Mr. Speaker, the government has failed Canadian grain farmers with Bill C-49. According to Ag Transportation Coalition, CN and CP supplied only a combined 38% of hopper cars ordered in grain week 29. Week 29 was the worst week to date during the 2017-18 grain year.
This is a crisis for grain farmers. They need to get their product to market and pay last year's bills. Guess who pays the penalty for delayed delivery for shipping the wheat at the port in Vancouver? It is not the port facility, not the shipper, and of course not the railway. It is the farmer who pays the penalty.
We urged the government to split up the omnibus Bill C-49 so we could pass the interswitching provisions quickly and protect the grain farmers, and the Liberals failed to do so. Now Canadian grain farmers are feeling the consequences.
The government needs to act quickly. We have winter in Canada every year and the Liberals need to quit using that as an excuse. It is time to get it done. Let us fix it for the grain farmers.