Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to testify before the committee this morning. There have been several positive developments in the past nine months, since we last appeared before you in March. We value the fact that you ha

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much for asking this excellent question. First, it's important to understand that the rail system extends over 26,000 miles across North America. It is also important to realize that it's an external network. We have to make choices every day. We have an obligati

Agriculture committee  You're right. We had a particular challenge this fall. We had committed to placing a minimum of 5,500 cars per week during the normal period and 4,000 cars during the more difficult period. The harvest is good this year, above average over the last three years, but perhaps a litt

Agriculture committee  I would like to point out that, for example, we placed 7,200 cars last week. This includes government cars and our own. That's 2,000 more than we thought we could place that week. The fact that the winter has been a little milder so far in western Canada has allowed us to catch u

Agriculture committee  Maybe just to add to that, what is not well understood is that in the last 10 years, there's been $21 billion of capital investment over an eight-year period, with $3.5 billion this year. I'll come back to a very important number. For every dollar we earn, 25¢ goes back into the

Agriculture committee  I'll start. Our investments in the network increased from $2.7 billion in 2017 to $3.5 million in 2018. So almost $800 million more was invested in the network, much of it in western Canada, between Winnipeg and Edmonton, where there was an issue for us. The Grain Plan, which w

Agriculture committee  It goes without saying that moving grain is a little complicated.

Agriculture committee  People sometimes tell us that it's 10% protein and 90% politics.

Agriculture committee  In this case, it's quite simple. There is a fleet of cars owned by the Canadian government, which is shared between CN and CP. When we say we place 5,500 cars during normal periods, and 4,000 during difficult periods, we're talking about cars shared between CN and CP for our cust

Agriculture committee  And some customers started buying private cars. They own them.

Agriculture committee  Five years ago, we were moving 30 to 40 private cars a week. Last week, we moved between 600 and 800. Now companies that elevate grain own cars, and they are part of the shared fleet. This allows us to have a fleet reserved for certain customers and to respond directly to their n

Agriculture committee  They are our employees, our locomotives and our railways. There are more and more private cars for moving wheat. As far as moving oil is concerned, the fleet is almost entirely owned by oil producers.

Agriculture committee  We have not heard from the car suppliers or the rail suppliers about any supply issues. Those are large investments. When you set up a line to produce grain cars in Hamilton, actual steel cars, you'll produce the thousand cars, and ultimately, if other cars are needed for other c

Agriculture committee  Yes, that's right.

Agriculture committee  Yes.