Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  No, Canadian products won't be shipped. They won't be shipped because we won't compete.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  You've properly captured the visionary element of it. I tried to lay out a broad vision to you about the truly generational opportunity of building a cohesive Arctic strategy and infrastructure. When I look at Russia, I see 12 Arctic ports, six of which are rail-served, and 20% of the GDP of the country is going through those Arctic ports, many of them operating year round.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We're quite hopeful that 2019 will be the first grain season. I think linkage from Peace River country on CN rail out to Prince Rupert on one side and out to Churchill on the other is going to be a really viable route for a northern natural resources, grain and mining products corridor.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I think it's a cost-competitive environment. We need to be watching our costs, and I'm in the freight business, so the costs related to operations and fuel.... In some of the resource-based mining industries, we certainly see a little angst around the carbon tax. We see a lot of concern in an already relatively difficult environment and cost base in the north that this may be another layer of costs.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We have not had any of those discussions yet. We're pretty new. We'll have to take a look at what we can do, but there's nothing at this point.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Absolutely. Listen, I'd invite anyone to go to our Arctic Gateway Facebook page, where you can track all the washout repairs. We're using what we call “geotextile tough cell material”. This is a new technology that is actually reinforcing railbeds. Up to three triple layers of geosynthetic material are providing almost like a concrete reinforcement of the railbed.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  From my perspective, you know I mentioned the effects of climate change and how that is changing the dynamic of ice thickness and what that will mean in terms of deploying icebreakers, but there's no doubt that the effects of climate change are being seen on the Arctic. I've been a strong advocate of innovation versus taxation on this issue.

International Trade committee  Good morning. Thank you for inviting me to participate. Canada, with a specific focus on western Canada, has been blessed with a significant agricultural endowment, with some of the best and most productive agricultural lands in the world, making Canada a world leader in agricultural production and export.

International Trade committee  I would say that competition regulation should probably not be done by a multilateral agency. However, the overall collaboration we're seeing between the U.S., the U.K., Canada, New Zealand and Australia is an interesting approach. The one thing we have to recognize is the steamship lines are international companies, operating in international waters and calling at our local ports.

International Trade committee  I think we should look at all of the issues that play out on top of each other. There's one thing we have to be very clear on, Terry. We have to ensure that we have the infrastructure that suits the business model of the steamship lines too. For instance, in Regina, we at AGT spent $35 million of our own capital in a partnership with CN Rail to build an inland container terminal to stop the empty containers that were flowing from Chicago and Toronto to Vancouver.

International Trade committee  I would add that in our case, if we hadn't had the Port of Montreal, we would have been in big trouble. We took containers that were destined to go back west, reversed course and took them east. On the export side, we serviced Europe, North Africa and the Middle East from Montreal.

International Trade committee  Ancillary charges are massive parts of our cost base. With the disruption in the supply chain and pricing variability, all of those ancillary charges also went up dramatically. The ancillary charges are now at a point where sometimes they're as much as what we used to pay for containers.

International Trade committee  Mr. Masse, I would say that very key, in my mind, is an analysis of the infrastructure gap we have. Again, land and apron space at the ports are at a great premium. We need to ensure that we have infrastructure inland to handle containers and intermodal. As Mr. Hemmes mentioned, the percentage of containerization in the grains sector has risen from 4% to 10%.

International Trade committee  Could I add one thing? If the containers don't come into Canada, we don't have a chance to use them on the way back out. The more efficient we get in our ports.... We need the U.S. volume of consumer goods to drive the availability of containers in Canada. Our population is too small and our productive output is too big.

International Trade committee  I could give a perspective to start. I want to make this gloomy Friday afternoon a little lighter. As I look out my window to our container terminal, I note that I haven't seen this many containers in Regina in the last two years. Equipment supply is loosening and our steamship line rates for the periods of November, December and January are declining quite rapidly.