Agriculture committee  There's always that dynamic tension. Certainly we can look at the first 16 weeks of the crop year this year and say that both railways were doing wonderfully. Recovery post-flooding has been choppy and slow. Also, there are commercial and operational decisions being made within the railways that affect that.

Agriculture committee  Very briefly, what we've seen in terms of the long game and the bet from the participants in the green sector, the buyers and exporters, is that when something like the Fraser Grain Terminal comes on line, that's another investment. That's another long bet on the industry and our ability for growth and profitability through the whole supply chain, to the benefit of everybody and the economy.

Agriculture committee  Well, certainly coming out of the shadows of Bill C-49, the Transportation Modernization Act, there's now bolstered communication between the railways and their grain shippers. Certainly, though, the railways consult. They put on paper their plans with the Ministry of Transport every year—their idea of what they are going to move for that year and the size of the actual crop to be hauled.

Agriculture committee  I can take a stab at that. Really when we think about western Canadian production—and I do not have specific numbers in front of me to share with you—typically we look at trucks being price competitive within a couple of hundred kilometres of a delivery point, maybe 200 to 250 kilometres.

Agriculture committee  What you're experiencing and what you're seeing even this year as being an emphatic point is the suboptimal outcome of our supply chain disruptions. It's that proxy kind of visual or metric being the number of boats, be they grain, other bulk commodities or container. It is absolutely not an efficient use of anyone's time.

Agriculture committee  People knew it was coming. You could see it in the data, but, unfortunately, the boats are booked months in advance, so that's not going to be helpful.

Agriculture committee  Very quickly, to your question, Mr. Barlow, certainly I think you would have seen similar effects to what happened in 2013-14 with the backlog, when we had a bumper crop. There are analysts out there who would point to the fact that if we'd had a normal-sized crop, you would have seen the plugging of elevators in country.

Agriculture committee  Very briefly, Mr. Barlow, certainly at some point in the near future, ideally all commodities will take off again Canadian export-wise, be it grain, potash, sulphur, coal or what have you, and there will come a time, in our view, when the capacity of the north shore will become strained.

Agriculture committee  A quick little footnote to your question is around where the products are actually leaving the country from the port infrastructure. I guess that's one of the legacies of the 2008 global economic meltdown—shipping rates have never gone back to where they were. I'm sure you've heard this in the past in your studies, but this really changed the nature of global marine shipping and, hence, where our grain is going.

Agriculture committee  I just have a very quick footnote to your question about on-farm storage. Certainly that was one of the take-aways from 2013-14. In the producer community, we saw a run on bins, for instance, after the 2013-14 backlog. Off the top of my head, I believe there are about 75 million tonnes of on-farm capacity in western Canada.

Agriculture committee  With canola, as a perfect example of that, the goal would be to have half of Canada's production domestically processed, because obviously that's the highest and best use economically. We've seen that through the illustration of canola's 10 crushers across western Canada. For instance, in 2013-14, they were doing slightly under seven million tonnes of processing of oilseeds on the Prairies.

Agriculture committee  Pipe to car....

Agriculture committee  I think that was alluded to this morning by the railway's brief answer to that question. It has nothing to do with the railways and nothing to do with the producers. It has to do with the actual shipper. The line or grain company that is producing that grain, it's their commercial decision if they want to use that railway service to get out there, and then use that third party operator of the port to ship it out.

Agriculture committee  It's changing.

Agriculture committee  The $75 billion and $85 billion numbers came from the economic strategy tables that had eminent blue ribbon folks on the panel and from consultation with the industry. Those are external folks who are looking at this with more of a global perspective. As far as planning goes, we have a strategic plan with canola, which we rolled out several years ago.