Transport Committee on Feb. 7th, 2023

[Olivier Chouc]

I can't really speak to that specific question, but I can assure you that the way our communication went, it was clear that the minister was kept informed by his staff, or at least that's what we were told. We felt confident that the information we were bringing would find its way where it belonged, ultimately.

[Annie Koutrakis, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

How much money was this disruption costing CN on a daily basis? I mean, regardless of what the minister or Transport Canada told you, or how this was impacting Via passenger service, it's not as if you lacked incentive to restore normal service as soon as possible. Would you agree with that statement?

[Olivier Chouc]

Absolutely.

First and foremost, we are committed and incented to respond, especially when passengers are stranded on the line like this. We don't need anything more to motivate our actions.

You're absolutely correct. Restoring...is what we do for a living. We move trains. We have a natural incentive to do this as expediently as possible.

[Annie Koutrakis, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

When CN experiences multiple problems across its rail network in the same period of time, how well equipped is it to deal with them?

I would imagine that resources can be finite at times. What I'm specifically looking for is how you decide which problems to prioritize resolving first.

[Olivier Chouc]

Martin, do you want to jump in?

[Martin Guimond]

In terms of resources, you need to understand that CN is split by region, by subdivision and then by territory. Every territory has access to some of the resources that we have.

It's important to understand that when we talk about our employees, we're well equipped to answer to multiple incidents at the same time. When you start working at the railroad...there's a culture within our company. Our employees know that they're always a phone call away. It's not because they're on their day off, on their weekend, or in this case, it's not because it was a holiday.

People understand that they can be called at any time. All of our employees understand that. It's a part of the reality of working in the industry and they're pretty proud of interacting quickly to restore the network.

We're well equipped in terms of resources and our employees.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Ms. Koutrakis.

That concludes the line of questioning for today. In fact, it concludes the witness testimony for our study on air passenger protection regulation.

I would like to thank our witnesses from Canadian National for joining us today.

With that, I will suspend the meeting for 10 minutes as we move in camera.

Thank you.

[Proceedings continue in camera]