Transport committee  I'd like to put that into perspective. We started with about 80. Really, we did. We went through them and said what was not the way it's supposed to be, and we did an assessment of what we think the likelihood of success is. We whittled it down to the bare minimum of technical amendments in order to make long-haul interswitching work, for example, and those are the three.

Transport committee  Yes, it could fall apart on any one of them.

Transport committee  It would definitely be for the short haul. Sometimes grain companies will truck grain from one facility to another. Trucking might be a viable option somewhere in the range of 100 or 200 miles, but when we're talking about the vast majority of the crop that's being exported through Vancouver, Prince Rupert, Thunder Bay, or the St.

Transport committee  Personally, I don't see a reason. I can't get my head past the notion that it will be used only if the primary carrier isn't competitive. All they have to do is be competitive and it's not going to be used. I personally think that we should be able to apply it across Canada without reservation, but I do know that there were some concerns about some of the more densely populated areas in eastern Canada, where you have a large number of shippers in tight proximity and it would create some issues.

Transport committee  One of the main opportunities we see in Bill C-49 is the reciprocal penalties piece. We have long been after the ability to get commercial contracts with railways. Every other link in the chain has commercial contracts. We have contracts with farmers, with penalties on both sides for failure to perform.

Transport committee  I have some statistics on soy. In our package of technical amendments, we say that soybeans represent 3.14 million acres in western Canada. Production is growing in leaps and bounds year over year. In 2016, acreage was 1.88 million. In 2015, it was 1.66 million. Other commodities, such as flax, canary seed, and buckwheat, represent a smaller acreage but are included in schedule II.

Transport committee  It's a good question. Some people consider it a pulse. We consider it an oilseed.

Transport committee  I suppose you can come up with a solution to anything that doesn't have the railways involved. It's going to sound silly, but you could load grain into backpacks and carry them across the mountains with Sherpas. It's not a viable alternative. When it comes to the cost of trucking grain and all the implications for our roads and everything like that....

Transport committee  The Canadian Wheat Board was a third entity involved in grain logistics. It was difficult. It made it really cloudy. You couldn't tell where the problem lay. Was it the grain company? Was it the railway? Was it the Canadian Wheat Board? Now that it's been removed, it's allowed each grain company to plan its logistics for its entire pipeline.

Transport committee  When you say domestic traffic...?

Transport committee  I don't know. Chris, has that ever happened?

Transport committee  Not to my knowledge. The only point I'd like to make is that they only lose business when they're non-competitive. If they're competitive with rates and service, in each and every case the grain elevator is going to want to stick with the primary carrier.

Transport committee  To answer your question about where the product is going, it goes to most states. Most states in the U.S. receive shipments of Canadian grains and oilseeds. Some of the more notable ones would be the southern California dairy market, for example. The benefit of the interswitching is that you could get onto Burlington Northern and they would take it down to that marketplace for you, and because you have increased capacity to the United States, you could therefore make more sales to the United States.

Transport committee  I don't believe there's anything stopping them from doing that.

Transport committee  I don't know the answer to that question. It's a good question.