Transport committee  To be straightforward, there's nobody who really wants to take this on. There's no champion of this, if that's your question.

Transport committee  That's right.

Transport committee  The proposal is to renew the fleet as quickly as possible in order to have the benefits provided to all the stakeholders in the grain supply chain, between the farm and the port.

Transport committee  They'd be leased, but the value of the equipment is about $1.5 billion.

Transport committee  Yes, 16,000 cars.

Transport committee  We've made this presentation to the transportation committee...I'm sorry, to the agriculture committee.

Transport committee  In summation, replacing the current obsolete and inefficient grain car fleet will increase the efficiency of grain delivery, enhance the performance of the entire supply chain, and lower the carbon footprint of the sector, because we're moving far more grain with far less equipme

Transport committee  Do you mean for Canada?

Transport committee  That's a very difficult question.

Transport committee  The last five years have not been good to the rail car building industry because of the worldwide recession we've just been through, and perhaps are going to go into again. In a good year—

Transport committee  We've been building equipment for the United States and Canada over the last five years.

Transport committee  We have a capability of building in excess of 12,000 cars a year, in a good year, in a robust economy. We will be in the 7,000- to 8,000-car range this year.

Transport committee  We're not experiencing any barriers in the United States. As a matter of fact, we've manufactured these cars for several of the American railroads. We'd like to see them in the existing Canadian fleet, which comprises approximately, I think, 11,000 cars now.

Transport committee  This fleet originally had over 20,000 cars that were built in the 1970s. It's currently down to about 11,000 cars through attrition. We'd like to see this fleet replaced entirely.

Transport committee  No, you'd be correct in your original assumption. We sell more rail cars in the United States than we do in Canada. But to be fair, that's a much larger market. There are more railroads in the United States than there are in Canada. But we sell quite a bit of equipment in Canada.