Transport committee  The only comment I'd make, to start off, is that regardless of the impact—and let's say it's somewhere in between, I don't know off the top of my head—of the ancillary charges, the principle in Bill C-8 is that you would have the right to complain or to file with the agency, if y

Transport committee  Bob is exactly right, that this was one of the major issues. When we sat down with CN, for us, at the time, it wasn't so much the transborder shipments, it was just the fact that the railways came out with this commercial dispute resolution process and they put it before us and s

Transport committee  Some grain shippers have complained that there was no notice provided when the railways decided to make that move, so this provision is something that was put in for that reason, and it's something they support. By virtue of the fact that we're supporting the passage of the bill

Transport committee  A duopoly is when you have the choice between one or the other, and a dual monopoly is when you have two co-existing monopolies. So if I'm a grain elevator and I'm planted in the middle of Saskatchewan, and I only have CN running up to me, CP is operating in Saskatchewan, but the

Transport committee  We think that we need to have balance in any solution, and usually when we're dealing with dual monopolies, as Bob explained, which is different from duopolies, we need to have some discipline. Usually, in order for that discipline to be maintained, it needs to be legislated. I'

Transport committee  Ours would be in the same area, I would imagine, perhaps a bit higher.

Transport committee  I'm going to double-check and get back to you, but I believe that's correct.

Transport committee  Go ahead, Bob, by all means.

Transport committee  If I might, I'll just read from my notes the things we've been saying. Without this bill, what's going to happen is that this will continue to result in—and I'm talking about the grain industry—lost grain sales domestically and internationally; lost revenue, because grain will co

Transport committee  You would never have a situation where the result would apply to each shipper equally. It's impossible. Shippers are different; they have different operations, they have different sizes, they're in different places. It's impossible to have an equal application.

Transport committee  If I can speak for the grain industry, there are very limited options, if any at all, for premium service. Certain of our members have tried to get into commercial contracts with the railways, which have been resistant. By default, we look at their tariffs and are subject to the

Transport committee  Definitely. If I could just jump in and make a few comments, I can't stress enough how much water we've put in our wine already to get to this point. We were around this table, and the Western Grain Elevator Association, as did the rest of the shipper associations, came with mu

Transport committee  Sure I can. This study is extremely important to us. We view the changes in the bill as a very good move to balancing out the power of the railways and giving the shippers more of an ability to challenge a problem after it's happened. We view the railway service review as tryin

Transport committee  While Bob's looking, perhaps I could tell you that from the grain industry's perspective, the main one is demurrage. Demurrage would be the main type of tariff that would fit into that category. There would then be a fuel surcharge tariff that's fairly recent but something that w

Transport committee  Could I respond to that briefly? That is a very good question, and it is a very unique situation that we found ourselves or put ourselves in. The fact that the railways take advantage of all shippers has gotten to the point where we, as shippers in Canada, have decided to get t