen today. It's embarrassing.