Agriculture committee  Yes, I can try. You make a good point. Whenever people say that we need more west coast capacity, I always say that we need more capacity, period. The additional marginal cost of more export capacity at the west coast has the potential to be very high. The cost of using Churchi

Agriculture committee  It gets back, Mr. Easter, to the core problem that there is an absolute capacity constraint at the west coast. We can point fingers at the railways, and I have some sympathy for what the Mining Association of Canada has said. I've sat in and talked to the people in both the minin

Agriculture committee  Yes. I was a director of the Canadian Wheat Board. I chaired the Canadian Wheat Board's transportation committee, which was responsible for the negotiation of the previous commercial arrangements which resulted in a net dispatch earning for 10 years of movement through that progr

Agriculture committee  I was.

Agriculture committee  I can do my best. Essentially what the GTA did was define and make transparent the aggregate service that would be available to the agriculture sector. Then it apportioned those cars first between the Wheat Board for the movement of board grains and the various non-board players

Agriculture committee  The key is that you do need an aggregate agency-type player so that you have either an administrative or a market mechanism to send the signal to the players the amount that can go west has been contracted. As Mr. Otto suggested, there is also the southern move, which is an impor

Agriculture committee  Mr. Chairman, honourable committee members, thank you for the opportunity to appear to discuss this critical issue facing the grain and oilseed industry in western Canada. I've been involved in transportation issues throughout my adult life, and I thank the committee for provid