Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'm Brett Halstead. Good evening to everybody there.
Members of the committee, thank you for inviting us to speak with you today about Bill C-30.
The Canadian Canola Growers Association is a national association that represents the voice of Canada's 43,000 canola farmers. With more than 90% of Canada's canola ultimately destined for export markets, canola farmers critically rely on the service of Canada's railways to help get our products to customers and keep those products competitive in world markets.
The competitiveness and reliability of our industry, which currently contributes $19 billion to the Canadian economy, is highly dependent on the railways' providing predictable, timely, and efficient service. As we look forward 10 years, we see further rising demand for our products. In the future, supply chains and rail logistics will be even more important as our industry strives to meet new goals of 26 million tonnes of canola production per year.
This crop year, canola farmers harvested a record 18 million tonnes of canola. This, coupled with relatively good canola prices, meant that canola farmers were feeling optimistic about their prospects. However, producers were not fully able to realize the economic benefit of this bumper crop because of a breakdown of the transportation system, specifically of the movement of product by rail from country elevators to terminals.
Not only have we lost market opportunities, but in many cases, farmers who had well-established grain marketing plans now face severe cash flow challenges as their canola continues to sit in their grain bins because of lack of delivery opportunities.
CCGA appreciates the government's ongoing commitment to resolve both short- and long-term service problems with Canada's rail transportation system, and particularly its responding to this crisis in the grain and oilseed sector.
The government has announced several measures to improve grain logistics, including better monitoring. These measures are all steps towards making the logistical system commercially responsible. We would like to underline that through this process, we have been striving to ensure that the framework is fundamentally restructured to benefit all shippers, regardless of commodity or geography.
With Bill C-30, we have a tremendous opportunity before us to rebalance the commercial relationship that historically has been heavily, and I repeat heavily, tilted in favour of one party, the railways, which form only one component of the value chain.
CCGA fully supports solutions that modernize the relationship between shipper and railway under a framework of balanced accountability.
Rick.