Agriculture Committee on April 19th, 2007

[Greg Cherewyk]

We have to be clear. We're always going to service a bulk commodity market. It's going to be a big part of agriculture in Canada, but we have to recognize that we're on diverging paths right now. The railways are moving even more towards providing incentives for unit trains and 100 cars, while the agriculture industry is moving in the opposite direction. At what point are we going to recognize that we need a convergence on these paths, and recognize that this is not sustainable? This is not the vision of the agriculture industry. How could it be the vision of the industry that's responsible for moving the product?

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

Mr. Brunell, you're a farmer. What do you see? What should we be doing to get this right?

[Rob Brunell]

That's always a heated topic with the strikes we've been dealing with, and being on different lines, and having different lines we tend to ship to. My closest delivery point is 45 miles. At this point in time, it doesn't make a difference, when I put it on a truck, whether it goes 45 miles or 145 miles, as long as it gets moved. We hear time and time again that when the shippers do receive the cars, the maintenance isn't done, and therefore they can't load--you know, 20%, 10%, 50%, what have you.

The other thing is, a lot of the smaller places don't have access to 100-car units, so therefore they don't always get the cars that are allocated.

You did bring up the Wheat Board topic, and it is a controversial one, but I think the one thing where the Wheat Board has had as an advantage is taking the railways to task on some of these things. Because they represent a large body of people, they can do that more effectively. If we do lose that, then how we are going to deal with the railways is a big question.

FRCC has brought up a lot of other things, and I think if you look through some of the stuff they've investigated and researched, there are a lot of suggestions a person could look into on that also.

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

Dr. Wittenberg, do you have any comments on this, on the transportation?

[Karin Wittenberg]

Just very briefly, certainly the type of person who can address complex issues is a person who's few and far between to find. They're more likely to be associated with large organizations such as the Canadian Wheat Board or the Richardson Centre. In one case, that's public information; in the other case, it's not. I suppose that's something we have to consider.

Certainly a commodity group or a smaller industry isn't privy to that, and if there isn't a vehicle through something like Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, they are going to be left behind.

The other thing I'd like to say is that I know even in some of the work that we do around research funding and that type of thing, when we took a look at how quickly a public organization can respond to change, we found we were often at a disadvantage in Canada compared to our counterparts. We may know where we need to go, but we have a difficult time getting there. We seem to be very barrier-oriented, and the resources to get over those barriers take too much energy. For these small organizations that becomes an issue again.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

The time has expired, and expired for this session as well. I think it's been great. I know that we're going to be doing a study in the very near future, I suspect--when we're done with the APF--on grain shipping.

I thank all of you for your input. It will help us form our report.

I do ask members to remain at the table. We have one minor piece of business. Witnesses are free to leave.

Just for our committee, the one thing that we kind of dropped the ball on this week is that we never did put forward a motion to direct the clerk to notify the media, whether or not we want the media at the meetings. There happened to be four, by chance, actually, that showed up at the last few meetings, but we never actually did put out any notices in the areas.

With our travel next week to eastern Canada, do we want to invite media?

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Yes.

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

Should this not be a standard thing when we come?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

It isn't, though.

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

I think probably we should have a motion that it be a standard operational procedure.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Alex moves, Larry seconds, that we invite media, and then we'll deal with whether it should be standard—

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

It should be, really.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

—when we travel.

(Motion agreed to) [See Minutes of Proceedings]

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

We'll make sure that gets taken care of tomorrow.

This ends the western leg of our APF hearings. It's been very good.

I want to thank our support staff. We are getting new support staff next week travelling with us, so I do want to thank Dominique, Paule, and Thel for interpreting; Nathalie and Robert for logistics; and Lynne and Stéphane for all their technical assistance.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Mr. Chairman, my thanks are twice as heartfelt because I dealt with them a great deal. I want to thank them again very much. They have done an excellent job. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Yes, they always do. We're very lucky. I don't know how the House of Commons survived, because we took the three best ones with us.

Anyway, I look forward to next week. I'll see all you guys in Ottawa.

The meeting is adjourned.