Transport committee  Thank you very much. I'm happy to be here. I very much appreciate the committee's efforts to review this bill. As Bob Ballantyne has already stated, we, as shippers, remain united in the need for this legislation. I'm here today representing forest product shippers from coast t

Transport committee  I would just add that we have been spending a lot of time on this issue. We look at the impacts on the companies we represent. It's in the tens of millions of dollars in the forest industry. We add up all of the bits that Wade was talking about and it translates into—I'm just tal

Transport committee  I'll make two points, if I may. The first point is that I'd be very careful on how I defined confidential contracts. What we experience is a strong creep, albeit the latter is perhaps an insufficient word to describe it. Would you consider an email from the railways telling you

Transport committee  Yes, that's correct.

Transport committee  Well, I'm glad you've taken it as an optimistic view, but our perspective—sorry I've lost the thought. Repeat the question. Sorry.

Transport committee  Yes, it's a backstop. The fundamental point is that the forest industry believes in commercial relations but we do not experience them on a day-to-day basis with the railways, as the situation is today. We're hopeful that the legislation moves us forward. We're prioritizing thre

Transport committee  If I could intervene, any form of improvement from added competition will be highly applauded by the shipper community. We need more competition. We don't think it's going to correct the problem 100%, but it will move us forward. You asked about the quality of the service we're f

Transport committee  Ideally, it would be nice not to have that hurdle in the front of this bill. It's great that you're raising that question. It was on our long list of asks. It didn't make it on our short list. Getting it into this bill is one of the most important questions that I think needs to

Transport committee  Yes, we have actually submitted them in order of our priorities. First is removing the word “operation”; second is the third party; and third is securing or locking down what the elements of a service agreement are. Those three are all interlinked, but that is the prioritization

Transport committee  Absolutely.

Transport committee  Representing a group of shippers that are very captive to the railways, we have actually been experiencing service challenges all the way through the piece. So I've already reported on that. It's interesting, but I didn't realize that we were all experiencing about half of what w

Transport committee  I guess the first point I'd like to re-emphasize is that these outlined obligations—and we outline a number of them and they have been referred to already by my colleagues—have already been agreed to by everybody, so we shouldn't be running for the hills on this one. I think this

Transport committee  I feel I should probably clarify that we are supportive of all six of the recommendations that the Coalition of Rail Shippers has put forward. We are an active member of the Coalition of Rail Shippers, so we support all of its amendments. What I'm referring to is that we felt it

Natural Resources committee  Thank you. I very much appreciate the invitation to be here today. I'm here representing the forest products industry. We have members from coast to coast from 200 rural communities, and we represent 230,000 employees in the forest sector. Given the abundance of forests in Can

Natural Resources committee  —things have improved?