Mr. Speaker, I consider my hon. colleague from across the way, the member for Foothills, a friend on the agriculture committee. We often disagree, but we generally are focused on our customers and constituents and how we can improve the agriculture industry in Canada.
Speaking of the industry, we are now shipping to order for the third straight week. Last week, 6,424 were spotted. The current demand is about 5,000 cars per week. Therefore, we are getting to the other side of the problem we were looking at in January.
However, working with the rail industry is working through legislation. Today, locomotives and cars are on order, and staff is being hired. I visited Winnipeg a few weeks ago and saw the training programs in place to get people on maintenance crews helping to refurbish locomotives. There are $3.4 billion in the capital program on rail, and we are looking at $400 million in track infrastructure as a part of that investment.
Looking at the transparency of the proposed legislation on what is adequate and suitable rail service and how the rail service providers will work with the shippers to determine the circumstances they are under with respect to adequate and suitable service, the shippers will have the ability to seek reciprocal financial penalties in their service agreement, which they did not have before. Therefore, the shippers would have a hammer to use in situations where they would not be getting service.
Does the member agree that we are getting better service through the rail companies largely as a result of the attention we are paying as a government and working with the opposition on this?