I would like to echo the comments that Mr. Drouin just made. It takes a while for the government to make decisions sometimes.
I think from the witnesses we just had today, and from meetings I think we've all had individually with farmers and different stakeholders, we know the importance of the past Bill C-30 and of maybe looking at the four recommendations that were in the Emerson report.
I was on the agriculture committee before. We did go over Growing Forward 2. We made recommendations.
I know that governments have changed, and you guys want to work together a little bit more. I'm really hopeful and optimistic that if we do make recommendations, they might be adopted a little more than they were when it was you guys back then.
This is a pressing issue. I think we could still get to Growing Forward 3 in due time, but I still think we should absolutely concentrate on grain transport. There were billions of dollars of losses for farmers, huge losses, and this could happen again. We're shipping less oil. They had a bumper crop, yes, but this is a pressing issue. I'd be very uncomfortable going forward with Growing Forward 3 or whatever it gets named, because this is an issue that needs to be acted on now.
We could ask the ministers to extend the provisions and not let them sunset, but we can't force their hands to do it. That's why I think it's important to have witnesses, experts. You know, we meet with farmers, but I'm not a grain farmer in the west. I represent a dairy, pork, and heavily supply managed area in Quebec. But I meet with people across Canada, farmers across Canada, and they're telling me they're worried, they're concerned. They want the government to act.
I think it would be a great opportunity for us to study this at agriculture committee. Transport is not necessarily the best place to do it. They're busy with rail safety. This is an ag issue. We need our farmers here. We need our commodity groups. We need them to come and tell us why it's important for the interswitching, why it's important for MRE, why it's important for the four recommendations. We have to make this legislation right.
I was on committee. I fought to have a lot of these things kept in place. I fought to make it the best piece of legislation it could be. Sadly, I'm sorry, you guys voted down—remember, Bev?—a lot of the things we recommended that were based on witness testimony.
So it's a plea. I'm kind of asking, I guess, that as committee members we find some consensus and go forward with a study on grain transport, because that is an issue that will help farmers right now.
Cultivons l'avenir, Growing Forward, will come in due time and we will do a study later. We will make recommendations to try to make that better, but this is an issue that I think we could deal with and put farmers at ease. This is a huge, huge issue for them.
I guess I'm just pleading that we do a study on grain transport and the Emerson report and look at keeping some of the recommendations that were made by our experts who came to committee.