Transport committee  I would say that without taking any specific one of those items, there's a very long list of various types of service obligations here.

Transport committee  Yes, and it may be that one or more of those do not apply in a particular case. It may be that the condition of cars is not really a matter of great importance to a particular shipper because it doesn't matter what the condition is for the goods they're shipping. It may be the case that cycle times or dwell times really don't matter for a particular shipper.

Transport committee  Dwell time may be irrelevant if a shipper is not overly concerned about exactly when the goods reach destination. That may be an area where there's flexibility for that shipper, and they trade that flexibility to get something else that is more important to them.

Transport committee  As a group, these are the types of things they're looking to see, but what I'm saying is for an individual case, it may not be a factor of great importance for an individual shipper.

Transport committee  One of the things I commented on in one of my two other appearances before the committee is that the government's approach in this bill is more general in terms of the obligations and the way they are described. The approach used in new clause 169.31 mirrors the one in section 113 of the act.

Transport committee  The agency will be supporting the arbitrator. The agency will be providing expert advice to the arbitrator as that person makes decisions.

Transport committee  Yes.

Transport committee  The understanding is that service obligations are terms related to the receiving, loading, carrying, unloading, and delivering of the traffic, which, as we explained at a previous meeting of the committee, is what is defined in section 113 of the act. The definition of service obligations is different case by case, depending on the specific situation of an individual shipper.

Transport committee  Because the agency currently administers the act, and with the current obligation on railways to provide adequate and suitable accommodation for the receiving, loading, and unloading, using those terms that are currently in the act, the agency has experience in determining what service obligations would apply case by case when a shipper complains under the current Canada Transportation Act.

Transport committee  It's through the agency's knowledge bank.

Transport committee  Railways have been increasingly making use of service agreements. It's something that seems to work well for them in better defining their relationships with shippers. In that respect, a regime that encourages the use of commercial agreements is very much in keeping with what has been happening commercially, and is therefore felt by the government to be something that is manageable for the railways.

Transport committee  This never came up in the discussions with shippers because we weren't at the level of the actual language that would be in the bill; it was the concepts of what would be covered. There was a list given of “here's what we want to be covered” and, in the end, the government decided that “we're going to cover this much and we're not going to cover these items here”.

Transport committee  Well, there certainly was a policy direction to reflect the fact that railways are required to provide service to all shippers and that they are operating in a network environment. Certainly, the decisions around “adequate and suitable”—the common carrier obligation—have always reflected that the railways have those obligations to all shippers and operate in a network environment.

Transport committee  That's a good question. I think at the end of the day the use of the term “operational” was really intended to ensure that there was broad coverage of the vast range of service issues that a shipper may wish to have arbitrated, to ensure that the coverage was there while at the same time limiting the scope of arbitration to service issues and not broadening it out to include financial penalties, and also avoiding the inclusion of obligations on shippers in terms of volume commitments and those sorts of things.

Transport committee  The intention certainly was to include performance metrics. The specific reference to performance standards is a specific example of what an operational term might include. It certainly, of course, was not meant to be exhaustive. But in the case of performance standards in particular, the intent was definitely that if standards were going to be set, there would have to be a mechanism to measure adherence to the standards, and that, of course, would be the metrics.