International Trade committee  On the grains and oilseeds side, they sell about $185 million of wheat and barley alone a year in there. That's 360,000 tonnes of wheat--a third of a million tonnes of wheat--and about 60,000 tonnes of malt barley. It's hard to measure whether we would have job losses, because we would export those crops somewhere else, but we would have to find another market for that product.

International Trade committee  It's my understanding that only about 5% of the land in Colombia is actually arable land. I think Colombian farmers will always be doing some local production for local consumption. Their main exports are coffee and bananas, for example. Those are two of their major exports, and it's stuff we don't grow here, so there's a comparative advantage for them to export crops like that while importing wheat from Canada, for example.

International Trade committee  No, a Canada-Colombia deal won't, just because of the difference in the products.

International Trade committee  Thank you, members. Gary has touched on why bilateral agreements with South American countries are good, but I'd like to share some of the shortcomings of bilateral trade agreements with you. Bilaterals deal primarily with tariff lines, and this becomes an issue for smaller marketplaces.

Agriculture committee  There is the possibility of government action, Mr. Easter, but it's a long shot. The CTA does have the power to step in where it looks like they're de-marketing a line. If they're trying to strip the sidings off to make the line valueless, then in theory the CTA could come in. But we met with them recently and asked, and they said it would be extremely unlikely that they would get involved.

Agriculture committee  Yes. If I go back and try to claim from the railways--

Agriculture committee  Yes, the railway will say you shouldn't have loaded it if it wasn't in good shape. That's their defence.

Agriculture committee  Once they go through this process, what we anticipate would happen is that they would simply pull out all the steel and all the ties and these would be decommissioned. I don't think you would ever see anybody go back in and build a siding again. The cost of doing that and negotiating....

Agriculture committee  Maybe I'll just back up a little. When we looked at the numbers, we saw that a lot of these sites had not been used in a number of years. The farmers aren't using them. The issue is that what they're suggesting is that the timeline is too tight. So the community says, well, if we'd known you were going to close it, maybe more farmers would have been using it.

Agriculture committee  Yes. If you made the amendment that he's asking, then the railways would be required to do a three-year process, not a 60-day process. That would give municipalities and farmers a chance to get together, put together a business plan, find some financing, and make an offer to buy them.

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairperson, honourable members, and guests. Our presentation is only about six minutes, not the full ten. My name is Richard Phillips. I have a farm in Saskatchewan and I'm with the Grain Growers of Canada. With me today and sharing our time is Rick White. Rick also has a farm is Saskatchewan and is with the Canadian Canola Growers Association.

Finance committee  Yes, but that could also very well be the university or Agriculture Canada. Without the certified seed and farmers buying that seed, no money goes back.

Finance committee  The tax credit would go directly to the farmer, and that would be an incentive to do it. Right now with wheat, for example, about 18% of the wheat acreage is seeded with certified seed. The other farmers save their seed from the previous year, clean it up, and plant it again. We're trying to encourage more public sector investment, but we want the private sector to invest more in some of these crops as well.

Finance committee  I don't think we'd want to differentiate that. I think there's a role to play. Even in crops like canola, for example, where there's a huge amount of private sector investment, there's still a lot of public sector investment too. There are areas where the public does research that simply will never be done by the private sector.

Finance committee  That can be a public company or a private company, or even universities. If there are certified seeds sold that the universities have developed, the royalties come back to the universities and they can do more research. So we're trying to find a way--not a stick, just a carrot--to encourage more farmers to use the certified seed so the royalties would go back to the universities, to Agriculture Canada, or to the private company, to whoever developed those varieties.