Thank you, Mr. Payne. I do encourage you to talk to your constituents about their opportunities and concerns.
Our feedback would be general, that we've had some very significant problems in getting fertilizer to farmers this winter. I was invited by some of our farm groups to join them for some meetings with one of the railways to discuss the challenges both in terms of moving grain off the farms and then moving fertilizer to the farms.
Most farmers recognize that we're facing a potential crisis on both sides. Probably the one saving grace that we're going to have with regard to this spring's crop is that it looks like a late spring. A late spring gives us more time to deliver fertilizer to our farmers, and hopefully that will mitigate some of the risks of not meeting our needs for our customers.
I would add that I've heard of some very unusual situations from some of our members. One retail company told me that they could not move urea from one side of western Canada to the other. Consequently, they were importing something in the order of 100,000 tonnes of urea through the Panama Canal into the eastern United States and putting it on U.S. rail to move it to the eastern Prairies.
Those are sales that your constituent and other fertilizer producers in western Canada have lost. It's going to be handled by imported fertilizer materials because of the challenges we have in transportation this year.