Mr. Speaker, I have mixed feelings about Bill C-52. This is difficult because I want to encourage our rail services and I support the bill. However, there are significant gaps not addressed by the legislation that absolutely need to be brought forward. In committee we will try to make some needed improvements to the bill.
My colleague from Trinity—Spadina consulted several experts, including exporters, and many of them brought up the issue of price. Absent from Bill C-52 is the important and unregulated discrepancy in rail fees, for example, between CP and CN. Why are existing discrepancies not addressed in the bill? Rail freight transportation must be more efficient and effective. It needs to provide reliable and sustainable services. Unregulated rail fees are another aspect to look into and this can be done at committee.
Trains move goods and people. Trains are a key mode of transportation for Canadians in the 21st century. I myself try to travel between my riding of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine and Ottawa by train as much as possible.
Rail freight transportation provides a service to our Canadian farmers and producers who ship their goods to market by train. This mode of transportation is essential to Canada's economic development, but does it currently benefit our farmers, producers and our Canadian shippers' associations as much as it benefits CN and CP? Does it benefit public transportation as much as it supports commercial interests?
A look at balance sheets and recent decisions at CP and CN show that these companies are run for their shareholders, not for the users of public transportation or small family businesses that rely on rail freight transportation. This decision was a choice, a choice made to serve shareholders and profits over customers. We have seen this before and we know this leads to poor quality services.
The Coalition of Rail Shippers has been stating for years that it receives poor quality services from CN and CP because of this pricing issue, and they are priority clients. Listen to the private shippers. They tell us that CN dictates the market. CN is the largest player in Canadian rail freight transportation. According to a report by the Coalition of Rail Shippers presented at the Canadian maritime conference in 2010, “CN and CPR together control 94% of the market by revenue”.
This market lacks competition, innovation and regulation. This is not the way to support Canada's economy or to encourage Canadian success. It is important that Bill C-52 gives freight shippers the right to enter into service agreements with railway companies and establish an arbitration process in the event of a dispute. This is what freight shippers told us they needed.
Rail shipping is the backbone of the Canadian economy. Transport Canada estimates that over 70% of all goods shipped over land go by train. The reason is easy to understand. In our very big country, rail shipping is often in bulk and it would be difficult to ship these large quantities by truck. Shipping by boat, which is sometimes more economical, is not available everywhere for obvious reasons.
Canada was built by train and the railway is a vital link between faraway communities on a vast land.
I would like to talk about an activity that I did in my riding. I organized a screening of a movie called Rocky Mountain Express. Its filmmaker is based in my riding. About 100 of us watched this wonderful movie, which talks about the history of the train in Canada and how it built the west of Canada. It was amazing. It really showed us how our country was based on rail.
We might be surprised by the poor quality of rail shipping services in Canada right now. The Conservative government is not the only one responsible for this situation, but it is guilty of inaction on this file. Day in and day out the Conservative government claims to work for the Canadian economy, but Canadian businesses are suffering from this unreliable service, the result of which is hundreds of millions of dollars in economic losses every year. This affects a broad range of industries, especially agriculture, forestry and mining.
The rail freight service review found that 80% of rail shippers are dissatisfied with the services provided by rail carriers. This is 80% of loyal customers. Unreliable service and high prices continue to hurt rail customers. This issue is not addressed in Bill C-52. We, the official opposition, will continue to push for fair pricing for all shippers, prices that are in line with the services received from carriers.
That is something we do not see in Bill C-52, which says that agreements governed by the new law would be made only with new customers and new contracts. Therefore, anyone who has been using the services for years, and who is a long-standing loyal customer, would not have access to the rules that Bill C-52 seeks to put in place. Clearly, there is room for improvement. We could make these improvements in committee if the government would be open enough to come to the table and participate in meaningful discussions and listen to the best suggestions to get the best bill possible.
I would like to come back to the fact that 80% of customers are dissatisfied. Something had to be done and something still urgently needs to be done, but the Conservatives' inaction has been going on for years. Why have the Conservatives taken so long to do something?
Here is what I think may be happening. First, rail freight customers are often farmers or mining companies. These customers have to deal with large railways that have a virtual monopoly over rail transport. In most regions of the country, shippers cannot choose a rail transportation company because they have access to only one or the other. Even in cases where the two railway companies are present, the competition struggles to play the role it should and to influence the basic economic principle of supply and demand.
Why do we need to intervene now and legislate? Why can the parties involved not come to an agreement themselves? In all likelihood, CN and CP benefit from the tacit support of the Conservative government and, in that context, they are not at all prepared to make real concessions. The result is that rail freight customers, the shippers, are not satisfied with rail freight services. Therefore, they have asked the government to take action and to introduce legislation that would require CN and CP to reach agreements on the level of service provided to shippers. After years of empty words, the Conservatives are now being forced to act as a result of pressure from the shipping community and the NDP.
Under duress, the Conservatives finally introduced a bill designed to solve some of these problems after the NDP critic's bill was introduced last spring. That bill, which was entitled the rail customer protection act, was much clearer and covered all customers.
The government is using half measures and here are some examples. The protective measures do not cover existing contracts between shippers and rail transport companies. The bill offers only a limited arbitration process for unsuccessful negotiations of new contracts. The arbitration is available only for shippers who are negotiating new contracts, instead of providing fast and reliable help for all shippers. Bill C-52 would cover only new service level agreements, not those that already exist. Furthermore, the fines mentioned in Bill C-52 would go to the government and not to the shippers.
We could talk all day about the amount of these fines, which seem a bit weak to me for such big companies. The ability to interact, discuss and negotiate is undermined when the fines go into the government's pocket, which supports what I said earlier, that CN and CP probably feel as if the Conservative government is in their corner. The Conservatives simply do not give Canada's rail network the attention it deserves.
