Transport committee  Mr. Hardie's point is correct. There are the two processes that Mr. Langlois specified for smaller shippers. The summary process would be more efficient. It's a paper-based process, but it's only for claims up to $2 million. Those above the $2 million would go through the normal FOA process.

Transport committee  The purpose of introducing reciprocal penalties was so that the penalties applied to the shipper also applied to the railway and that there be some level of “let the arbitrator decide” the level of—I'll call it reasonableness—in terms of what the penalty should be. If we remove this, it means that the penalty could be applied in an imbalanced way in that it would be applied to the railway but not necessarily to the shipper in a balanced and reciprocal manner.

Transport committee  No.

Transport committee  This bill, in addition to provisions that are already in the act, requires that the railways make available lots of data, and that data will be made available through performance reporting. Some of it will be made available to the department and to the agency for rates, so already we have a lot of information, and that information is in the public domain.

Transport committee  Oui, I'm going to ask the lawyer. The lawyer is going to answer.

Transport committee  Just to clarify, in the English version we can refer to “service obligations”, but in the French version we have to specifically refer to sections 113 and 114, which both specify what the service obligations are. It's just a linguistic differentiation. The intent is okay.

Transport committee  Sure. I can add clarification there. The legislation provides that the agency will set the rate based on comparable traffic, as you mentioned. Proposed subsection 135(3) actually lists the factors the agency can use to determine comparable traffic. That traffic wouldn't necessarily have an LHI rate.

Transport committee  Correct.

Transport committee  Thank you. The reason we excluded interchanges in those two corridors was simply because of the amount of traffic that moves in those corridors. The interchange points in those corridors normally offer competition, but we recognize the point you made about the captive shippers, particularly in northern Quebec and northern B.C., and in fact in northern and southern Alberta as well, which is that where they have access to only one railway, the nearest interchange point for some of them happens to be the point inside that corridor.

Transport committee  I think we would. In particular, I think the wording for Quebec is a little easier, in that we can just focus on the north, but on the wording for the Vancouver-Kamloops area, the way the corridor is defined right now, in the definition section in the bill, it's really from Kamloops west.

Transport committee  Yes. This is one of those I mentioned, actually: TIH and nuclear materials. Because they require special handling, there are liability considerations that go into the setting of the rate and the tariff for the movement of those goods. If you have the good transferred from one railway to another railway, the mechanism for attributing those liability considerations becomes very complicated.

Transport committee  No, not at all. In fact, I think a lot of these shippers have access to the other remedies in the act, such as the level of service provisions, final offer arbitration, and all the other elements that are already in the legislation.

Transport committee  Yes. In the current provisions in the bill, toxic inhalants are excluded from using the long-haul interswitching.

Transport committee  There is no ban on transporting products, as long as they are kept in appropriate containers. As you said, the provision in the bill provides an option for shippers who have access only to one carrier for their goods. That is the reason they are excluded. All hazardous material can already be transported by train.

Transport committee  Yes, and they can use boats too.