Mr. Speaker, to have a successful export policy, and for Canada to have a good reputation around the world as being a country that knows how to export, we have to deliver products on time. We cannot say that we will send a number of containers of logs or tonnes of grain, but then have the containers not show up on time. Therefore, it is critically important for our export market to have a good transportation system.
Unfortunately, a fundamental weakness with Bill C-52 is with the outline of the arbitration process, which could not only be too expensive for some shippers, but the option of arbitration is only available when contract negotiations fail and not in the case of violations to existing service level agreements.
For example, if CN promised a certain performance standard through the service agreement and violated that service agreement, that should automatically trigger arbitration. However, in this case, the bill does not say that. The bill says that one can only go into the arbitration process when the contract negotiation fails, which could take a long time, could be very costly and it is not exactly what the shippers want.