Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to put on the record the fact that there have been some questions here about the cold weather. Many people have asked why, when Canada is cold, would the cold weather be affecting the trains this year. I can attest to the fact that in Manitoba, where I'm from, in December we set a record for the coldest December we've had in over 100 years. December and January combined were the second coldest in over 100 years. It has been an extremely cold winter. I'm not saying that to excuse anybody, but we have to deal with the reality. To make it sound as though this has not been an extraordinarily cold winter, which some people have done, is not a fair thing to do. I want to make sure that's there.
Anybody who's on the Prairies, whether they're in a rural or an urban setting, understands the importance of agriculture and how important it is to our economy in the Prairies to address this situation as quickly as we can and to look at the long term. I'm glad to hear that there is both a short-term and a long-term outlook of how we're going to deal with this going forward, to make sure we don't run into this situation again in the future. It is very, very important for our prairie regions.
I also want to touch on the DOT-111s. You talked about some of the enhancements to them and the standards we're going to put in on the new DOT-111s. We talked about the timeframe. I'm glad that you made the statement that 10 years is too long. I'm glad we're trying to be very aggressive on this moving forward. I think it's also important to have a good understanding of what the new standards will be. Maybe you could speak to what the new standards for the DOT-111s will be.