Once again, thank you to this bank of witnesses for their helpful testimony tonight.
What strikes me, having sat through most of the deliberations of the transport committee a year ago in dealing with Bill C-52, is that most of these same proposals were made a year ago in relation to Bill C-52, but they were not accepted at that time, and the legislation was put through Parliament without the various considerations that are being put on the table once again.
I wonder if the witnesses tonight can give us some sense of what went so wrong. Obviously, a year ago the government didn't think these things were necessary, and then along came 2013-14 and this obvious disaster in terms of grain movement.
As this problem developed from the summer through the fall—the big crop, the weather, all of that—who was doing the system planning last year to try to anticipate these things and make sure that the system was ready to cope? Who was doing the coordination of the various elements in what is a very complicated logistics chain here in order to get the right grain, at the right place, at the right time? Who was looking at capacity?
It seems that the capacity remains now what it was a year ago. It may be in the last little while being used a bit more efficiently, but is there any significant improvement in capacity?
Who was doing the planning? Who was doing the coordinating? What's happened to capacity? Why has it been so inadequate this year? Why is that basis calculation in terms of the deductions coming off the farmer's price? Why is basis now gobbling up effectively 50% of the world price before it gets into the farmer's hands?
Can we shed some light on just what has gone so wrong from about a year ago now, when it was the considered judgment of the government that these sorts of amendments were not necessary?