Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank my colleagues across the floor and the NDP for supporting us on this motion. It truly does show that we are working together and that everyone understands the situation that we face in western Canada. I do have a couple of concerns about my colleague's amendments. This is not to say that I don't appreciate the support; these are just the facts. March 21 is too late, and the reason I say so is that road bans in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta will be in place well before then. They are probably being put on right now. Road bans mean that the municipalities are putting weight limits on the roads as of the next week or two, meaning that farmers will not be able to haul their grain in the next couple of weeks. It is that critical.
If we wait another two or three weeks to host this meeting and try to come up with some solutions.... In my opinion, there are things the government can do immediately, even before that meeting, but I am concerned about the March 21 date because the road bans across western Canada will already be in place, meaning that producers will literally not be able to haul their grain to the terminal. That means they won't be getting paid.
The other concern I have is limiting it to one meeting. I appreciate that this is something we have to deal with quickly. Having CN and CP there is important, but I think we're very well aware of what their input is going to be. Our producers and stakeholders have asked the government and us in this committee to come up with a plan by March 15 to try to come up with a resolution for this. To have just one hour to listen to stakeholders, producers, grain companies, and groups like that, I think, is just disingenuous. We have a list of more than a dozen witnesses whom we would like to see. Not including the Minister of Agriculture and Minister of Transport in that one meeting really will do a disservice to our stakeholders, who are looking to us to try to come up with some options here. Again, I appreciate your guys being here. I know this not what you had planned on doing during a constituency week and that you're all busy. I don't want this to come across as being ungrateful, but I just think that March 21 is simply too late and that limiting this to one meeting is doing us a disservice. In my opinion, we're just going to gloss over it and are not being serious about handling this issue.
I talked about the road bans for sure, but the other thing we need to understand here is the cash flow issue. Our producers have a critical cash flow problem. If they can't get their product to the terminal, they don't get paid. If they don't get paid, they can't repay their mortgage and they can't repay their loans. I would also like the government to consider having discussions with lenders, banks, and FCC to get some flexibility in loan repayments, and some forgiveness, or some extension of lines of credit or promotion of the advance payment program. There are lots of things the government could be doing in the meantime that it's not doing. I think we really have to understand the critical situation that we are in right now. This has been delayed too long, and I think for us to wait until March 21 is pushing what is already a critical situation past the point of no return. I think we have to act more quickly than that.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.