Transport committee  Certainly, for our membership, it is the same. The answers are no, no, and no. Mr. Shannon, when he was here from CP the other day, alluded to the fact that in some cases, there are contracts. There are still some confidential contracts between shippers and railways. There may

Transport committee  I think demurrage has been around probably for a hundred years. Some of the other ones are fairly new. The fuel surcharge is fairly recent, just when the crude oil prices started to become quite volatile. So that's a fairly recent charge. Things like the charge for submitting a

Transport committee  I'm not absolutely certain of that. I'd have to check with some of my members, but I'll venture a guess that it is being passed on. That charge has been applied to virtually all modes. The truckers pay it, the railways pay it, the marine, and if you're a passenger flying on an ai

Transport committee  The counterpart in the United States to our association is the NIT League, the National Industrial Transportation League, and we lobbied jointly with the NIT League against that charge. We were unsuccessful, but we did that jointly. We had good support from the U.S. shipper commu

Transport committee  If you detected any hesitation, it's only that it's in the future, and I can't say for certain that they wouldn't. I would anticipate that they will continue to make investments as appropriate to handle the markets that present themselves. We seem to be in a time of growing dem

Transport committee  I have a couple of comments. First, in terms of capacity, there are places on the network that are at or very near capacity, but certainly there are places where the rail network is not at capacity. In regard to the new container terminal that has opened up at Prince Rupert, CN h

Transport committee  I think our feeling is that the way it's written covers it off quite adequately and that it doesn't need this. My recollection is that in an earlier version of the bill, either when it was Bill C-44 or Bill C-26, it had a provision like that in it, and when Bill C-58 came forward

Transport committee  First of all, and Wade can comment on this, my understanding is that this provision is only for grain-dependent branch lines. It isn't general across the country. It's only in grain-dependent....

Transport committee  I would say that was the main reason. The shippers felt that if CN and CP were offering this, they should offer it for each of their entire systems, and that in this instance the border shouldn't make a difference because a lot of the traffic for many of the companies that are re

Transport committee  I think most shippers are prepared to live with this. Your point is well taken that in a lot of markets a lot of railway customers are in, they have to hold the price for a lot longer than 30 days. There are all kinds of fluctuations in the input costs they have. But as far as I

Transport committee  It is, I think, pretty much done arbitrarily. The railways have, under the Canada Transportation Act, the right to issue tariffs, which they do. There may in some instances be some negotiation and discussion with the railways, to some extent possibly on the level but also on th

Transport committee  No, I don't agree with that statement. I was here when Mr. Patenaude made that statement. I know him quite well, as a matter of fact. He was very careful that he didn't indicate that any shipper had signed up for it. As I say, I don't know for certain, but as far as I know, no sh

Transport committee  Yes, the bare freight rates are among the lowest in the world. It depends how you do the measurement. Some work was done, and I think it was by a transportation institute in Australia some years ago, that compared the freight rates in a whole lot of countries. Of course, they wer

Transport committee  I was here when the railways said that. I'll comment after the meeting.

Transport committee  Following from Wade's comment, as the railways mentioned when they responded to that, confidential contracts are in place between individual railway companies and individual shippers. Because the contracts are confidential, nobody knows the terms and conditions. I think, general