Transport committee  Yes, we have a few examples. For the pulse sector in particular, a good example of the kinds of things that can cause problems for your industry is India, for instance. It was our largest market. It's a $2-billion market that is effectively closed to us now, due to both tariff

Transport committee  We very much supported that provision, but one thing we always have to keep in mind is that if the agency needs to investigate, it means it's too late. The failure has probably happened. If they have the proper data, they can start to see when the supply chain starts to become

Transport committee  To build on Joel's point and the report from Minister Bains he is referencing, there was a specific report on the agrifood sector, as it's one of the sectors targeted by the government for future growth. It's one of I think six that were chosen. The big point there was that for i

Transport committee  Just on the rate piece, it's not necessarily that.... I understand your point that we want better service and can also complain about cost, but just to Michael's point, these are monopolies and they have the ability to price accordingly. I guess the question really is how much

Transport committee  So far in the grain year, service has been quite good from the railways, as you'd expect, because it's very good railroading weather. The crop has been a bit slow to come off. We've had some issues with weather and some stalls in harvest. The railways are now meant to publish pl

Transport committee  Yes, there's a steady trend upward, but for the harvest, if you take the three-year average, you're going to be able to predict with pretty good certainty the size of the crop you're supposed to move each year, and the railways do that. They plan operationally months and months a

Transport committee  We just had a transloading facility, Ray-Mont, go into Prince Rupert in the past year, so we are seeing some investments there for that kind of movement. Essentially, they're able to take hopper cars and stuff them into containers and ship them.

Transport committee  There is a grain terminal—

Transport committee  Yes, there's a big one there, but generally the push has moved through Vancouver, because that's where a lot of the companies.... It's jointly owned by several different grain companies, so they've been investing a lot in their facilities in Vancouver. Prince Rupert is still a de

Transport committee  I can start. On your last point, one of the items that came out of the process of Bill C-49 was that Transport Canada started a collaborative forward planning exercise. They worked through on the quantity supply chain table. They are trying to wrestle to the ground some of these

Transport committee  Right, they're facilitating, which is one of the abilities of government, to facilitate. I'm not sure how that's going to go, but generally these issues have been discussed for years and years. A lot of them have to be dealt with commercially, individually between shippers and ra

Transport committee  Agriculture is a bit unique, because we have what's called the maximum revenue entitlement, the MRE. Essentially, it's an entitlement for the railways on the revenue they can make for moving grain. It guarantees them a 20% rate of return or whatever on grain, but prevents them fr

Transport committee  Thank you very much, committee, for the opportunity to speak to you today. Pulse Canada is the national industry association that represents over 35,000 growers and 132 processors and exporters of peas, lentils, beans and chickpeas. Canada is the world's largest producer and ex

Transport committee  We've had a lot of rail legislation in the past few years. It has been about incremental improvement each step of the way. That's the nature of what happens. We've been discussing this for 100 years. Shippers carry on with what they get—restricted capacity, poor service, unreliab

Transport committee  We wanted it to be made permanent because we were seeing real value for shippers. Service capacity at a fair cost comes from competition. Extended interswitching was providing that. It was very clean and simple, and it worked well. We had an exhaustive list of other recommendati