Agriculture committee  Thank you very much, and good morning. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank committee members for this opportunity to address you concerning the hopper car fleet, a topic of particular importance to the Western Canadian grain industry. First, I'll provide you with some historical con

Agriculture committee  I'll start by answering your last question. The Canadian Transportation Agency determines car maintenance costs. It's the Agency that requires maintenance changes. I'd like to clarify if I may, Madame, what I said earlier. I mentioned that there are approximately 12,100 cars rig

Agriculture committee  We review it regularly, but I'm going to ask Madam Borges to respond more specifically.

Agriculture committee  I'll mention something I had mentioned in my earlier comments. It is that each year the agency reviewed the whole situation, including the costs, and did an audit on what the railways had done under the revenue cap for each of them. There is a provision in there to roll back when

Agriculture committee  It's $2 a tonne.

Agriculture committee  At the moment, it's based on an historical allocation, and each railway has a portion of the Canadian government fleet. In CN's fleet, as we mentioned earlier, there are some aging aluminum cars, which everybody recognizes are outmoded. The balance of the fleet is with both CN an

Agriculture committee  That's one of the questions we'll consider in the negotiations. We've just started talking about the future of the hopper cars. We have to think of the future. We're confident that most of the hopper cars will be available for a number of years. As my colleague mentioned, some o

Agriculture committee  I'm going to ask Madam Borges to answer that, Mr. Easter.

Agriculture committee  We're in a negotiation right now, and there may be differing views as to the lifetimes of some of these cars.

Agriculture committee  Clearly we're talking to both railways, and we're very mindful of the complexity of the situation. There are issues around car supply. We are also regularly hearing service concerns on the part of shippers right across the country, including grain shippers. We're going to have

Agriculture committee  One of the areas identified at the time of the Estey and Kroeger reviews a few years ago was cycle times. Although we have seen improvements recently, as has been mentioned this morning, the cycle times of today are nowhere near the targeted improvements that were identified when

Transport committee  Mr. Chair, the department is working closely with CBSA on a whole host of issues involved with the border. We are in regular communication. That doesn't mean we're always party to every element of what the agency is doing, but we're working closely on the DRIC process and on issu

Agriculture committee  I'm happy to speak to the committee, Mr. Chair, but I'm also very comfortable if you wish to continue with your questions.

Agriculture committee  Mr. Chair, I wasn't present at the earlier discussion, but we'll try to answer that question. I'm going to ask Mr. Doran to comment on the question.

Transport committee  Thank you. Mr. Chair. We actually provide an annual subsidy to the Province of British Columbia for the ferry from the mainland to Vancouver Island. It's partly a longstanding arrangement and it is in fact, as you suggest, in recognition of the importance of the connection betwe