Mr. Speaker, I have followed the career of Minister Stewart in Saskatchewan quite closely. He is not given to hyperbole or overstatement. He is a very solid, practical, businesslike kind of guy.
He knows the agriculture industry from top to bottom. When he makes a recommendation like that, it is undoubtedly rooted in good, solid factual analysis. I am sure that his department, the Department of Agriculture in Saskatchewan, would have worked out the arithmetic to analyze his position.
Minister Stewart says quite clearly that the level the government has set for railways to move a certain volume of grain is too low. It is not a stretch. It is not a reach. It simply would require them, at the level set by the government, to move what they would have moved anyway over the course of the spring.
Minister Stewart is saying, given that there is a backlog that has been accumulating for six months—literally millions of tonnes stranded on farms—that the government should up the ante with the railways and ask them if they could not do a bit more. He has suggested an increase from 11,000 to 13,000 cars. That is about an 18% increase, which does not strike me as outlandish or unreasonable, and it is obviously backed up by the analysis of the Saskatchewan Department of Agriculture.
As for the penalties, quite frankly, $100,000 a day would sound like a pretty stern penalty for most individuals. For the railways of Canada, that is walking-around money; it is not something that is likely to influence their behaviour severely.
Minister Stewart has a point that the penalties need to be higher than they are today, to be meaningful. I agree thoroughly. Those penalties should in some way go to the advantage of farmers and not just go into the coffers of the Minister of Finance.