Thanks, Mr. Chair. Thanks for keeping us all together in the conversation.
Also thanks to the opposition for bringing us back to Ottawa to look at how we can add our value and our networks to the discussion that we are having, and in the upcoming meeting that we'll be having on the problem we're facing out west.
We have two areas that I think are of concern. We have the systemic areas mentioned in the motion, and then we have the immediate crisis that we as a government and the rail companies are dealing with. With regard to the systemic issues, I'm looking forward, in the study we'll be doing, to having a motion on the table to ask how we will get to $75 billion in exports, what technologies we will need, and what we will need to do to support our export of agricultural products.
I'm thinking that we will be getting into the systemic issues in a lot of detail in that report, which is going to be lengthy, but the ground is thawing as we speak, and hopefully it will be fine. It doesn't look like it in Ottawa today, but we know that spring is coming, so we know that we need to deal with the emergency situation we have in front of us.
I was on the phone earlier this week, calling out west, talking to grain companies in Calgary and Saskatoon and getting their sense of where the problems are and the source of some of the problems. They mentioned the heavy snows through the mountains this winter, with the risk of avalanche being one of the main risks they are dealing with when they get into the mountains. They talked about the cold weather on the Prairies forcing the rail companies to use shorter carloads so that the few operating locomotives we have had to take fewer cars. That was a temperature issue.
They said that they understand weather-related issues, but they want to see what the longer-term solutions are going to be for this in terms of the numbers of locomotives on the tracks, how we manage avalanches, and how we make sure we can get the high-throughput terminals on the Prairies feeding the ports on the coast. I hope that will be part of our study coming up.
I was on the plane today reading the correspondence. CN has already responded to the ministers' letter. We had both the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and the Minister of Transport sending a strong letter to the rail company saying that we need to see progress and an action plan, and then I did see the response saying that people are being pulled back from holidays or pulled out of retirement, that leases are being signed, and that orders are being made for the locomotives, so there is activity.
A few minutes ago we received information that Farm Credit Canada is going to be providing financial assistance to farmers who need to purchase their inputs for this year. The farmers can't get the cash from their crops that are sitting in almost-full terminals.
We do see some work going on, but I think that we, as a committee, need to understand that work to make sure that we are doing everything we can, so I'm supporting the motion for March 21. I think we will have a lot to talk about by then and we'll get into further studies when we talk about how we can make sure in the future that we can develop the export markets we need to develop using the best technologies and best solutions we can.