As part of its mandate to support the efficiency of Canada's national transportation system, the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) calculates regulated cost of capital rates. The CTA uses these in various rail related determinations – including regulated interswitching and the Maximum Revenue Entitlement (MRE).

The CTA recently held a public consultation on two components of regulated cost of capital rates, namely net rail investment and capital structure (2020 Consultation on Cost of Capital Rates). The CTA is now seeking input on whether the category of debt that it has identified as “general purpose debt” should be included in the calculation of cost of capital rates.

At the conclusion of this consultation, if it is determined by the CTA that general purpose debt should be included on the regulatory balance sheet, then the CTA will also make a determination on how it should be apportioned based on the submissions filed in the 2020 Consultation on Cost of Capital Rates.

The CTA's Discussion Paper: Whether General Purpose Debt Should Be Included in the Calculation of Cost of Capital Rates covers the key issues in detail and also asks questions that you can answer about each of them.

Consultation Process

You are invited to submit your input to the questions posed in the discussion paper by August 5, 2021. Your responses to the questions should include a supporting rationale and evidence to allow the CTA to properly assess its validity.

Your initial public submissions will be posted here on August 6, 2021 in the official language in which they were submitted, along with your name or that of the organization represented.

Stakeholders can provide responses to initial submissions by August 26, 2021.

Public versions of the responses will be posted here by August 27, 2021.

Input can be sent to ferroviaire-rail@otc-cta.gc.ca.

If you wish to submit a video due to accessibility issues, please send an email to ferroviaire-rail@otc-cta.gc.ca with the subject line "Video". We will contact you to coordinate your submission.

Confidential Information

If any document you send us contains information you believe should be treated as confidential, you must give us two copies of it, as follows:

1. One copy (the public version) from which the confidential information has been blacked out.
2. One copy (the confidential version) in which:
   • each page is marked “contains confidential information” at the top; and
   • you highlight or otherwise identify on each page the confidential information that was blacked out in the first copy.

We will post the public version on our website, and keep the confidential one for our own use only. However, all input we receive is subject to the Access to Information Act and Privacy Act. We will protect the confidentiality of your information in accordance with these Acts, but those Acts can require us to release information if someone requests it and it doesn't fall within the legislated exceptions.

Reference material

Discussion Paper: Whether General Purpose Debt Should Be Included in the Calculation of Cost of Capital Rates