Thank you very much for coming in, Bob, at this late evening hour.
I applaud what you're doing as an organization. In fact, we use Farmers of North America on our farm, and you have certainly reduced inputs as we exercise the opportunity you provide for farmers. That's very good, and I applaud that.
I know you were in my office here recently and talked about this plan for AgriInvest, but from the informal study done in 2008, we heard that breaking the monopoly of the Wheat Board would actually increase income to farmers in the prairies by somewhere between $400 million and $600 million. So that's $500 million, not just for one year but for every year. That is a conservative amount, according to this study. Therein lies a significant amount of money. You're talking about $450 million and $285 million from the two funds coming together to free up some of those dollars for investing in agri-investments.
If you look at it that way, the subsidization of the Wheat Board right now by prairie farmers is significantly more than that, on a yearly basis. So I would challenge you, if you're working on behalf of farmers, to consider that as you move forward.
You talked about the movement of goods, and I couldn't agree with you more. Railways and a rail freight review are absolutely paramount to moving along with this so that farmers have the opportunity to get their product to shore and off to market.
Shortline rail is also part of it. We talked about producer cars. We talked about a rail freight service review, but shortline rail you have some interest in and knowledge of regarding the rail service review. Can you comment on what you would see as an opportunity for shortline rail?