Transport committee  In the courts.

Transport committee  As I mentioned in my last appearance, the act already provides for what your amendment proposes. When a matter is submitted to arbitration, it is the shipper who provides in his submission to the agency the questions that the arbitration has to resolve. The shipper's submission

Transport committee  Not really, in my humble view. If a shipper and a railway can agree on, let's say, choice of law clause—which law, Ontario's or Manitoba's, should apply in the case of a dispute—the shipper has an ability, if they can't get the railway to sign an agreement, to agree to sign an ag

Transport committee  You can go to arbitration to get the service element established—

Transport committee  I think we discussed force majeure, either last time or the first time around. I strongly believe force majeure is captured by an operational term. If we tell a railway company to pick up the car on a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, part of an operational term will be that they sh

Transport committee  Yes, when the provisions set out a long list of elements, the choice that Parliament has to make is always a risky one. Do you prefer to define almost everything that you want to cover in a concept that you are trying to establish, or do you want to leave something else aside? Th

Transport committee  As I mentioned when I first appeared here on this bill, the first subsection of the clause, without restricting the generality of what follows, sets out what constitutes a service obligation. But courts currently consider that the title covers only the category included in the st

Transport committee  Well, right now the legislation doesn't allow a lot of flexibility. It's 45 days. The arbitrator has an ability to extend to 60 days in circumstances, so at the tail end of the process it's 60 days, unless the parties agree otherwise. If you're asking an arbitrator to deal with p

Transport committee  If I could add to that, we have to bear in mind the other concern, which is that the process in and of itself is pretty short. Legislation establishes the process: you come in and you come out in 45 days. If you remove “operational” and open it up to every possible contractual is

Transport committee  Absolutely. There is no restriction that prevents a party from doing that. The legislation makes it clear that the decision of the arbitrator is to be deemed to have the same force as the contract and should be enforced as such. If there is a failure, it is expected that a party

Transport committee  A force majeure clause in very simple terms is usually if you have a contract a party can agree on what's going to be a force majeure and whether a party will be excused from performing if a force majeure occurs. For example, I have to deliver cars and there's a tornado or an av

Transport committee  The legislation already does that. I can walk you through it. The legislation already restricts arbitration to the issue that the shipper puts on the table. If you go to 169.39, you see that the arbitration gets triggered by the shippers. In their application, the shipper has to

Transport committee  Well, the legislation does allow the railway to come in with their own proposal—

Transport committee  —but their proposal to resolve the matter that's been submitted by the shipper. The legislation is very clear on that. The shipper raises the matter. The offers that are put on the table have to be offers to resolve the matters raised by the shippers. The matters raised by the

Transport committee  Imposed. Enforced.