Thank you, Chair.
I think that at the end of the day we're all hoping that this legislation is going to help farmers and help them make more money. I think it's important to give them as many tools as possible to get their crop to their customer. I think this is another tool.
We know about the Japanese boat that had to go to Seattle. But for various reasons, with global warming, we could be in a very good position in Canada for producing more grain, and the United States could have a problem. They have a lot of grain cars down there, so why not have that accessibility?
We've talked about Burlington Northern coming up here. Maybe sometimes our grain could go south and then west. The lines are there and the capacity is down there, so I think we have to make that available as much as we can. I think it's another tool that farmers can use so they're not stuck.
Sure, we'd like all our grain to be exported through our own ports. I think that's the idea. But when it's not happening, for various reasons, maybe with these other rail lines we can get our grain out through other ports in the United States. I think we can keep our farmers' options open when they're shipping grain, or the shippers' options, and I think it also gives some competition to the railroads. They might have to pull up their socks a bit.