I think that government should expect the whole system to work better. Government spent tens of billions of dollars in infrastructure improvement, and we should expect the entire supply chain to work better. I don't want to point fingers at the railway. We have people in our industry who order double the number of rail cars they hope to get, because they might get half of them. Now is that a railway problem or a shipper problem?
What we have to do—and we would be in agreement with the railways on this—is to look at the entire supply chain, from the time the product enters the boat back to the point where it leaves the farm, and we have to make the system function better. You referred to the rail freight service review. I think one of the most interesting things in that report was some of the innovative measurements of system performance. Those numbers are now three years old. To make informed decisions, we need to get away from story-telling. I might come in and give you a heartbreaking story about how bad service is, then someone else will come in and say how good it is. Instead of that, we need to start focusing on the measurements that are going to tell us how well the system is performing.
Vessel demurrage is a very interesting thing. You can cite a lot of good numbers about performance, but if you're incurring huge vessel demurrage costs, something in the system isn't working. An analysis of key performance indicators will tell you where you need to start putting a little bit of heat.
We were firm supporters of the announcement made by government on March 18. We feel it had all the essential elements. What we said then and what we continue to say now is that we need to get on with it. Let's start implementing the recommendations. We have met with Transport Canada. We understand that they have been working to find a facilitator. They had a couple of people they were hoping would take the job but didn't. But even without the appointment of a facilitator, we think that this committee and others, as well as relevant departments, could be looking at some key performance measurements. They could start by making sure that all committees have up-to-date information.
So expect more—but expect more of the entire system. To know exactly where the improvements need to be made, I think we need to be starting with current information. The railways rightly say that their performance has improved, but that's not the measurement that really matters. What we need to understand is that the entire system is working well together.