Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord. I also want to thank my colleague from Trinity—Spadina for her work as our transportation critic, for her tireless work with a community that is invested in seeing improvements to the Transportation Act and for her efforts to improve the bill.
Bill C-52 would amend the Canada Transportation Act. It is a bill that is long overdue.
Rail transportation is the backbone of the Canadian economy. It is in the DNA of our history, and it is something that touches a huge part of our economy. More than 70% of all surface goods in Canada are shipped by rail. We are a vast country and a country that is open to the world. It is very export oriented, and having good transportation networks is absolutely fundamental.
Many of us are familiar with the railway industry. I know that in my family, my grandfather, my husband and my mother all worked in the railway sector. It is part of our country, part of our history and part of our current economy. It touches so many Canadians.
What we have been finding through the study on the bill and leading up to the bill is that 80% of service commitments for agricultural rail customers, which means that they deal with food, feed and farm materials, are not met by the railway companies. There are serious delays, insufficient numbers of rail cars, et cetera. A rail freight service review found that 80% of shippers were not satisfied with the service they received.
What is the root of the problem? One would think that after a couple of centuries, we would be getting our rail service right, but sometimes when governments rush to fix one problem, they create other problems. Sometimes when governments have ideological blinders on, they are wilfully blind to the problems they are creating.
In 1995, the Liberals were in a rush to show that they were jumping on board the privatization bandwagon. They wanted to prove to the world that they could privatize with the best of them. One of the companies they rushed to privatize was CN. They privatized the company, CN. They privatized the tracks. What they forgot to do was put in any safeguards for Canadians, safeguards for shippers and safeguards for our passenger rail service in terms of access to the railway tracks. They basically turned it over to the private sector.
CN is doing very well. It made a profit of $2.7 billion. Bravo. It is doing well. It was just announced this week that the CEO made a salary of $48 million. I am sure he worked hard for every single penny of it.
The trouble is that these ideological decisions create problems. It was the Liberals in 1995 that unleashed this, and frankly, neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives after them, for almost 20 years, have done anything to fix the problems until this bill. It is with insufficient measures that they are trying to address the problems.
Let me say up front that this is a bill we will be supporting at report stage and third reading, but it is a weak bill. It is a bill that does not do the job Canadians really need it to do.
The bill would give rail freight customers or shippers the right to service agreements with rail companies. It is shocking that they have not had this before now, especially with the two majors, CN and CP. It also puts in place an arbitration process, led by the Canadian Transportation Agency, in cases of failed negotiations or where there are penalties for violating the results of arbitration.
This is positive. Canadians deserve fair and reliable freight services. This is obvious and logical.
Shippers pay good money, but they need a stronger position vis-à-vis the two main companies that form a duopoly. Together they have a kind of two-party monopoly. Their power is only partially addressed by Bill C-52.
There were recommendations by the shipping community at the committee stage that were sensible, practical and modest, yet the Conservatives ruled them out of hand with no serious consideration.
As the official opposition finance critic, I certainly know this. With every budget bill we have massive omnibus budget bills. We have been dealing with another one this week, Bill C-60, which again, is an amalgamation of all kinds of changes to different laws, many that have nothing to do with finance and budgets. We have seen that they never accept one amendment to any of their budget implementation legislation. Experts in their fields have testified at the finance committee that the government will have problems if it bullies ahead with certain changes, such as getting rid of the inspector general of CSIS. The expert who helped set up CSIS told us that this would cause problems, but it did not matter. The Conservatives are more expert than the experts, and they went ahead and made the changes anyway.
In this case, they heard expert testimony about why certain changes should be made. However, the Conservatives gave them no serious consideration. They rejected the changes out of hand, which is a bit sad, because this House ought to be about discussion, debate, learning, and ultimately, compromise to get the best laws possible for Canadians.
The bill needs further improvement. The NDP will continue to work with businesses and shippers across the country to improve this legislation and to tackle the issue of uncompetitive freight rates and gouging of the shippers. What we heard from businesses across the country was that they are getting poor customer service. They have had disruptions in rail service and unacceptable service costs. We heard about produce rotting, because it could not be shipped. We heard about lost contracts, because there was no guarantee that the goods could be shipped reliably, which made Canadian businesses unreliable suppliers. We heard about missed connections with ships for travel and shipping. This is a daily occurrence for industries across Canada.
Poor rail services are hurting Canadian exporters, damaging our global competitiveness and costing us jobs, which is a little ironic from a government that talks a lot about jobs. However, when the rubber hits the road, it often misses the train. That is what has been happening with this legislation.
There are a number of key amendments we put forward that the shipping community pushed for. They were championed by the NDP and defeated at committee. Without the rejected amendments, this bill remains only a partial success. Nevertheless, it is still worthy of our support. I want to stress that we are dissatisfied with the outcome. It is not what the shippers really wanted to see. Therefore, there is a need for future strengthening of this legislation.
Sadly, I see that my time is just about up. There is so much else to say. Thanks for the attention of this House. I look forward to the questions of my hon. colleagues.