Agriculture committee  From a farm perspective, I echo their comments in terms of how damaging it would have been. A strike at that time, when we are basically 50,000 cars behind, which is essentially more than a month at the best capacity at harvest period, would be a problem because I think that every day we lose now moving grain just results in more backlogs, more penalities, and more grain that is just going to end up sitting in the ground and being held over.

Agriculture committee  Just in terms of that, Wade did a good job, obviously, of clarifying how much they're actually moving. I think what's important though is that there were a number of challenges for crop development on the prairies last year, if we're talking about 2012. This year was considerably more than last year, but I would certainly suggest that with improved agronomics, improved investment in our distributing facilities and that kind of thing, and especially if western Canadians move more into higher yielding crops, if corn started to grab an impact, the challenge for members is that these yields are going to be increasing in the next few years.

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, for the opportunity to speak with you this afternoon concerning the grain logistics system in Canada. My name is Levi Wood, and I'm the president of the Canadian wheat growers. For those of you who aren't familiar with our group, we're a voluntary farm organization that is member-based and has been a strong advocate for opening competitive markets in the grain system for the past 44 years.