News

Joint Letter to the Minister of Transport

March 14, 2018

As part of our lobbying efforts for several amendments to the rail-shipper provisions of Bill C-49, the Transportation Modernization Act, FMA and several other associations wrote to the Minister of Transport last week reiterating two of our recommendations for amendments made earlier to the government, the House of Commons, and the Senate. 

One amendment is to provide more precision on the costing and pricing information needed by shippers when attempting to resolve a rate dispute through Final Offer Arbitration.  Unless such information is made available, shippers are at a distinct disadvantage in the arbitration process.

The second amendment proposed is to give the regulator, the Canadian Transportation Agency, the authority to undertake investigations, e.g. on service problems on its own initiative rather than the Agency having to wait for a formal complaint.  The current wide-spread rail service problems are a good example of where such authority would be useful in examining and resolving such problems.
  
FMA and other associations have made these recommendations recently to the Senate Transport and Communications Committee during their public hearings and we remain hopeful that the Senate will include these amendments to the bill.

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