International Trade committee  First of all, the number doesn't sound right to me. If you would like an accurate picture of service from the railways, I'd refer you to the Canadian Industrial Transportation Association, which is the association of shippers.

International Trade committee  I'm not sure we have a problem. I was about to say that we don't have a perfect record in service, but our service improvement has been drastic as measured by the shippers themselves. It has improved by 46% since 2009, and it's now at about 73% satisfaction. It's difficult for me

International Trade committee  Yes, it's $5 billion. In terms of broader transportation trends, the number one global trend in transportation is supply chain integration. What this means is the interoperability of hard assets, which is infrastructure; connectedness, which is making sure that everything works

International Trade committee  Yes, thanks very much. I am Michael Bourque. I am with the Railway Association of Canada. We are the voice of the Canadian rail industry. We like to say we are moving people, goods, and the economy. The reason we say that is that our large class I carriers—CN, CP, and BNSF—oper

Transport committee  I'll just add a short piece to that, Mr. Chairman. During the passing of the Railway Safety Act we had asked for a small amendment to the act that would have required municipalities to provide notification to the railways if there was going to be construction within 300 metres o

Transport committee  The only thing I would add is that as we move into the future, we're going to see an even greater need to integrate our supply chain, from our ports to our trucking, rail, shipping, seaways, terminals, intermodal—all of those kinds of investments. We need to keep our eye on that

Transport committee  Mr. Chairman, is there a category of question that I'm not supposed to answer?

Transport committee  As I just mentioned, moving petroleum and chemicals is a growing part of our business. Many of them are originating in oil sands because we're moving bitumen. We're actually providing a solution now where there is under-capacity or there are missing links in the supply chain. It'

Transport committee  Thank you very much. I am pleased that you mentioned the Plan Nord. Canadian National has already announced that it is prepared to build a rail line to support mines in the north. This is indeed a private sector investment, with financial support from the Government of Quebec. I

Transport committee  That's our revenues; the tax dollars would be a subset of that. I don't have the number in front of me, but I can get it for you. I may actually have it here. I'll look for it while we're....

Transport committee  There have been a number of significant changes. First of all, I would mention that 17 years ago CN was a crown corporation, and it was certainly not enjoying the level of productivity and efficiency it is now. What's come out of that are a number of investments. If you look at

Transport committee  The specific example here is that during the passing of Bill S-4, the Railway Safety Act, we asked for the exemption to be 12 months instead of six months. That's simply because we operate in four seasons, and in order to introduce a new technology, we need to test it in all of t

Transport committee  That's one of the issues, yes.

Transport committee  Sure. I can mention one now, because it came up earlier, if it's okay with the chair. I did leave the slide, but I thought we could maybe deal with some of these issues in the questions and answers, so I appreciate the question. Right now we are working with the government on c

Transport committee  I have no idea, but hopefully one of these engineers will be able to answer the question.