Finance committee  Now I understand the question. You're absolutely right; it's a huge problem. I just read a couple of weeks ago in The Globe and Mail that CN is shipping 50% more crude in the last quarter than it did the previous quarter. I'm very happy for that railway. That's part of its busi

Finance committee  It certainly reduces the capacity that's available to us and other sectors, like mining for example. Yes, it does, unfortunately, which is too bad because the Canadian economy suffers and the communities that depend on those industries suffer. We need to fix that. We need to do b

Finance committee  Thank you very much for the question. I think if we broke it down into three buckets, it would help respond to your question. You have, in bucket one, research and development activities and investment, and in bucket two basically taking those new technologies and de-risking the

Finance committee  Sure. Before I begin, I just want to wish everyone a happy National Forest Week, celebrating all the great social, economic and environmental contributions that the forest industry makes across Canada. Your question fits very nicely with a point that Mr. Easter was asking about

Finance committee  That's also a good question. I have two quick examples. On the forestry management side of things, there's a huge overlap and sometimes a very uncomfortable partnership between the federal government and the provinces when it comes to administering the sustainable forest manage

Finance committee  Good morning, members of the committee. Thank you very much for having me here on behalf of the members of the Forest Products Association of Canada, or FPAC. FPAC is the voice of Canadian wood, pulp and paper producers, nationally and internationally. Canada's forest products i

Transport committee  Yes, I would say on the final offer arbitration tool specifically, as Pierre has said, the changes that we too are asking for would basically be let's make it easier to use, and let's make it cheaper to use, and more accessible for shippers to use if, as a last resort, you have t

Transport committee  If you think about the government's priority to reduce greenhouse gases, it certainly doesn't make very much sense, does it? If you think about the government's priority to reduce greenhouse gases, we should be shipping by rail more of the products that Pierre and I are describin

Transport committee  I think you'd want to do some kind of cost-benefit analysis in the situation you're describing, but I'm very sympathetic to the point you've just made. We have two specific members who have been hurt in the same way you've just described in the example you've given. The fifth k

Transport committee  To try to clarify what I think you're looking for, let's say you're a mill operating in northern Quebec and you're typically ordering 10 cars a week that arrive on a given day of the week, and all of a sudden you get three cars. Hopefully the next week it's made up, but if on a c

Transport committee  If you don't know the data and if you don't know how well or how poorly the system is working, how do you know how to make a well-informed decision about where to invest in infrastructure? I think that's the point that Pierre is making.

Transport committee  We've provided a very specific amendment in relation to the “suitable and adequate” issue that you've just asked about. That's in our submission, and I hope that will be helpful to you. What it boils down to is that we need to be as explicit as possible that they must meet the hi

Transport committee  Thanks very much for your question. We will make sure that you have the detailed annex that we submitted as part of our remarks this morning, with pleasure. I have just a couple of quick thoughts. If you go ahead and make the changes we've outlined in relation to “suitable and a

Transport committee  I'll just start by saying, as Pierre said in his remarks, that what we're looking at in the context of the long-haul interswitching looks a lot like the competitive line rates that we already have. While in theory this is a very powerful concept, in reality, with the exemptions t

Transport committee  Thank you, members of the committee, and thank you very much for having me here today on behalf of the members of the Forest Products Association of Canada. FPAC is the voice of Canada's wood, pulp, and paper producers, a $67-billion a year industry. Our sector is one of the lar