Thank you, Chair Schiefke. It's nice to see you again. It has been a while.
I am joined today by Kara Edwards, our director of transportation.
Canada's chemistry industry is the third-largest manufacturing sector in the country and the second-largest rail shipper. Every day, we ship 550 railcars—that's over 4,000 cars a week—and we do that 52 weeks a year. Our industry continues to be robust globally and, in the last couple of years, we're finally seeing some signs that Canada might participate in the surge of new investments taking place in the sector.
Right now, we're tracking over 10 global-scale chemistry investments in Alberta and Quebec. Each and every one of those is premised as net-zero carbon from day one, and each and every one of those is intended to serve not only Canadian markets, but primarily global markets.
Here's the thing: We have challenges already. We have critical transportation infrastructure that is deeply constrained at existing volumes, so we have to call on you, as the committee and as the government, to take intentional and meaningful steps to grow our transportation infrastructure to ensure that these new products that the world needs so much—and that Canada will benefit from producing—can reach their intended customers.
We also have to take a longer-term perspective from time to time. Canada has an objective of having 100 million people by the end of the century, which is 500,000 new Canadians a year. I think of that number all the time: 100 million people. The rail and transportation infrastructure we have today is already constrained, so you have an enormous job ahead of you to convince government and Canadians of what needs to be done to fundamentally allow our critical infrastructure to grow to meet the needs of this growing economy.
Our supply chain and transportation network is critical to achieving those objectives, both for our industry and for the economy across the nation. The system has to be safe, it has to be resilient, it has to be competitive and, my goodness, most important of all, it has to be much more reliable than it is today. That's not currently the case.
We poll our members regularly about their transportation needs and experiences. Today, 76% of our members—again, we're the third-largest sector in the country—note that their operations have been negatively impacted by the various supply chain disruptions over the last 24 months. That's a big number. I'll add another piece, since I talk about this often: 55% of our members have told us that they've lost sales in Canada and abroad due to the disruptions in the rail transportation service.
You've heard this already, as folks have talked about it, but we definitely need to make sure the national trade corridors funding gets where it's intended to go and grows commensurate with the needs of the growing population and economy. It's very important to help improve the resiliency of our rail transportation network in particular.
We have several other recommendations in our submission. In the interest of time, I'll leave those for now, but I do want to talk about a couple of them very briefly.
Over the last decade, we have seen severe rail network disruptions on a nearly annual basis, whether they're work stoppages, blockades, lockouts or weather events. They're too numerous to mention. That even includes actual strikes—and remember, in leading up to a strike, an industry like ours will be blockaded. You will not be allowed to ship. You'll be embargoed. You will not even be able to put the cars on the rails if you think a strike or lockout is coming, because some of these goods are dangerous and can't just sit on a siding somewhere.
Moreover, at the end of a disruption, at the end of a strike, it can take weeks to return the system to normal fluidity. These disruptions are important. They cost billions in lost sales and have tarnished our reputation as a reliable supplier.
The most important recommendation we would make to you is to look at finding a way to ensure that we can avoid rail labour disputes. Every week we're disrupted means $532 million in delayed or missed sales. I'll point out that in the United States, they have not had such a disruption for a hundred years. Their Railway Labor Act ensures better outcomes for everyone. We would encourage this committee to look very carefully at that experience in the U.S.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, for this opportunity. We look forward to your questions on our many other recommendations.