Thank you very much and thanks to my colleagues who spoke so well before I did.
The Canada Grains Council is made up of a number of councils. It's the Canola Council of Canada, the Flax Council of Canada, those commodity associations. It's also made up of general farm organizations: the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, with all of its provincial associations like Keystone Agricultural Producers in Manitoba, APAS in Saskatchewan, a broad range of them.
We also have farmer commodity associations. We have the Fédération des producteurs de cultures commerciales du Québec, which is the grain growers of Quebec. We have the Grain Farmers of Ontario, we have wheat commissions, wheat growers; we have barley commissions, barley growers. It's a really broad cross-section. We have the Canadian Seed Growers' Association. All the major grain companies in Canada belong to us. The entire flour milling industry and the entire Canadian baking industry belong to us. The canola crushing industry belongs to us, and we have all those exporters. Ports and railways belong to our membership. When I come here to speak for the Canada Grains Council, I'm speaking for the value chain from top to bottom.
Other members and other witnesses have provided many details on the shipping and other challenges they're facing out there. I want to focus on where we need to go for the future. We simply must have better forecasting and planning going forward, not just each spring for what the fall movement might look like, not just in the middle of July as to how the crop looks, and not just weekly or monthly forecasts.
We need to plan where are we going to be five years from today. Where are we going to be in agriculture 10 years from today? When we look in the west particularly, there's a huge change in the crop mix. We're seeing corn starting to come in across the prairies and there's going to be more of that. We're seeing more soybeans coming. When these crops come in, does that mean more volume or less volume going out through Vancouver or south to other directions? Just the canola people alone: there are about 16 to 18 million tonnes of canola today; they're forecasting 26 million tonnes, an increase of almost 10 million tonnes within 10 years. That's seed and also processed canola for export. That's just canola.
On wheat, right now we produce 28 or 29 million tonnes. Where will we be in 10 years in tonnage on wheat? Barley, 8 to 9 million tonnes, where will that be in 10 years? Oats, 3 million tonnes; flax, half a million tonnes; soybeans, 5 million tonnes: how much more volume in each of these crops are we going to be producing in five or ten years from today, and just as importantly, what corridors are we going to ship on? Is this all going to go to Vancouver? Will some go to Prince Rupert? How much will be going to the United States? How much more could go out to Thunder Bay or to the Lower St. Lawrence, for example?
If we were to make those accurate projections just in agriculture—not the other commodities like lumber or coal—what bottlenecks will we face? Is it going to be the number of passing tracks we have in place? Is it going to be capacity on bridges? Is it going to be downtown Vancouver, for example? Will the grain terminals get backed up? Can they handle this extra 10, 20, or 30 million tonnes of grain that we might have out there? What about the car spots at the elevators? When I was with the United Grain Growers, we thought building a 25-car spot was pretty big business. Then we moved to 50-car spots. Then we went to 100-car spots. We wondered how we would ever do this. Now the railways are hauling up to 134 cars. In five or ten years from today is it going to be 134, 150, or 200 cars? Can we load these at the grain elevators and get them to ports? Can ports handle long-unit trains like that? This is the sort of stuff that we need to look out for five or ten years from today, and we have to start planning now as we go down that road.
We recognize that not all the grain can move at once. As Dr. Gray asked, what could we do to move more grain off-peak? There's a huge demand for four months of the year. What kind of incentives could be in place to move grain either before or after that peak season? How can we level those humps?
What role should government play as we look ahead on all of this? What can you do as government to help all of us? The reality is you can't regulate everything, and I think you're finding that right now. Every time you say we should regulate more grain to move down corridors, it's which corridor? Are we talking Minneapolis or Chicago? Each time you move into more regulation in the private sector, you find more and more that your fingers get snapped more and more too, even from the people who like you.
I think we as industry actually have to show more leadership, and I'm speaking on behalf of the grain sector here. At the Canada Grains Council, we have all these people at the table and I have to say we have not done a good job ourselves of sitting down and even working on this five- or ten-year forecast. It's taken this big wake-up call for us to start seriously thinking about what we could do rather than relying on government for everything. We have all those players there. We need to have that frank discussion. How much more grain do we need to move? Where is it going to move? How can we together increase that overall capacity in our system?
What government could do.... If the grain industry could show leadership and do that as a group and say, here's our forecast for flax, for wheat, for barley, for soybeans, for corn, for canola. If we can do all of that I think what needs to be done is... Where will the lumber be in five to ten years? What does the coal industry see five to ten years out? What are the mining and manufacturing industries going to be in five to ten years? I think government could maybe play a role in having all of us together then, not just the grain people, so we look at what the overall system capacity is, not just the grain, which has been problematic.
If everybody is planning on growing by five to ten million tonnes then we need a much bigger number than just grain in terms of looking at the bottlenecks. I think government could play a role in helping us sort that out as the overall shipping community.
At the end of the day we want Canada to be internationally competitive in the grain sector, and that means the right crop at the right time in the right place. This has all been a really big wake-up call. I think we're prepared to show a lot of leadership as the Canada Grains Council in trying to make these five- and ten-year plans. I know I've talked to both of the railways before I came here and I said, guys, you need to be at the table too.
I think the underpinning of the penalty system will help get people to the table, so I commend the government for the work and the direction they're going in, because we need that incentive to get people all at the table working with open hearts and open minds.
Thank you very much. I look forward to the questions.