Good morning, Mr. Chairman.
Good morning, members of the committee.
Very quickly, I'll note that Pulse Canada is a national organization made up of grower organizations from each of the major pulse-producing provinces and of members of the Canadian Special Crops Association, which are the processors and exporters of peas, beans, lentils, chickpeas, canary seed, mustard, buckwheat, and sunflowers.
I think that all of the witnesses you're going to hear are businessmen. We have a business focus: we're trying to increase the profitability of our industry. At Pulse Canada, we're focusing on what every business does, and that's trying to reduce the costs that our industry faces and also to drive up the value, and particularly in pulses, with the tremendous story we have in health, nutrition, and environmental sustainability.
As it relates to costs, the number one issue for our members is transportation. I just want to quote one line out of a World Bank report that really puts our issues into perspective: “Predictability is central to the overall costs that companies incur in logistics and thus to their competitiveness in global supply chains”.
The key word there is “predictability”. What we are facing is a lack of predictability, and this is creating some costs in our industry. For this reason—our focus on trying to address rail costs—Pulse Canada, for the last four years, has had a major focus on transportation. We have played a major role in the Coalition of Rail Shippers and we have spent a lot of time over the last two years on the rail freight service review.
I want to give you just a couple of opening comments and then turn it over to Greg Cherewyk. I want to mention that from a pulse and special crops perspective on the costing of rail service, there are really two areas. There's the visible cost of a rail freight rate, but what we want to bring into this is an important part of the discussion; that is, of the costs shippers are paying, they're paying for service that is unpredictable.
Greg has summarized some of our key findings related to that lack of predictability, how it impacts our costs, and what we believe needs to be addressed to reduce costs and increase the profitability of our sector.