International Trade committee  I think it's all of the above. I think given what happened through the pandemic and then coming out of it, there was a sudden surge of traffic. There was a surge in demand, if you will, for traffic to move through all of the west coast ports. The railways have a fixed number of

International Trade committee  Thank you, Madam Chair and committee, for the invitation to attend today's meeting. I'm Mark Hemmes, president of Quorum Corporation. Quorum has been responsible for monitoring Canada's prairie grain handling and transportation system on behalf of Transport Canada and Agricultu

Agriculture committee  I think it would improve it greatly, yes. Now I understand. You're talking about the—

Agriculture committee  That's a tough one to answer. It's a good question, but I don't think you can schedule the arrival of vessels much better than what they do today. In order to have a bulk freighter come into a port, you have to book that freighter anywhere between six and 12 weeks ahead of time.

Agriculture committee  I don't know whether there's an exemption for anyone.

Agriculture committee  If we had that kind of data, we would be able to identify where the problems are occurring and possibly offer solutions as to how they could be addressed. If we were able to give it to both the stakeholder community and the government policy-makers, they would be better informed.

Agriculture committee  That's a really good question, and I don't have a quick answer to it. It probably centres around a greater level of accountability for the performance that the railways are putting forward today, which really is somewhat lacking. I think that would be the place to start. It w

Agriculture committee  Yes, I would, to a degree. The thing that people have to keep in mind is that the dominant direction of the flow of grain in Canada is to the west coast. There's not a lot of competition between that and oil. I think what Murad was referring to is getting oil back into pipelines

Agriculture committee  First of all, we would be able to tell where the problems are occurring. Right now, we have a difficult time trying to discern what commodities are moving in the short term. We have to wait about six months to try to quantify some of the effects of the delays that are occurring r

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman and committee, for the invitation to participate in today's meeting. I'm Mark Hemmes, the president of Quorum Corporation, which is based in Edmonton. Quorum Corporation has been responsible for monitoring Canada's prairie grain handling and transportatio

Agriculture committee  In my summarized comments I said that I don't think you can point to any one place and say that's where you pin the blame. I think the railways carry the brunt of it, but I think there is also an issue with the fact that there isn't enough transparency, or there presently isn't e

Agriculture committee  I think Bob put it quite well, actually. To your point about the eastern part of the Prairies being especially challenged, we look at our numbers right now and see that Manitoba is over 100% of the working capacity, which tells us that there is a lot of grain that's still sittin

Agriculture committee  I don't foresee it, but now that I've said that, it could happen. It could happen for a multitude of reasons. What you have to bear in mind is that with 28 or 29 ships sitting out in Vancouver right now, and most of the terminal empty, you have very close to 1.8 million tonnes'

Agriculture committee  I would say it is. Yes.

Agriculture committee  Yes.